Thankful Thursday: National Sons Day

Apparently today is National Sons Day. Who knew? :) So thankful for my three sons!

Here's a favorite from May 2016. Micah was 10, Asher was 13 and Noah was 15.

And here we are last weekend...Micah's 18, Noah is 22 and Asher is 21. 

Very thankful to be their mom...to have had the opportunity and privilege to homeschool them...to have learned so much alongside them...and to get now to watch the men they're becoming and the adventures they'll have. 

Our weekend

So, my last post was pretty calm...quietly adjusting around here. This past weekend was a reminder that we can be busy, too. Let's see...

Asher came home on Friday and we spent the afternoon switching around iPhones, as Nathan, Asher and I all got new phones. Micah took the bus from Boulder up to Fort Collins and we picked him up at the transit center and then transferred his phone, too, as he inherited my old iPhone. Asher also went to demo team practice and we all caught up on stories. (Boys away at college have much more interesting and entertaining stories than we do, lol.) 

On Saturday, Micah got his annual covid and flu shots. (We'd had to time them mid-cycle between infusions hence his coming home this weekend...which worked out fine given the other things also going on.) After that, we headed down to the first annual Colorado Korean Festival in Denver... 

We sat down to a late lunch (hit traffic on the way) and enjoyed watching some K-Pop dance instruction and traditional drum and traditional fan performances.

We then also wandered the various vendors and watched the Taekwondo performance, got some traditional Korean drinks (no idea what was in them, lol...it was too loud to talk to the vendor), and thoroughly enjoyed watching the K-Pop random dance. They'd start a random K-Pop song and if you knew the choreography, you jumped out on the stage and did it. They did that for an hour. Who knew that each K-Pop song has specific choreography? Wow. (Micah and I were a little/lot scared of a particular dancer who seemed to know every.single.song.)

Overall, the festival was fun and good for a first year. We're hoping they have more food vendors next year (the lines were crazy long for the few they had). 

After that, we took Micah back to his dorm, as he had things to do. ;) The rest of us then wandered the Boulder Fall Fest along Pearl Street...got some ice cream and watched a street performer. We got dinner in Longmont at a favorite pizza place there, drove to Asher's dorm to pick up a couple things, and then headed home for the night. 

Sunday we took our minivan to get new tires installed, picked up grocery orders and then headed to Open Streets to see Asher and Karate West. Nathan and I walked all the vendors, watched Asher and the demo team perform a couple routines, and caught up a bit with other parents.

After that, we picked up our minivan then went home for a quiet afternoon of chores and football and catching up. 

While we were doing all that, Micah went to a CU Taekwondo club gathering Saturday night and then went climbing with the CU Alpine club on Sunday. These are the pictures he sent me...

Yup, Micah's enjoying CU and seems to be fully taking advantage of the college experience. :)

And that was our weekend. 

Adjusting

So. It's mid-September. One month ago, we moved Asher to UNC and then moved Micah to CU the week after. Things have settled down now; time for a status report. :)

1. College. Both Asher and Micah appear to be adjusting to college just fine. They're both finding their people and enjoying at least some of their classes. Both joined their college's Taekwondo Clubs and each have a couple other groups they're participating in also. So far, classes and life in the dorms are going fine. 

Asher had an overnight up in Estes Park for his Outdoor Adventures class this weekend, and Micah's surviving the craziness on CU's campus during the Rocky Mountain Showdown football game this weekend. (The Rock is there!)

2. Visits. I think I've mentioned before...Asher comes home on the weekends to go to karate. It's a nice opportunity to touch base and catch up. And last weekend, for about 24 hours, we got to catch up a little with Micah, too. Every four weeks, we'll go pick him up and bring him home so he can get his infusion. The drive time and sitting with him during his infusion is some lovely time for conversation. He had some great stories about people he's encountered at CU and has been enjoying getting out and exploring campus and Boulder. He's a big fan, too, of the bus systems there. 

