<p>I am jealous of those of you with kids in cool places like DC and NYC (amoung others!). S will be in Milwaukee. Which I loved btw when I spent a few days out there last month, but I love, love, love NYC and DC, both places I have spent a lot of time in. Who knows maybe I will move from Boston to the midwest when all is said and done. :)</p>
<p>Happy Tuesday everyone. I posted ever so often on the old thread, but not enough to really introduce myself. Our youngest son is starting school in about 8 weeks. Hes planning on studying computer science or a related area. He has some interest in physics as well so it will be interesting to see how or if his major changes as time goes on. Hes going to school about 800 miles from home. Our oldest is less than an hour away. If you had asked me three years ago where they were going, I would have guessed exactly the opposite. </p>
<p>DS has orientation in a few weeks. He had the option of going to one right before school started for international and out of state students. I dont think that he really cared, but we decided on mid summer orientation because Id rather he get registered sooner rather than later and it will allow him to do things like set up a bank account, get some questions answered about computer requirements, and maybe see his dorm room before he moves in.</p>
<p>Happy Evening…</p>
<p>Saw this item about scholarships, academic competition and sports–this story will warm you heartbecause it is about community…</p>
<p>[Rivals</a> High - Student splits 40K in winnings among runners-up](<a href=“http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1237085]Rivals”>http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1237085)</p>
<p>I know that all of you moms with Ss are lamenting your limited color and decorating options but I have to tell you that the grass is not any greener on the other side! At least you CAN shop on your lunch hour… I can’t buy anything without my D along because she has very definite tastes. Older D was the same way but even worse. When she went away to school, we bought things and then I had to return them when we found cuter things that she liked even better.</p>
<p>That being said, I’m still glad I have girls because I do like the cute stuff, too!</p>
<p>I guess my d is more like an s when it comes to shopping. I don’t think any shopping is going to get done before she leaves for Tulane in late August. She is a camp counselor at a girl scout camp this summer and is “home” from Friday night through early Sunday morning every weekend. I don’t think she has been home more than 7 hours any of these weekends and has been asleep for 6 1/2 hours of those 7.</p>
<p>I asked her if she wanted new bedding and she said why? Aunt Laura gave me a set of XL sheets and my 6 year old pillow and comforter and good enough. <em>sigh</em> I have an excuse to go shopping and spend money and she won’t let me.l</p>
<p>bajamm-
Your D sounds like my D! She is also working at a GS camp, but has only been home one weekend so far. She got home at 7PM on Friday night, and was gone by 7:30 Sunday morning to get to camp by 9AM. She said that she doesn’t want to spend her ‘free weekends’ shopping, so we bought most of her stuff in the 2 days between her graduation party and when she left for camp in June.</p>
<p>Relief! Yesterday I posted that DS had ear pain and congestion. Today ears were irrigated and ear infection is being treated with oral med and ear drops. We leave at 5 am tomorrow to drive down to USC for orientation and a month long engineering summer bridge. Thank goodness for a responsive medical team!</p>
<p>Minnymom - glad your DS is feeling better.</p>
<p>mamom: I hope you can get to know Milwaukee because it is really a fantastic city. I’ve split my life almost exactly down the middle in the northeast and midwest, have lived in Boston and Chicago, and I think Milwaukee has everything anyone could want. I won’t go into detail but I’ll just list: beautiful lakefronts and parks, fascinating history, wonderful ethnic neighborhoods and restaurants, lovely architecture, world-class museums-theatre-music of all kinds, major league sports teams with great venues (even if they lose a lot, ahem), and much more. </p>
<p>On another note, D made it to her Orientation tonight, including surviving a somewhat hairy experience getting a cab from LaGuardia to Garden City (if any LI-ers have other advice, I’m all ears!). I’m hoping to hear happy things from her if she has a moment in the next few days. I’m sure there’s some fear and anxiety as well, but I think they are balanced by excitement. She got a long letter from the theatre dept today listing yet more books and plays she needs to have read this summer, and outlining other supplies (all black clothes for her movement classes, for example).</p>
<p>Good luck to everyone - it’s getting REALLY REALLY REAL!!!</p>
<p>Hello to you FIMathMom, and thank you for the welcome ,</p>
<p>As I read this i can sense both the excitement as well as nervousness among all parents in these last few days 2 months in my case to be with our children before we meet them again in December ( for us as international parents that’s when we meet her again) as independent young adults.</p>
<p>My D is our only child and I am a stay at home mom so she has been the centre for both of us for the last 17 and a half years. Big change for all of us but the good thing is we are very proud and happy and she is also quite confident and excited.</p>
<p>Our shopping will start once we land there 5 days before move-in.
