Saturday November 29, and Sunday November 30, 2025

It snowed on Friday night and Saturday, about 4 to 5 inches. Chase's hockey game in Springfield was cancelled but he had one in the evening. They played at All American and lost 6 to 3. Chase got a penalty, and Daddy said he deserved it. On Monday, Chase told Nanaw he sort of tripped one of the players on the other team. A few days ago, Nanaw discovered she had a leak in the unfinished part of the basement. It's just a small leak but Nanaw has to get it fixed. Uncle Mike came over and helped her with it. Nanaw spent most of Saturday moving things that were close to the leak over to the finished part of basement. She worked so hard and so long that she got a message from her Fitbit telling her to slow down and take it easy.  Nanaw asked Mama what Chase did on Sunday, and she said he and Daddy went to church and then Chase played in the garage but it was too cold. So he went downstairs to play VR. Then he played with some hockey thing downstairs. Mama put up her tree and some of her decorations. She said she needs to do her Jack tree, put up Chase's tree and then finish putting up the rest of the decorations sometime next week. On Sunday the basement leaked more so Nanaw called Uncle Mike, and he came down in the afternoon to work on the water. He brought a surprise for Nanaw: Aunt Becky had made her grilled cinnamon rolls. They were delicious and Nanaw was so happy about them. Rockbridge no longer makes them the way Nanaw likes.

Happy Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28, 2025

On Thanksgiving Day, Nanaw went over to Chase's house about 2 p.m. Mama had everything under control, and she and Daddy were working very hard. Nanaw went to visit in Chase's room. He was playing a hockey game on his X-Box and was having a great time. Nanaw had fun watching him. Cousin Joe, Julia, Hudson and Jeremy were the first guests to arrive. Hudson had a great time playing with Chase's toys, which required a lot of clean-up time from Chase and Hudson's mom. The  food was all wonderful and the people delightful. Nanaw spent most of the time with Chase, either in his room or downstairs. He's a little shy around so many people -- we had 20 -- so he hung out in his room. On Friday, Chase and Nanaw had their major holiday adventure -- going to see the Christmas display of trains at the Transportation Museum. Nanaw had thought they'd go about 10 a.m. but Chase kept playing computer games with friends and postponing our departure time. When they finally went, they had a wonderful time. Mama usually goes but she decided to stay home and put up her Christmas decorations and decompress from all the hard work for the Thanksgiving dinner. Chase and Nanaw saw the reindeer and took pictures. They did their usual thing of getting boxes of popcorn and sitting in the café to eat the popcorn.

 

Sunday, November 23, Monday, November 24, Tuesday, November 25, and Wednesday, November 26, 2025

On Sunday, Chase had hockey and Mama had a dryer breakdown. Her dryer stopped working again. Over the past few years, she's had dryer trouble several times. Sometimes Daddy can order a part and fix it, and sometimes he can't and they have to buy a new dryer. Nanaw thinks that has happened twice in the past few years. So Mama brought her clothes over to Nanaw's to dry them. She's not going to pick them up till Monday morning when she drops Chase off at Nanaw's house. On Monday, Chase didn't have much homework except to study for the vocab test on Tuesday. One of his classmates Emma wasn't at school on Monday so she wasn't able to make a Blookit for the vocab test for everyone to study from. Blookit is a cool program that has games and images mixed in with the vocab words you're supposed to be studying. So Chase and Nanaw spent a lot of time going over the words. On Tuesday, Chase and Nanaw went over the vocab words again in the morning before school, and he seemed to know them well. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school at noon, he said he thought he did well on the vocab test. Nanaw was excited that Chase only had half a day at school. His Thanksgiving break was from Tuesday afternoon through Sunday. In the afternoon, Chase played with the Nova hockey guys and on the computer. On Wednesday, Chase and Nanaw made plans to go on an adventure to Handyman Hardware to look at the Christmas decorations like they do every year. Usually Mama goes with them but Mama didn't go this year, just Chase and Nanaw. The Handyman decorations were even more wonderful this year, and dear, sweet Chase let Nanaw take a lots of pictures of him with the decorations. After Handyman, they went to the library to pick up books that Mama and Nanaw had on request. They also stopped at the library vending machine to buy the fruit candy that Chase likes so much. The reason Mama didn’t go on the Handyman adventure is that she's working very hard and worrying a lot about hosting Thanksgiving this year. She's never roasted a turkey before. Uncle Chris and Auntie LaLa came over to Chase's house on Thanksgiving Eve so Uncle Chris could teach Mama how to roast a turkey in a bag in the oven. Nanaw came over after her Thanksgiving Eve church service. She wasn't sure about this bag thing.