3. Household. It's quieter around here with only the three of us now. But we also have less laundry and fewer dishes and lighter grocery bills, so there's that. :) And with Micah not taking a car to college, Noah can now drive himself to and from work, which saves me that small task. Plus, the piles of things staged for dorm room move-in are gone and I took a load of stuff from boys' bedrooms to Goodwill this week, too. (For the record, the boys created the load of stuff for Goodwill over the summer and as they were packing; I did not go through their rooms in their absence.)

4. Bucket list. With more time of my own, I've been a bit adrift so far. But. I've been revisiting my bucket list for some inspiration. It's not a full bucket list, but a year or two ago I made my own private "50 before 50" list. One of the items had to do with climbing. At Ascent, there's an area called "the ramp." I'm not a great climber so I only ever manage the one route on the ramp that's along the wall. (Along the wall is easier since you aren't just hanging the entire time, lol.) On my list, then, I have "climb a ramp route that's not along the wall." And, on Monday, I DID IT! I finished that orange route! 

It's not the hardest route I've ever climbed but it was a significant accomplishment for me. I climb overhang in other parts of the gym but was in my own head about this part of the ramp. Feeling proud of myself and ready to tackle a new challenge!

And that's where things stand around here. Asher and Micah are off and well. Our pace here has slowed with fewer people in the house, and we're adjusting and finding our new rhythm. 

Thankful Thursday

Here's my list this week...

1. Throwback Thursday. So thankful that I took as many photos as I did when my boys were younger. I love being able to look back and see these smiling faces 17 years ago.

2. Hard cider. Nathan and I decided to try out Locust Cider in Old Town for date lunch last week. My blackened fish tacos were delicious, their completely gluten free menu is pretty cool, and their hard cider selections were yummy!

This was a small Vanilla Bean cider after the pint of Honey Pear cider I had with my meal. I can't decide which I like better...

3. Micah's college experience. So. Last Friday (the end of the first week of classes), Micah changed his major and all but one of his classes. My college friend, Sarah, laughed and said he took after me. (I may have changed my major in college a good number of times, lol.) In fact, though, all of us here but Noah changed our majors. So there. Of course, the rest of us didn't do it during the first week. :) But, that's Micah.

Micah has plenty of experience with college classes (having pretty much only taken college classes all through high school) and a healthy self-awareness so seems confident that business wasn't the right major for him after attending the classes. He says there wasn't anything "wrong" with them or the professors (acknowledging that it is a good business school, which is what attracted him in the first place), but he just couldn't see himself doing that for the next three years. (Thanks to already having his AA, he would have finished the business degree in three years or less.) Given that he'd already taken a good number of college business classes and earned four business certificates along with his AA, it feels like he gave it a solid chance.

So. He spent Friday drawing on his existing college experience to go around campus, meeting with the appropriate people to get his major officially changed to Philosophy, drop his business classes, enroll in new classes, and switch out all his books. He now has two philosophy classes and two other upper-division classes in the College of Arts & Science that will count toward his requirements. He spent the weekend catching up on what he'd missed in the classes, attended them for the first time yesterday, and is thrilled. 

Thankful, then, to have a happy boy who knows what he wants and knew how to get it. :) 

(Thankful, too, that the philosophy degree can actually be finished even sooner and costs less than the business degree...and that none of Micah's scholarship money was tied to his major so switching won't impact things like it did for Asher at UNO.)

4. Asher home on the weekends. Asher seems to be enjoying his classes at UNC, has joined a few clubs, and is doing well. One of his classes had a field trip today to observe an elementary PE class, he's really liking the Taekwondo club, and his outdoor adventures class has an overnight excursion next weekend that he's looking forward to.

And. He comes home on the weekends. I'd like to say it's because he misses me, but I know that he's coming home to go to karate, lol. It's okay. I'll take it! Last week, he needed a photo of himself for a class, so I got to take this... 

5. Settlers of Catan. We didn't have any real plans for the long weekend, but Noah, Asher and I played a game of Settlers of Catan...and I WON! I never win, so this was worth documenting. ;) 

(We don't need to talk about the house rules that Asher and I instituted about re-rolling, lol.)

That's it for now. Settling in for a less busy September and looking forward to fall...