<p>cpt: Congrats on the Pitt decision! I grew up in the Pittsburgh area and attended many Pitt football games, so I’m partial to Pitt. Nice choice!</p>
<p>fogfog: Frustrating! Guess I know what your response will be when xyz needs a place to stay next time!</p>
<p>CPT: Congrats on the Pitt decision. Great choice!</p>
<p>Fog: I’m always amazed by people like you described. </p>
<p>Today is the last day of school before spring break. It looks like the teachers and kids at D’s schools are fried waiting for this late break. My daughter said that they are doing nothing in most of her classes today and that most seniors are not coming to school. I let her sleep in and go in late to take her math test. I guess I have senioritis also.</p>
<p>Well I don’t know what you all did in regards to praying for dry weather today for the last admitted students event (as I requested) but I just got a pic from the ds/dh duo of a sunny (not even partly cloudy) sky over Pittsburgh. Praise be!
I have to say, even with just having ds out of the house for one night - it was remarkably easy. People went to bed, they didn’t skype till midnight, they got up, they didn’t take 20 min showers…it was breezy! I am going to LOVE next year!</p>
<p>Happy 18th Birthday to Ohiomo24’s son and my son–and any other Tax Day babies represented here.</p>
<p>**The SS Indecision left port on April 1st.</p>
<p>The ship will stop in many ports this month with the last port call scheduled in 16 days when all final commitments to schools are due. (Or nautically speaking, it’s time to sink or swim.)**</p>
<p>Happy Birthday to OWM’s son and my son! Yesterday I called to schedule a dr. appt. for him and the woman said --“Oh, he’ll be a man tomorrow!” That kind of got me.</p>
<p>Happy birthing day to OWM and ohiomom24! Both S’s turn 18? Hope it is a great day for them.</p>
<p>Amanda: As always, thank for the laugh! I’m happy to hear that there are clear skies over Pittsburgh. </p>
<p>Happy 18th Birthday to OWM and Ohiomom’s son! We moved into our house on tax day in 1992, so I guess it’s our house’s 19th anniversary.</p>
<p>Good morning! I have been off the board most of this week and it looks as if I have a lot to catch up on. </p>
<p>Congratulations to those that are off the SS Indecision!</p>
<p>Fogfog - I hear you! It seems as if we are always available to help other parents with rides when they are in a jam but nobody is around when we are in a jam. I have actually started to say no but I feel badly when a kid can’t participate in something because the parents are lazy. Ugh!</p>
<p>It looks as if I am going to reluctantly host a post-prom get together - I really don’t want to but no one is stepping up in my Ds group. There will only be 10-12 kids. Other than taking everyone’s keys - any words of wisdom?</p>
<p>Cptofthehouse: Congrats on your son’s decision to attend Pitt! My daughter will be a freshman engineering student there in the Fall and we are all very happy! Wish that it were a few hundred miles closer to home though… :)</p>
<p>gamom - good luck to your D! </p>
<p>cpt - Pitt was on my S’s list also. He really liked the school, ended up else where because of $$$.</p>
<p>fog- Really, they can’t help, even if it is out of the way? Wow. is there anyone else who can drive fogchild home?</p>
<p>S’s last regular day of school. Vacation next week, then he only has AP classes til the test. He is psyched. My hope is he uses all this free time to study for the upcoming AP exams. Ha. </p>
<p>We are going to SanDiego for a week, leaving Monday. I am psyched for that. We have done little in the way of planning, other than hotel and air,just haven’t had much time. I did ask for ideas on the parent cafe and got enough stuff to keep us busy for two weeks so even if we wing it it will be fun. I hope when I get back most have disembarked and made it ashore.</p>
<p>Still have today and Mon and Tuesday until spring break here. It’s been such a long wait! Won’t be going anywhere, though–husband broke his collarbone playing soccer last Sunday and is in a lot of pain. Just hanging around the house and not having to drive the hour round trip to school every day will be fun at this point! Good luck to the Indecision crew and happy vacation to those leaving town!</p>
<p>momofboston: We hosted the after-prom get-together last year and another family in our “friend” group did it this year. About 10 or 12 each year, all kids that we knew well so it was easy. Have never suspected any of this group of being partiers so that made it less stressful.</p>
