Sunday Reflections – 17 September 2017

Sunday Reflections Button

Happy Sunday!

After yesterday’s brilliantly sunny day and oddly warm temperatures, we seem to have hit a gloomy patch. I like cloudy Sundays though. It makes me feel less guilty about staying home and watching football.

We made it through the first full week of school. It looks like the schedule is not great but not horrible. Holly’s homework load has been relatively light so far; she has been able to do a lot of the assigned work in class. Dance keeps her busy for at least two hours each night, but she has done a fantastic job of balancing everything. This past week, she spent most of her free time making campaign posters, at least two or three a night. I imagine what is going to happen is that her free time will shift from poster-making to actual homework soon enough. She is enjoying eighth grade though, and that is a win in my book.

Last weekend, Jim went down to Houston to check in on his family. None of them had any water damage, but the town where they live did seem some massive damage. Jim’s former high school had water up to the second floor; the damage is so bad they closed the school for the remainder of the school year and had to make arrangements for all 2,000 students with other districts. He said that you could see evidence of the flooding all over the city, from high water marks to garbage, but the city and its inhabitants are making strides in moving on and doing what needs doing. It is going to be a long time before the flood-damaged areas completely recover though.

Connor is surviving life as a freshman. We don’t hear from him much; he never was one for texting, and marching band takes up a large portion of his time. Plus, the downfall of AP testing is that you start your college career bypassing the easier basic courses and immediately start with higher level courses. He is learning this lesson the hard way and finding that his calculus and chemistry courses are a bit more difficult than he expected. Thankfully, the school has a robust study group program and promotes it, so he has a few study groups with those courses that are giving him a spot of trouble. Jim and I were worried how he would handle the difficulties of balancing everything, so it makes us feel so much better that he is using the help offered.

On Friday, he traveled with the marching band to Akron, Ohio to support the football team. They aren’t slated to get back to Ames until later tonight, so I doubt we will be able to talk to him today. We are both interested in finding out how it went and how proactive he was with all of the bus time. Next weekend is his first free weekend since he moved to campus, so we are also curious how he will handle the extra free time. I suspect he will sleep. A lot.

Other than that, things are quiet here. Dance, school, work, rinse and repeat. Jim and Holly winterized the landscaping yesterday. It seems early, but we have gotten caught every single year in the past with early snow or freezing temperatures before we had a chance to prepare. Jim wanted to make sure we were prepared this year, making it one less thing to do this fall. We’ve started the demo of the basement carpet but still need to make some decisions on its replacement. This is just one of the winter projects Jim has in mind for the next few months. With a house that is ten years old, it is time to make some changes to a few things, and that carpet was beyond nasty.

I hope everyone is enjoying a relaxing and fun Sunday. Holly has her parade around lunchtime, followed by dance rehearsals after that. I know she is going to be exhausted by the time she gets back home. I foresee naps later today, and I am perfectly fine with that. Have a wonderful day and even better week to come, and I’ll see you all back here next week!

Here are past posts from the few last weeks in case you missed them the first time: