fall is coming

Fall is coming. The nights have been delightfully cool lately, and the days have a crispness to them. The sky is that lovely blue that only comes in the autumn.

I went into Bill's room today and made his bed and put away a couple of books back into his shelves and changed his garbage bag. A few dress shirts got dumped on top of his dresser because he needed the hangers, so I will have to find some more hangers and put them up in his closet and his room will be perfectly clean.  It is the first time any of us have been in there since he left, other than to open the window. Getting the emails from him, and knowing that he and his roommate get along great and that half of the kids in his hall are honors architecture students and will be in his classes make me feel a lot better about him being gone.

Steven is starting his soccer practices soon. Even with the home schooling, he will have plenty of athletics - travel soccer in the spring and fall, and lots of wrestling. He has been invited to come to a very exclusive training club in Ann Arbor, where he will be working with former and current University of Michigan wrestlers and coaches in small workshops twice a week.

The home schooling will start on Wednesday. For literature (and writing) he will be studying classics. We will take up The Iliad where we left off. For social studies we will continue with the Civil War and Reconstruction, possibly switching to some world history later on in the year. For science he will be studying astronomy/cosmology. I will also have him read books on his own and do book reports on them. And we will go see some theater, as well as classical music concerts, and he will have to write reviews/impressions of those as well. And for math he will have beginning algebra.

Tomorrow we will go to Barnes and Noble to get a book he has been wanting and so he can inspect the collection of CD's from one of his favorite rock bands. We will have lunch at Pannera Bread. That will be our send off to summer.