Saturday, November 22, 2025

Saturday was a very exciting day for the family. Saturday night Aunt Becky (with a lot of help from Nichole, Nyeal, Irina and Kat, were throwing a huge surprise party for Uncle Mike's 60th birthday and his retirement from UMSL. The party was out in St. Peters at Gettemeier's, which used to be in Florissant. Mama and Nanaw rode out to the party with Aunt Becca, in Big Daddy, Aunt Becca's big Bronco, which was great fun for Nanaw. Uncle Mike thought he and Aunt Becky were having dinner with Kat out in St. Peters. He was extremely surprised when he saw all his friends and family yelling "Surprise" at him. Daddy and Chase didn’t get to the party till later because Chase had a hockey game. Nanaw got visit with all kinds of people: Auntie Lala and Uncle Chris; Aunt Karen, cousins Nicholle and Gabe; Uncle Mike's friends from UMSL; almost the whole family, with a totally surprise visit from cousin Mike Jr. all the way from Oceanside, California. Kat made major amounts of cake pops, and Chase and Nanaw ate lots and took lots more home.

Friday, November 21, 2025

On Friday morning, Nanaw forgot about having Chase study for the DLR test. But he said Nanaw didn’t have to worry because the test was easy. After school, Chase licked the batter bowl from Uncle Mike’s chocolate birthday cake. Then Chase licked the chocolate icing can so he was very happy. At five, Mama came to pick them up to go to Joe Boccardi’s for Uncle Mike’s birthday dinner. Chase had ravioli in red sauce and really liked it. After dinner, Chase and Daddy went to Chase’s baseball practice and everybody else went to Nanaw’s house for birthday presents, cake and ice cream. Nanaw packed cake and ice cream for Mama to take home to Chase and Daddy. Aunt Becky gave Nanaw a great idea about how to turn containers upside down, put the cake on the lid, then put the container on top, and voila, the perfect container to put a piece of cake in.

Thursday, November 20, 2025

Chase didn't have any homework or studying to do before school again on Thursday morning, so there was a lot of device time, as he calls it. Today was Uncle Mike's birthday, and he came to visit Nanaw. They went to Taco Bell for lunch and then to Waterloo Walmart for Uncle Mike to get his Covid and flue shots. Uncle Mike fixed the non-working Turkey in the Straw singing and dancing turkey (a Thanksgiving decoration), and that made Nanaw very happy. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, she took Truman and Eep as Chase requested. Yesterday she forgot to bring the guys Chase requested and that was not well-received. After school, Chase worked on his geography homework. He hasn't found his lost English homework paper and he didn't talk to the teacher about it. And he didn't send her an email. She won't be there tomorrow because she and her class will be on their Memphis trip. Tomorrow morning, Nanaw will kindly ask Chase to sit down at his Chromebook and write an email to the teacher explaining that he did the linking verb and action verb assignment but lost the paper and could he please have another copy to do the homework again. He's not going to like it but he has to take responsibility for this. 

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

On Wednesday morning, Chase didn’t have any tests to study for or homework to do. So the little fellow played on his phone till it was time to leave for school. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, he was happy to tell her he got a 100 on his Lord of the Flies worksheet for chapter 6. After school he did homework. He had a vocab packet to do, plus some geography. When he was done, he left the packet for Nanaw to look at. He asked Nanaw if she knew where his English verb homework assignment was. It was due today and it wasn’t in his agenda, which was where Nanaw thought she’d put it this morning. Nanaw looked everywhere several times but couldn’t find it. Chase said the only place he hadn’t looked was his locker so he was going to look for it there tomorrow. Nanaw said he should ask the teacher for another copy and redo it and explain he’d done it but it got lost. Nanaw baked brownies with German chocolate frosting for Mama, and Chase licked the brownie batter bowl.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Chase didn’t have any tests to study for before school but he made some changes in his English worksheet. Nanaw had read the instructions for the action verbs and linking verbs. She had Chase read the instructions again and asked him to go over the assignment again. He changed some of his answers based on his new understanding of the rules for the verbs. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, he was excited to tell her he got a 96 on his science test. That was much better than some of his previous low grades. Nanaw said what a big difference a lot of studying can make. Nanaw told Chase she had some yummy vanilla ice cream. Chase said if they had root beer, they could make root beer floats. Nanaw said she was going to Schnuck’s to get a newspaper and she’d get some root beer. Chase made a big root beer float and offered some tastes to Nanaw. It was really good. They worked on Chase’s Lord of the Flies worksheet and Nanaw showed him how to find the page in the book where the correct answer is. Chase was doing a lot guessing about the answers. Nanaw advised him that that was the way to get the wrong answers. Nanaw said he must always find the page where the correct answer was. He didn't have any hockey or baseball in the evening, and he said he was planning to play roller blade hockey in the garage or knee hockey downstairs.

