The truth be told, I'm not much of a love expressing dad. I'm more of a hard ass, keep pushing your kids kind of dad, but I wanted to take a minute to brag on my son a little bit. Seth has been working the past few months 4-5 days a week running all the routes for our Green Teens Curbside Recycling Business. The routes take between 4-6 hours, and then you it take another 1.5 hours to go dump. All while attending 2 Classes at TCC online, working as a office aid and playing Varsity Football. Did I mention that he is a straight "A" student! He's really good at Math. Anyway, this is has been a really busy senior year for him. His sister, Sydney, attended Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU) this past semester. While she was gone Seth ran all of the recycling routes for our business. Usually his sister would work the routes with him, but when she left he picked up the slack. My wife and I helped him when we were able, but sometimes he had to run the routes himself. He has really been working hard and seems to become more responsible each week. He was able to pay for all of Sydney's college while she was away! Yes that's right, the business made enough money to pay him and pay for Sydney's college, all thank to my son! He really loves his sister and my wife and I couldn't be more proud of the man he is turning into. I'm sure he will have some smart ass remark for me when he reads this, but I really am proud of him. He hopes to attend OSU next year. I can't wait to see what he does from here.
Football
Seth didn't have the easiest time at Owasso Football. He got lost in the big program and didn't get to play very much. This just makes me more proud of the fact that he stuck it out. I'm not sure how much you know about Owasso Football, but it's big time. They practiced 6 days a week. On Wednesday he would get up to lift weights at 6 in the morning, come home and run a recycling route until noon. Then go to his office aid hour and straight to football practice. He usually didn't get home until 5-6. Then it was nap time and maybe some homework later. He discussed quitting football with us several times. In the end he decided to see it to the end. Seeing him work his way through the process and eventually deciding not to quit was like watching him mature in leaps and bounds. My wife and I loved that he made a big decision carefully.
Thanks to a grant this year from PepsiCo Recycling we have grown our business in the past year from 100 customers to over 250 customers! We hope to grow to over 300 customers and the plan is to keep the business going so it can help to support both Sydney and Seth in college next year. His cousin Elias is now working for us too.
Sydney's Future
So as a dad I can't leave my baby girl out. Sydney had a tough first semester at college. She had to make some big life changing decisions in life the past few months. She had decided to come home and attend TCC and hopes to get into a nursing program next year. I'm also very proud of her. The decision to let go of Soccer in her life and start making the best decisions for her future wasn't easy. She has played Soccer since she was very young. It was a major part of her life. She did a lot of research and took 2 months to make a choice. In the mean time, Seth is happy to have his route worker back!