Here’s wishing everybody’s children the most wonderful, fulfilling and meaningful years of their lives during next 4 years in college. My prayers and best wishes for parents too.</p>
<p>fog - what a great story! thanks for sharing. </p>
<p>minny- glad S is feeling better.</p>
<p>Emmy - I really did like Milwaukee the few days I was out there last month. We spent 3 weeks out in the Chicago/Minneapolis/St. Paul/Wisconsin Dells area a couple years ago. We had a great time and I hope to get back sometime. Unfortunately, because of it’s location and the cost to get there, I will not be visiting Milwaukee much more than 1 or 2X a year while S attends Marquette. NYC and DC, OTOH are easy and cheap to get to from Boston. </p>
<p>Some of the other freshman from Marquette have started registering for classes. Marquette has everyone scheduled to register at different times and unfortunately for S his time slot doesn’t open up til July 13th. I understand they are tryng to make sure the system doesn’t get bogged down with 2000 kids at once, but comments on FB indicate that some of the better teachers for core classes are having their classes filled up with the early registrations. I am real concerned wrt to calculus. Several of the teachers have gotten really bad ratings on rate my professor and from upperclassman on FB. If only the lousy teachers still have slots open by the time S registers I may rethink letting him use his AP credit to pass out of the class.</p>
<p>I am happy enough buying plain sheets and bedding for S. I hate shopping. I still have an 11yo D at home and she does enough shopping for everyone. We are inthe process of redoing a spare bedroom at home for her and I have looked at enough quilt and comforter sets to last me a while.</p>
<p>My son is more of a blue or green guy. I had him on the JC Penney website last week and he picked out a set of steel blue sheets to match his t-shirt quilt that I had made for him. We added a navy blue comforter (college is in Vermont) and I think that will do it for the bedding - assuming I can find his brothers old XL twin sheets. If not, I might just wait until the after season sale. I know they have deep discounts of that stuff in September. </p>
<p>At his school the classes are all picked on-line very early and in his major, they do the picking for him so no choices at all. The chatter, he said, on the FB page for incoming freshman is what gaming system people are bringing. His main concern seems to be if his roommate, who he won’t know about until August, will have a tv for said gaming, or if he will have to bring one. I frankly don’t know how we could haul that up if we already have to take up his huge dual monitors, his desktop pc and actual room stuff. These geeky guys have a different set of toys.</p>
<p>D is now registered for classes! She is taking five classes and two of them have me worried. I wanted her to back down in difficulty for the first term, but her adviser recommended these based on placement tests. I am proud of D for being ambitious and will trust her to make her deicisions with appropriate consideration. It is really really real, EmmyBet!<br>
Tonight we book family tickets for move in. D is heading out a week early alone with one bag for Pre-O trip. We will meet her there with her stuff.
Fun trip to BBB over the weekend. D fell in love with some clearance stuff which is GREAT $wise, but means we cannot do the remote pickup for the stuff, so I guess we will ship a box. I learned the mailroom opens a week early, so it should work.<br>
Next stop Apple Store for the MacBook Pro. I will check with the school first to make sure there aren’t any “deals” if we by through school.
