Peoria Bound

Robert moments before I dropped him off at school Wednesday. I love having a job where I can take a 2 hour lunch so I can see my kid off on his trip. We went and had lunch together at Puerto Vallarta and then packed him up and got him on his way.

Another adventure....Life is good.

It sounds like he has had an awesome time. They got to see the guy that wrote the music for the Halo video games, they got to see Robert's cousin Nicole play the piano piece that won first place in the young composers contests, they got to spend time with kids just like them from all over the state and they got to spend time with each other. Robert's roommate was Danny Cast. I wasn't blogging yet when he was a freshman but there is definitely a story....

One day at work, I get a phone call from Andrew, he is home and apparently so is Robert. Robert gets on the phone and the first words out of his mouth is "MOM, you HAVE to call the school and tell them this wasn't Danny's fault- it is as much my fault as his and if he gets in trouble, I need to be in trouble too"-- I had no clue what was going on. It just so happened that Danny and Robert were messing around before band started. They were really just giving each other a hard time, In fact, Robert was pretending to choke Danny and Danny reached up to take a swing at Robert. The problem is he accidentally connected. Robert had blood coming from a cut right under his eye, which made it look like his eye was actually bleeding. There was also a blood vessel busted in Robert's eye so he looked like he had been beaten up badly. The school nurse sent Robert home and wouldn't let him come back to school until we had taken him to the doctor.

I called the school; when my friend Laura answered the phone, I told her what Robert had said and she laughed. She had a story to tell me too.

When all of this happened, Danny was the one to take Robert to the nurse, when the nurse said Robert needed ice, Danny RAN to get it for him. Danny helped him to the office and after Andrew had picked up Robert, Laura told Danny he should go back to class. Danny's response: I might as well wait around for my punishment. After the doctor visit and declaring Robert's eye looked worse than it was, he returned to school the next day. They both got called into Mr. Athey's office and because there are rules against fighting and it was pretty evident they had been fighting even if it was friendly, they got two Saturdays of Saturday school. Do you remember the old adage about a good friend bailing you out of jail but a great friend...?

This summer, I came home from work one day and Danny and Robert were sitting on the same couch playing a video game with a bunch of other friends, I almost commented then that I didn't know if they should be competing against each other and sitting that close. When All-State was announced and Danny and Robert were the only two guys going, I thought somehow it was funny. Even more memories those two will remember the rest of their lives. I have a very short list of guys that I would feel totally comfortable with Robert sharing a room with. Danny is most definitely one of them.

We are heading up in a matter of hours. I am really excited to see Robert but just so very glad he has gotten to experience this. It's times like this I stop and thank the Lord one more time for bringing us back home to Jasper county.