Checking In...

Tomorrow is the last day of a fabulous summer. Here are a few updates.

Joe, a student from King College in Tennessee has lived with us this summer while he played for the Brazos Valley Bombers baseball team. We were his host family. As such, we got season tickets to the games, and the boys got a live-in famous hero for the summer. He may as well play for the Astros because he is just that famous to them.

Tucker spent a good bit of the summer googling "cheapest catcher's mask" and calculating how many weeks of allowance it would take him to buy one. On Sunday, Joe went to the store and bought him one. I don't think he took it off for three days straight. He wore it to HEB, to my school, and everywhere in between. Joe got Keaton a "super cool" racetrack that has a shark that tries to eat the cars. It's still in the living room floor so we can play with it all the time.

Tucker has increased his technological savvy this summer, too. He's created his own blog www.tuckstown.blogspot.com (I helped set it up, but I'm hands off now), he's bookmarked ESPN, the Texas Collegiate League, and the Brazos Valley Bombers, and he's started emailing. I worried about him not reading or doing any math all summer, but between scores and emails, he done plenty.

Keaton's been on the computer some, too. He really loves to do online jigsaw puzzles. He REALLY loves them. He's also started to do some things for himself. Let's be honest, I wasn't sure that would ever happen! :) He wants to buckle his own seatbelt and get his own peaches off the counter. I'm happy to see him finding some independence. We've just signed him up for his first go at soccer this fall, and I think I'm more excited than he is. I'm sure there will be many stories to come out of that.

I've been having fun writing for money. It's a silly little project, but it's fun for me to get paid to see my name in "print." You can check my work out here.

Trey's working like crazy, and glad to be. I think he leaves work every day thinking he has enough stuff to do to stay for a few more hours, but I'm glad he comes home to us. He's also been working really hard to get in shape, and I can tell that he looks better and feels better which makes me very happy. You can find details on that here.

School starts for me on Friday, without students for six days, then full force. Everyone's kind of laughed at me because I'm so excited about the beginning of the year, but I just love it. I love the idea of new beginnings: new people to laugh with, new students to help, new friends for the boys. More than that, I really hate the ends of things. Most of my yearbook kids are leaving for college in the next two weeks, Joe went back to Tennessee this morning, summer's over, and I hate goodbyes and see you laters and all that. So I'm choosing to get excited about the beginnings instead of being sad about the endings.

So I hope to be back to my usual zany posts once the fall semester returns us to the wonderful routines of life. In the meantime, it's been a great summer.