<p>Oh my, reading about your emotions is starting to bring mine to the surface and as Lorelei said, It’s too soon. S leaves a month from today. Time enough for that later.</p>
<p>S headed off this weekend to a friend’s cabin and D was at her friend’s cabin. As S said, you get to practice being empty nesters. It was fun but definitely quieter than usual. It’s been nice to have the Olympics to distract us.</p>
<p>Tomorrow I have DS all day. We will get the new phone, shop for what else we need and pack the rest up. Just hope that I am here on Tuesday. I if am not here, you will know that one of us snapped.</p>
<p>MidniteMom, you know if you want, any of us near your son’s school would gladly descend on him with sheets, towels, pillows, smoothie machines and lots of transmitted love from you— just say the word!</p>
<p>Of course, he’d probably be horrified.</p>
<p>Agreed! And several of us will be there. Just say the word, MidniteMom!</p>
<p>Count me in with the moms above.</p>
<p>Mihcal1 - we’re sending all the good Wacka-Vibes in your D’s direction! </p>
<p>We’ll probably have 98% of stuff needing to go in the car all loaded in it tonight. It’s more than halfway loaded and most of the rest is packed up and just needs to be put in there. (except for MY clothes for the trip!!) Hopefully only 2-3 tiny errands to take care of in the AM and then we hit the road and we’ll be in her college town sometime in the last half of the day on Tuesday. Her move-in period is 10am-2pm on Wednesday, followed by a 4 pm reception and dinner for the families of the 15 freshmen B0nner Scholars. I’m sure I’ll be more than ready for someone else to take care of our dinner plans by that evening. :)</p>
<p>I haven’t killed her yet but earlier today I imagined the headlines in tomorrow’s local newspaper and it wasn’t pretty.</p>
<p>Oh the comfort and solace of all your sharing. I have laughed, cried (excuse me, sprung a leak) and added to my do list things I would never have thought of without you all. I leave my son at his college exactly 18 years to the day of his birth. What were the chances of that? </p>
<p>Thank you one and all for making me feel oh so much better about my own attempts to cope with it all.</p>
<p>“WOW - go on vacation for 10 days and you switch to a whole new thread with 38 pages!”</p>
<p>I know . . . right?</p>
<p>sonwhosings, I just misted up!</p>
<p>New thread! How exciting! I can’t believe my twins are going to be in college in less than 2 weeks. Great news–they were assigned to the same dorm! (It’s what they wanted.) The dorm holds 800+ students. My daughter is on the 5th floor in a room directly over her brother’s room on the 2nd floor. 
It should be interesting. They’re very close & are more confident going to college knowing they have each other. Meanwhile, my youngest (HS class of 2016) is in mourning, because her sibs are her best buddies. </p>
<p>I’m thankful that my kids have different move-in days (my son is in the honors college and moves in earlier than his sister). I can’t imagine trying to move them in at the same time! </p>
<p>Great to catch up with you guys, even if I mostly read and don’t post.</p>
<p>Advice needed: D and family are leaving in 6 days for college move in, yet D refuses to start packing, writing thankyou notes for grad gifts, and finishing other committments that need to be done before we leave on Sat. D says that she will take care of it all and gets very snippy. I’ve been staying out of it, but as it gets closer, I’m getting more anxious. What to do?</p>
<p>YoHo, I am a bit unsure about how I would handle it, as I am having the same issue with the thank you notes myself. At this point, I am thinking of threatening bodily harm but will probably withhold money until notes are done. He has been so good all year with most deadlines. </p>
<p>I figure that the only things that you need to make sure get in the car is the bedding. Your D will learn the hard way if she leaves something behind.</p>
<p>Son is getting more excited everyday now - thank goodness because it was starting to worry me!</p>
<p>Last night 2 friends who are a year older so both spent a year in college far away from home called him up at 10pm for a McDonald’s run. He came up to put on real clothes and was so cute being excited and saying it was like his first college event - a late night food run.</p>
<p>We boxed up everything we have here except clothes. The biggest things are actually the mattress pad and area rug. Two boxes of stuff that doesn’t include our bb&b stuff. </p>
<p>YoHo - are you helping with the packing up or expecting it to be done without you? Maybe she doesn’t know how to start, maybe she doesn’t think she has all that much to do, maybe she’s in denial about leaving. I think I’d tell her what time and day you’re leaving and let her deal with it. </p>
<p>woody - I’ll be watching to news and ready to bring you a cake and file.</p>
<p>Good morning everyone! </p>
<p>hang in there, Woody!</p>
<p>JenPam - that’s really cool about your twins being in the same dorm! That must make you feel better!</p>