Monday, November 17, 2025

When Mama brought Chase over to Nanaw’s house on Monday morning, she told Nanaw that they sold $1170 worth of donuts at church so Chase and Brady each will get $570 toward their Washington DC trip, which is really good news. Chase didn’t have any tests to study for in the morning before school and he was happy about that. On the drive to school they listened the book Notorious for Chase’s AR reading. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, they went over his homework. His vocab is due tomorrow and Nanaw went over it. She also looked at the Lord of the Flies worksheet that’s due Wednesday. Chase worked on his English worksheet about helper and action verbs and Nanaw will look at it before school tomorrow morning. At four, Nanaw took Chase to get his hair cut. Nanaw likes Brittany, his stylist. She’s really good with Chase; he actually talks to her. 

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Chase and Daddy went to the 7 a.m. Mass at church today so they could help Mama sell donuts and pretzels for the Washington D. C trip fund raising. After Mass they came out to help Mama, along with Brady and his mom. Mama said that Chase and Brady did a lot of laughing and fooling around as part of the sales, and they had to shush them. Nanaw is glad they had fun together because they don't see as much of each other as before. Brady is in the other class but at least he has Drew in there with him. When Chase got home, he had lunch, did homework, played on his roller blades and shot the puck. Chase and Daddy left at 4 for Chase's hockey game. Mama stayed at home because she had too much work to do from staying up at church so long. Nanaw had asked for a picture for Days of Chase, and she said she'd put a reminder on her phone. Chase sent Nanaw a selfie and Nanaw wrote back thanking him and telling him she loved him lots but he never answered, just like Nanaw expected. Mama asked Nanaw if she could take Chase to get his hair cut at 4 p.m. tomorrow, and Nanaw said yes.

Friday, November 14 and Saturday, November 15, 2025

On Friday morning, Nanaw and Chase studied again for today's science test. They had studied intensely on Thursday afternoon, and Chase seemed to know the material so Nanaw just had him read the study points out loud to her. It turned out to be interesting because Chase explained things to her, and Nanaw liked that. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, he said he thought he did well on the science tests, and that he might have even gotten an A. On Friday afternoon, the Builders Club was sponsoring a Hangout Bonfire at ICS, and miracle of miracles, Chase agreed to go. Mama took Chase and Hunter to the bonfire. Chase had told Nanaw that he thought most of his friends in the crew were going to the bonfire. At different times, Mama and Chase talked to Nanaw about the fact that Evie was Drew's girlfriend. Nanaw told Chase that Evie's mom said Evie might go to Gibault. Chase told Nanaw that was because Drew is going there. On Saturday morning, Chase came over to Nanaw's house while Mama went to the grocery store. Chase told Nanaw that at the bonfire they had pizza and a candy salad (a mixture of lots of candy). Later they made toasted marshmallows but Chase was full and didn't have any. Chase played miniature hockey on the living room, and Nanaw watched. In the evening, Mama, Chase, Brady, and Brady's mom went up to church to sell donuts and pretzels as a fund raiser for the Washington, D.C. trip. Below are pictures of the boys at the sales table and the posters the moms made. The last nine pictures are ones that Daddy took of Creekside Park. They're a lot further along than Nanaw expected, and she's very excited about the upcoming park.

Monday, November 10 to Thursday, November 13, 2025

On Monday, Daddy had the day off so he took Chase to school and Nanaw got to sleep late. About 10 a.m., Daddy called Nanaw and said Chase wasn't feeling well and Daddy was going to pick him up and bring him over to Nanaw's house. When Daddy and Chase got to Nanaw's, Daddy said Chase's homework would be available in the black box outside of school after 3 p.m. Nanaw said she would go pick it up. Chase had a headache, and Mama said it would be okay to give him Tylenol. He took a nap for about an hour or an hour and a half. When he woke up, he felt better. For lunch, he chose a can of chicken noodle soup. It turned out to be a new kind of Campbell's with carrots and squiggly noodles in it. He really liked it a lot, and that evening told Mama it was almost as good as hers. He chose the name Dancer for the big deer and Baby Dancer for the little deer. Mama had the day off on Tuesday so she took Chase to school, and Nanaw got to sleep late again. During the day, Nanaw went to Dollar Tree where she'd bought the chicken noodle soup that Chase liked so much and bought three more cans. She gave two cans to Mama when she took Chase home and kept one can at her house. On Wednesday it was an unexpected early dismissal. Usually, it's on the third Wednesday, not the second. Chase had a 3 p.m. appointment on Wednesday for his teeth cleaning. Mama asked Nanaw to bring Chase to his house after school and hang out there till it was time for Chase's appointment. Nanaw said first they had to go to her house to get Truman the tiger and then they would be there. Later, while they were at the dentist's office, Mama texted Nanaw that Chase was supposed to have Teresa for his teeth cleaning but she was busy so he had someone else. On Thursday, Chase had a religion test. Chase studied the material on Wednesday night and then he and Nanaw went over it again on Thursday morning. He seemed to know the material but you never can tell with Chase. After school, Chase and Nanaw studied for the science test on Friday and planned to study the material again on Friday morning before school.