<p>Fog – keeping you & your mom in my thoughts. We recently put my dad on hospice and they are amazing. He has congestive heart failure and is not in pain, but he’s just slowly wearing out. </p>
<p>MaryJay – so glad the tornado skipped over you. So scary! And I’m sending virtual raspberries (not the good kind) to your son’s teacher. I’ve never understood teachers who behave like this. </p>
<p>Spygirl took the SAT this Saturday for her second time. She said it seemed to go okay. Guess we’ll see on June 20th :0! ACT this Saturday and finals begin next week.</p>
<p>We leave in 11 days for Europe. Wondering if I’m going to get everything done. On warp speed packing, organizing rail passes &hotel confirmations, ordering hay & grain, and cleaning my messy house! Whew. But if comes down to it, the house sitter will just have to deal with the mess :)</p>
<p>I know it’s an odd item on the to do list However, the goats and the horse need to be fed in our absence and DH can’t seem to find any first cut hay yet. Which means we’re paying an outrageous amount for last years hay. And the chickens & rabbits need food, too. All in all, it’s still cheaper than feeding Spyboy.</p>
<p>Wow, I guess we’re lucky… Marching Band definitely counts for PE here, and after watching my son and the rest of them for the past 3 years, what they do is as athletic as anything else that might go on in PE. Heck, I don’t see the football team out there every single day for all of August, marching around that parking lot where it’s 120+ degrees! They earn those letter jackets my son now has. :-)</p>
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<p>@beadymom – There’s the Wyndham Houston - Medical Center that’s less than a mile from Rice – Hotels.com is showing $84 a night, but I doubt that would be for a weekend night. Can’t hurt to try, though! They do have a complimentary shuttle as well. The Hilton Houston Plaza/Medical Center is even closer, and not terribly much more expensive. And Rice has this map page showing hotels, which would be a great place to start:</p>
<p>My son is a football player and they are out there every day in August for two a days for sure. I don’t envy the marching band, but football players definitely work hard in the off season.</p>
<p>My kids are done on Friday and finals start tomorrow. If I live through this week, or even worse, the next week of waiting for D14’s grades, it will be a miracle. She is borderline B/C in her math class and her US History class, which has been a nightmare year with an awful teacher. She is borderline A/B in her Honors English class, which would at least give her a weighted A, which would be a big help. I have nagged, nudged, poked and prodded until she is sick of me and I am sick of myself. Even my usual evening glass of wine is not helping at this point…I need to just stay out of her way and what will happen, will happen. Anyway, thanks for providing a spot to vent!</p>
<p>thanks KaMaMom for your link. Working on a priceline find…</p>
<p>sure agree that varsity sports should qualify as PE.</p>
<p>Hope everyone has a good “last” week of junior year. Such a demanding year, nice to have a summer before the college apps season begins.</p>
<p>My d who just graduated college last week called tonight, loving her work with kids in New Orleans, and met a guy she really likes. Life moves so fast doesn’t it…very happy she’s having a wonderful adventure so fast out of college…</p>
<p>I have never understood why there is a PE requirement and I wish they’d do away with it for all of the reasons people have mentioned. I think it should be an option, but not a requirement. </p>
<p>S14 is in the final stretch! He took SAT Subject tests in Bio, US History and English Lit on Saturday. He thought Bio and US History went well. He’s not sure about English Lit. He said Bio was much easier than the AP test. He isn’t even sure he’s applying to any schools that require the SAT IIs but he wanted to take the tests just in case. </p>
<p>Finals are Wed, Thurs and Friday. ACT round 3 (first two times were through the school district) is Saturday. We’re going to hope his bladder cooperates this time. He’s hoping for a one point increase over last time, when he didn’t finish Science because he had to ‘go’ so bad that he had to leave the room and take care of business. The first round, he hadn’t studied at all, had no idea what to expect and didn’t have the writing portion so we considered that a practice round. If he had finished science last time, he probably wouldn’t be doing round 3! </p>
<p>He got his Eagle project approved by the principal, the Scoutmaster and the Troop Committee Chair. It will go to Council for approval next week. <em>fingers crossed</em> It would be great if he could finish it before tennis practices start in August and get his Eagle officially before college apps.</p>
<p>Thanks, crazy4disney. Unfortunately the week I’m going the Wyndham is not that cheap! But … my sister will be traveling with me and she gets travel agent discounts at the Wyndham so I’m having her check on it. :)</p>
<p>We scheduled 3 visits - including engineering departments! And we get to play in San Antonio for a few days!! I have never been there, so looking forward to taking the kids to River Walk and maybe Sea World or Schlitterbahn water park.</p>
<p>Agent 99 - loved the comment about feeding several critters being cheaper than feeding a teenage boy!! So true! After your busy spring it’s going to feel great to finally buckle into those <em>comfy</em> plane seats!
Fogfog - Thinking about you and your mom, wishing you peace.