<p>YoHo - I think there’s procrastination going on with getting ready for the launch in a lot of houses! Just decide how you want to handle it - leave her alone? Do it for her? Drag her along and make her do it with you? Plan on leaving a day late if she doesn’t get ready in time? Put on a smile, start nipping and tucking,. and hope she jumps in? Let me know which strategy works and I’ll copy it!</p>
<p>S will have an easy launch. He’s flying out without minimal stuff four days early for a hiking trip, so all he has to do is pack for that, and we drive the rest of the stuff out on Wednesday, Aug 22. Any of you who are picturing him spending this week packing and labeling boxes before he splits town hasn’t met him yet! His GF launches on Friday - sniff. </p>
<p>Older S gets his wisdom teeth out tomorrow. I’ll admit I’m nervous about it because his teeth are especially jampacked into surrounding teeth and the oral surgeon identified some possible complications he’s vulnerable for. I’ll be really glad when it’s over. Mental note - youngest son will get them out way before he’s 21!</p>
<p>On packing and notes - I would say that her clothes packing is less of an issue if she has a space limit she will eventually need to decide how to fill it. On notes IMO they are non-negotiable and should be done before and other personal activities. D received some cash and a gift or two, but mostly checks. My line was that it isn’t polite to hold a check for a long time and it isn’t polite to cash the check w/o having the note in the mail. It did help my D to have a sample not dictated. She would get stumped by writing to people who she didn’t know well. I would give her a verbal script . . . “Well, something like thanks so much for the check it will sure help me to outfit my dorm and buy books” followed by something that would be specifically meaningful to the sender either an anecdote or a quip of some kind that would be personal. I talked her through each one, and just figured that it was the same thing as teaching a kid how to iron a shirt or bake a pie. I tried to explain what types of things would be appropriate for each sender and hopefully some of that will sink in for unsupervised note writing later in life.</p>
<p>That guidance and moral support seemed to get her through even though she was balky and had writer’s block at first. They got easier over time.</p>
<p>A little late to the party on whether to take the GF to launching but … My advice would have been “go with your gut.” Every situation is unique and you’re the most qualified to know how to handle yours. Time has mellowed me with respect to S’s first (that we knew of, anyway) GF. She’s a good enough kid, I guess, but they brought out the absolute worst in each other. W and I agreed not to be too obvious we didn’t like it because that would have only pushed them closer together–and that could have caused real problems. Besides, I said, eventually, one of these girls is going to have a big say in how often we see our grandchildren. Sobering thought.</p>
<p>Don’t know why it took me so long to figure out, but S’s biggest separation event may be saying goodbye to his private trumpet teacher. He’s scheduled through the last Saturday he’s in town.</p>
<p>PinotNoir - hope all goes well with the wisdom teeth. I was warned of complications when I had mine out, but all went well, just had some numbness for longer than usual - but it went away(might want to warn him).
So we finished the last of the shopping (printer will arrive today) - now what? I realized last night that worrying about the shopping was keeping me from worrying about the move(with the brief roomate saga in there), now with almost 3 weeks to go - what do I do?</p>
<p>Oh thanks goodness ds is not the only one wih unfinished thank you notes! Was feeling deep shame, but now I only feel a wackaloonish level of shame. The sad thing is that ds didn’t have that many to send out and has had only two left to write for a month!</p>
<p>I did finally get him into a store yesterday. He owns exactly one pair of sneakers and one pair of snow boots. Silly mom that I am, I strongly felt he needed at least one more item of footwear. His attitude is “I’ve only got one pair of feet. Why do I need more than one pair of shoes?”. We did find him a second pair of sneakers and I’m looking online to see if I can find lightweight waterproof hiking shoes and something ever so slightly dressier than sneakers to wear if he ever has to wear something other than jeans and a tee shirt! We’re facing three issues here. He doesn’t have any idea what style is good for an eighteen year old because he’s never looked at other guys’ feet to notice what they wear (Why would I look at other guys’ feet???), he wears a 12 4E, and I’m being cheap and don’t want to spend $100+ on something he may never wear. Plus he’s super fussy about how they fit. Ten days until we hit the road!</p>
<p>It’s all happening!!! We are leaving for college this morning!!!</p>
<p>pacnwmomof2, Try Zappos. My son wears a 14. Free shipping and returns.</p>
<p><a href=“Men's Sneakers & Athletic Shoes + FREE SHIPPING | Zappos.com”>Men's Sneakers & Athletic Shoes + FREE SHIPPING | Zappos.com;
<p>Good luck woody! Let us know how it went.</p>