<p>Some tips. Have two adults there at all times. Greet everyone at the door so you know who’s there. We did not take keys, but we had a rule that if they left, they could not come back. (So they can’t run out to get “stuff.”) Anyone who didn’t plan to stay all night had to leave at 1 a.m. We did this primarily in case we fell asleep and didn’t hear someone sneaking out and we let the other parents know ahead of time that this was our rule. We designated sleeping spaces for girls (guest bedroom) and boys (basement game area.) </p>
<p>We had lots of snacks and soft drinks/lemonade/juice. They served themselves. Everyone brought games–Apples to Apples, Twister, Battleship, Catch Phrase, etc. plus Rock Band. Pretty much everyone fell asleep about 3 and woke up about 10. Then we served breakfast. </p>
<p>It was a great memory for all the kids and they still talk about both years. I think you’ll be glad that you provided that time and place for your son.</p>
<p>Happy Birthday to “da boys”!</p>
<p>Congrats on college decisions! Hurray! And a special shout-out to our cadet.</p>
<p>D is almost done with her waitlist mini-app. She has the right take on this - we’ll see what happens. Any of you WLers, come on over to the WL thread - we’ll do a double-rigger boat for a while together.</p>
<p>She was happy to get a note from school that she’s receiving a scholarship at awards night in May, although she’d already had hints from her choir director that she was in consideration for one. Our town is incredibly generous with local scholarships, most of which use a general application that’s easy to fill out. Last year, for a graduating class of around 250, they gave out about $200K in scholarships to over 100 kids. It’s exciting to see scholarships given to kids in the middle of the class, for doing their best, being nice people, doing something special that no one knew about, or planning study in a service career like health care or education. The top kids get very generous amounts (usually $3-4K) but they don’t run away with everything. It’s really nicely done.</p>
<p>D also was annoyed that there was an academic letter ceremony Weds night that was poorly advertised - on the school calendar, but no announcement, no e-mail to the kids who were receiving awards. She got a letter last year (missed that ceremony, too, because of music) but got additional chevrons and would have liked to have been there. Apparently only 2 seniors showed up. Shame on the people organizing this, but really only a blip in the big picture.</p>
<p>I need to ask her about post-prom, actually would love it if kids came here, just selfishly.</p>
<p>Momofboston: You’re a good sport for hosting the post prom party. OWM gives good advice. One other thing is to stress to your daughter that she is only allowed to have the 12 kids in her group, and to try to keep the plans quiet. If anyone else asks to come, she can say no and blame it on her mean parents.</p>
<p>Momdoc: I hope your husband feels better soon.</p>
<p>Mamom: Have a great visit to San Diego. It’s a great city with beautiful weather. My favorite parts are La Hoya and Coronado Island.</p>
<p>My D and I leave for Jamaica on Tuesday and return on Saturday. Our group planned the trip so I could be home for the Passover Sedar on Monday night, and the rest of the group could be back for Easter Sunday. It’s pretty hectic getting ready for a trip and Passover at the same time.</p>
<p>Happy 18th Birthday to the guys!!</p>
<p>Emmybet: Congrats to your daughter on the scholarship. It’s great that your town is so generous, and I love that the few top kids don’t win all the awards.</p>
<p>@HeadHead - I totally understand your feelings about the chapel to student center conversion. When D and I were looking at schools, almost all of them had beautiful chapels. But when the tour guides were taking us around, they all made it a point to say something along the lines of “but don’t worry - we don’t use this as a chapel, it’s only used for concerts and speakers!” It made me a little sad. This was at all schools except the one D ultimately chose. She definitely didn’t choose it for that reason (she didn’t understand why I was sad about the secularization of the space at the other schools) but it’s one of the things I liked about it. Most students don’t spend much time there even though they have regular services. And they use it for some secular events as well. But it’s still a real church and I felt good about that.</p>