The Nest is Empty

Updating the blog a day late because of all the travel. Beth and I returned very very late, or I should say early this morning, from dropping off Alex at school in the land of far far away. Last Sunday the 21st, Beth, Alex, and I all headed west right after church. The good news is that directions for how to get to Seattle are easy (Get on I-90 west. And then what? Then nothing, just get on I-90 west and go to Seattle!) the bad news is from here it takes 4 days to get there. We left Warsaw right after church, drove through somewhere for lunch and went separately as far as O'Hare, where we left the van and continued west in the Honda we got for Alex a couple months ago. We got dinner somewhere in Wisconsin and made a reservation for down the road a ways, driving basically until it got dark and then another hour or two. So after the first day we made it as far as Albert Lea, Minnesota (~520 miles). Repeat the second day and get as far as Sheridan, Wyoming (~750 miles). Repeat the third day and get as far as Spokane, Washington (~670 miles). Repeat the fourth day and get to Redmond, WA (~280 miles). So a light day of driving on day 4, at least. Along the way on day 2 we stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, and Wall Drugs in Wall, SD. The Corn Palace, we should have skipped. It was nice to stop driving for a while and see something but it was kind of lame and not what anyone expected. It's a basketball stadium decorated with corn, and who cares. Lame, waste of time. Wall Drug was about like I remembered it from when I was maybe 6 years old...still have the signs up for 500 miles in both directions, still have lots of jackalopes, still have creepy animatronic singing cowboys. So two stops in about 3 hours. Otherwise, we went right on through except to eat and get gas :) We did learn on the first day to fill up whenever you can when out on the plains, because the next gas may be many miles away. We never let it get too low after making it to an open gas station with maybe 10 miles left in the tank. But overall, the drive was easier than I thought it would be. Having 3 people sharing driving certainly helped. 

So we got there, overnighted at a motel in Kirkland (Beth forgot her phone at the hotel in Spokane, so we had to have it overnighted to us at the hotel) and got Alex moved in on Thursday. He's in overflow housing since we signed him up a bit late in the game, but it's not so bad because he's being put up in the Redmond Hilton. He can't have any open heating elements so no electric skillet or toaster, but he does have a rice cooker and a fridge and microwave, so hopefully he'll eat all right until he gets into a more permanent apartment. He has a very nice setup there in the meantime, and he said he wouldn't mind if he has to stay there all semester. I bet. He still has some things in the storage unit for now at least, since there's no room for his dresser or night stand and such, so we'll hang on to that for now too. We visited Target and Safeway a few times each and got him everything we could think of that he needs. The shuttle will still come to the hotel he's at so he can still ride that instead of driving back and forth to campus.

Later on Thursday we went to see the Space Needle. It's expensive so we thought we'd take Alex because he probably won't be going himself. Parking wasn't horrible once we found the area and we got right on up. It was hazy enough that Mt. Rainier wasn't visible from to top but the views of the city were really cool as was the entire thing.

We visited with Scott Mason a few times while we were out there. He's managing a recreation establishment...not sure what else to call it....the kind of place where you can golf by hitting a ball into a sheet and a digital vision system determines how good a shot it was and where it goes. And then play hockey, carnival games, soccer, and such the same way. We had dinner and he took us there on Thursday (his night off) and comped us a couple hours playing, which would probably have been a couple hundred bucks. We went to visit him at his apartment Friday so we could do laundry...all that laundry from the road...and hang out until he had to go to work. Saturday we got a car wash (for free! since it was free car wash day at the place, which was a nice curprise) and oil change in the car, then Alex had a game club meeting he wanted to go to (plus IHOP afterwards) so we dropped him off, then Beth and I went to check out Pike Place Market, which was a mistake on a Saturday. The GPS took us to the main entrance, which was swamped with people and not a place I wanted to be driving. Literally enormous crowds, everywhere. The sign at the original Starbuck's said a 2.5 hour wait for service. I couldn't find an actual place to park nearby, so it would have been a very steep walk down to the market that Beth may have had a hard time with. So we punted. By the time we saw what the place was like, neither of us wanted to be there any more. And we just turned around (as soon as we figured out where) and went back to the hotel. Sunday we got Alex in the morning and checked out some more of the town of Redmond, finding a cool open air shopping center with a cool game store that Alex liked a lot. Late afternoon we headed for the airport, Alex driving us in extremely heavy interstate traffic and dropping us off. He did great. And he got back to the hotel before we were even through security. The flight back to Chicago was uneventful, but to save money get got a late one. It was 11:00 local time when we landed, and about 3:00 Warsaw time when we got back home. I actually got up to put the trash and recycling out and try to go to work but ended up sleeping another couple hours before actually starting work. From home, thankfully.

So there we have it...nest, emptied.