Hello to all my “old” friends and welcome to the new additions/de-lurkers to this group.</p>
<p>Soiling the nest occuring rather frequently around here, even by those who are not leaving quite yet (some have 4 yrs to go and I wish it were tommorow!)
ds comes home at 11 pm from gf’s, plops himself across my bed,
dh: “who are you texting?”<br>
ds: “the president, duh”
Frying pan available at this hour?</p>
<p>Then at midnight or so, dd1 comes storming out of her room at top decibels “DID ANYONE ELSE’S COMPUTER JUST CRASH? OMG! MINE JUST CRASHED, IS IT JUST ME???”</p>
<p>Dh has a job, it starts (OMG) before noon every morning, how do these “people” think the old folks can operate if they don’t get sleep? So this morning, I am all opening curtains at 7:30 am, blasting stereos, talking loudly, slamming doors - the kicker is, dd1 is still sleeping, ice cubes down her back and all. I need a vacation. Kinderhook isn’t far…I hear they have a nice lake? </p>
<p>I look at those Dora the Explorer comforter sets with renewed interest.</p>
<p>It’s so fun to read posts about pre-college shopping and orientations. We’re not there yet - D doesn’t get back in town until mid-August and St. Olaf has orientation and registration for freshman a few days before classes start in September (so students don’t have to make two trips). Do girls still coordinate bedding colors? I remember doing that when I was in college, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case these days.
D needs a new laptop and is strongly leaning towards a Mac. I know they offer college discounts, but when I went on the college website, I was a little surprised the discount was so small (I think it’s about $100 off list price, but for the price of the Mac, it didn’t seem to make that much of a dent). Another thing that will have to wait until she gets back.</p>
<p>It is fascinating to have international parents on this thread. It looks like the UK, India, and mixed Australia/US are represented. Any others? I would love the hear their persepectives on any culture differences. Thanks for your wishes for us all, Anialways.</p>
<p>My son gets to take over my D’s room once she takes off for school, and she will get his smaller bedroom. Anyone else have younger kids happy to be getting a new bedroom?</p>
<p>There was some discussion of towels and sheets earlier, of how acne preparations can cause streaks in colored items. I saw in an LLBean catalog that they have “peroxide resistant” towels. Does this really work I wonder.</p>
<p>AK- Kinderhook has TWO lakes, a “crik” which is quite fun to go tubing on (well except for the Buick size mosquitoes), and easy access to the Hudson River by car. But I am still “promoting” the wicked fast Internet and plethora of computers in our household. ;)</p>
<p>On another note, D had her first day of a “real job” yesterday. The county work program finally came through and she is working at the not quite local (the next village over) library. She had a good time yesterday (this was volunteering for orientation- she does not get paid until next week) but came home to a message that she did not have to come in this Friday (her only other scheduled day this week) as the librarian had 3 meetings. She said she would see her next Monday. My first thought was OMG the librarian does not want her back (after just one day)!!! My ideas of D living in our basement for the rest of her life resurrected themselves. But then I relaxed and realized maybe the librarian just looked at her calendar and saw the conflicts. It makes a lot of sense not to have D there just hanging around if the librarian had not trained her and could not supervise. So now I am 
Whew.</p>
<p>
cooker and mnmom - there was a thread discussing the relatively small discount on macbooks thisyear compared to previous years. S is a PC guy so it didn’t effect us, but it looked like a lot of folks were looking forward to the discounts/giveaways apple usually has.</p>
<p>Stillwater~ D2 is getting a new room, actually so is D1. The girls have shared the big bonus room. Told D2 that she wasn’t going to have that room all to herself after D1 left so she had the choice of taking the bedroom upstairs (that was being used as a tv room) or the spare bedroom downstairs (my craft/computer room!). She chose the downstairs one, so we moved their queen size bed into the upstairs room and I am in the process of trying to merge the tv room and craft/computer room into the one bonus room! Then we will begin moving D2 stuff into the downstairs room. She is excited about getting to pick out new bedding. She received an antique spindle bed from the inlaws and she has been buying items for her new room. Hoping to make some progress today!</p>