The empty nest we've heard about is starting to get real. Last Thursday was Missy's move-in day at Ball State. We all went down to Muncie Wednesday evening and stayed ovenight in a motel, then started to move-in process. Missy had a particular time span she was supposed to be there to move in, and we got her there and got all her stuff moved up without any issues. She is on the 6th floor of her dorm, and has a roommate that she has been talking to online and seems to get along well with but has not actually met. Her roommate wasn't around when we were moving her in, but she had moved in a few days ago I think. Her stuff was all moved in already, anyway. We made a few more final passes through town to see what there is to see and do in Muncie, ran to Wal-Mart and Target and several other places to find things that we found she needed (a power strip, snacks, something to stand on so she can get into her bed...) and had lunch, but by about 2:30 she walked into the dorm by herself and we had to leave. Next milestone, check....Missy is starting college. Ready or not. Beth cried on the way home. We missed a turn on the way back so we drove I-69 all the way up to FW instead of using state roads through Marian and Wabash, and I think that was actually faster and easier. 

Speaking of empty nests, I'm posting today instead of the usual Sunday because we are heading on an epic road trip Sunday afternoon. Alex needs to go back to school too, and since we got him the car a couple months ago, we are going to drive it out there. Beth is going to go with us instead of staying home alone for a week just after Missy left, which we thought was a smarter thing to do. We've been finishing up everything we can think of that we need to get done before leaving (haircuts, filling prescriptions, etc) and I think we are ready. I've been both looking forward to and dreading the trip. Google maps says it is 33 hours to drive to Redmond and I fell like this is going to be the longest and most boring ride ever. Well, at least we're crossing mountains so maybe there will be something to look at. And with 3 of us to share driving, maybe it won't be so bad. 

The FCC softball team are the champions! As unlikely as that seems, it's true. Well, it's true that the tournament was divided into 3 sections divided by record, and with a record of 5-7 on the season we were the top seed in our bracket, so to speak. There were 4 teams in the tournament, the bottom 4 in the division. Not necessarily the most sporty way to do the tournament but I think it was a lot of fun! We didn't have to play only teams that would blow us out in the tournament and we were guaranteed to play at least 3 games. Anyway the second game of the tournament was the triple play game, which put us into the championship game vs. (as it turned out) the same team we triple played. They beat us 12-10 in the first game because we just kept letting them stay just ahead of us. Then was the second game for all the marbles, and we beat them 14-10! We had a huge lead going into the last inning and they scored several runs, so I wondered if we were going to pull off an FCC classic and blow it by giving up a big inning late, but we held them off and won it! Not as amazing as when we won the overall tournament a few years ago, but a lot of fun nevertheless. It was a fun season.

We're busily getting everything ready for college to start back up again. We have plane tickets for Beth and me to fly back home, motel reservations for Redmond (we'll find hotels on the road as we go), and tuitions and room/board are all paid for. I cashed in the 529s, used some of Grandma's money, and we got a very generous gift from Aunt Judy, so everything is paid for until next semester and still nobody has any student loans. Awesome for the kids! 

There is a ground hog under the shed in the backyard. I do not want him there. There's been one there before, but I blocked him out, and now new holes are dug. Including under some of the cement blocks I put alongside the shed this spring. I submitted a City of Warsaw request for animal control but I don't know when/if such requests are actually handled. So, I think I'm going to do some concrete work when I put those blocks back in place, and also block the front which is where he dug in from this time. Basically, he went around the blocks on the side by digging in from the front corner. Unacceptable. 

We spent most of the weekend (and a lot of the week) helping Mary Jane move into her new apartment. She had several people cancel on her so we asked our small group and a few of them came to help Saturday morning. She also had a box truck, which we all loaded up, plus our van, plus our truck, plus the Presslers' truck, plus her car, plus another truck from her friend, and we got everything moved in one take. Except for a few things (sofa, chair, junk) that went into the dumpster and some other things (freezer, china cabinet, etc) that I hauled to Our Father's House. It took longer to get the stuff moved back in because her new place is on the 2nd floor and just halfway in between the elevator and stairs so it was a long carry either way. But we got everything unloaded and hauled up, and a lot of it put away (or at least put somewhere until she can figure out where she wants to put it. Between the all day move on Saturday and the other one-off loads we hauled over on several days during the week, we got her all moved.

Softball played a wild one last Tuesday. The first several innings was kind of a clown show on our part. Nothing was going right in the field, to the point that I remarked to a guy on their team as he came in to second due to another error "this is not our day." We couldn't do anything right, except for the fact that we did score a few runs along the way. Then things pretty much changed abruptly for the last few innings, culminating with us scoring several runs in the top of the 7th to take a lead of 14-13. In the bottom of the 7th, their first two batters got hits so they had runners on 1st and 2nd base with no outs. Then the next batter hit a sinking fly towards center and both runners took off immediately. Mike W caught the ball sliding after a hard run, then fired to me at 2nd base. I stepped on the bag, lead runner out, then tagged the other runner who was standing on 2nd by this time, trailing runner out. Triple play. Ballgame. In all my years playing softball, I have never seen that happen before! Incredible!