GoldenWest - We know it’s really ugly when even our best nagging doesn’t help! Here’s to a quick end to the year!</p>
<p>And I’m totally down, as the kids would say, for getting rid of the PE requirements for athletes. But, my son has saved the senior lifetime sports class for his senior year because we figured it would be a nice stress reliever then! He was able to take health online last summer, though.</p>
<p>Up early as the final week of school continues. And we’ve already had some words over the senior year. Last night my son comes upstairs all excited about the preliminary schedule for his cross country season. Seems that they have scheduled some very nice invitationals. He tells me all about this one particular event, and I made a mistake about asking when it is. Turns out it’s SAT day in October. Well, Son '14 needs to take the SAT that day to qualify for scholarships, etc. When I pointed this out, he was not too pleased with … me. Do not blame me for this. Blame coaches who fail to read e-mails from parents like me who give them the SAT/ACT schedule and ask that nothing be scheduled for those days. There’s events every weekend. They could be adjustments as needed. Last fall, they did not schedule anything on the SAT or ACT dates.</p>
<p>My son says that he will be the only member of the team who will be stuck taking it instead of competing. Oh well, what about priorities here? Yes, I’m venting, and I do apologize, but…</p>
<p>Am I wrong? Son '14 says he can take it in November, but I hate to say it, he will miss out on some deadlines. Needless to point out, not a happy night in our home.</p>
<p>That is such a bummer, momreads. Same thing happened to us in April with a sport, so now my kid is cramming all of the tests in around finals. Latest is GC wants him to retake SAT in fall, even though I think he has a score that most people would be thrilled with. Only got a couple wrong on multiple choice and could up his essay a bit but that’s it. It is so disappointing that they think anything less than 2400 is not that great. Really, is a college going to think that a ten point difference in score is going to mean the kid with the higher score is automatically going to be more successful in college? Ugh, I am so tired of the testing and I am not even the one doing it.</p>
<p>I don’t know which are the “last chance” dates in the fall either. If the subject tests didn’t go well, I guess there will be re-takes there, too. So we are looking at a crunch time which I was hoping to avoid.</p>
<p>^ugh – sorry about that – what a severe and avoidable conflict. When D was running, she had a meet on SAT day but it either started later or her event was late enough she just made it. Too bad coach wasn’t more flexible.</p>
<p>S informed me there are only 2 weeks left. I think he’d be fine if he was already a senior. I asked if he wanted a yearbook; he said not really. He’s looked like he was 18 since he was 15. When we went on college tours, parents went up to him and asked where the science building was (I guess he blended right in).</p>
<p>Finally a little cooler today. NYC last week was a very unpleasant experience.</p>
<p>Stay cool everyone and hang in for the final round!</p>
<p>Us, too. No ACT in April due to a track meet. D1 had to miss a diving meet that was scheduled on the same day as the Sept ACTs. I get it. Competitions are set up according to venue availability and the schedules of other competitions, and with so many ACT/SAT test dates, there’s no way to avoid them, but Ugh. And yes, it’s always the parent’s fault for insisting on the test.</p>
<p>Sorry about the Xc schedule. S runs also and we just assume there is a meet every Saturday. We never have weekday meets.
The Saturday act date is very popular so the meets always start around 2. It is the courses decision so maybe your area will do that. Sat isn’t so popular but it is the week before conference competition starts so the top athletes may not run. Sometimes it is a jv meet so varsity can take a rest week. That is what s did last year. </p>
<p>Xc is a big team so things wouldn’t get scheduled around a few testers. S may need to “validate” sat score and will probably use the November date (I will eat the cost if by chance he runs at state.)</p>
<p>Four days left here… not that I’m counting! ;)</p>
<p>PE is a requirement here for 3 years - no exceptions.</p>
<p>FogFog - I hope all is going well today… one day at a time.</p>
<p>Ordering hay is a pre-trip necessity here except in spring/summer when the pastures have enough grass. We drop grain feedings when we’re on vacation for the ponies (9 currently). The chickens still get fed, but we only have 8, so seldom need to order more just for them. Our neighbor’s biggest “issue” is keeping our stallion watered. He’s the only one without auto water or access to our pond. </p>
<p>Less than 4 weeks until my oldest’s wedding. Just 4 years ago he was in this position of thinking about where he wanted to apply and visiting schools. My how time flies!</p>
<p>Just realized that I never posted about our trip to Case Western this past weekend. Most of our time was spent at the stadium but we did get a tour of the campus. However, since it was summer we didn’t get to see dorms or a dining hall. One of the athletes leading the tour conceded that the food was just ok though.</p>
<p>For a small school, it has a pretty big campus (or maybe it just felt that way because it was hot and DS was tired from having worked out in front of the coaches for 3 hours beforehand!). Although it is in the city of Cleveland, it is definitely a campus, with lots of green space and quads. The architecture is very interesting, a mix of traditional stone college buildings and modern quirky structures. The surrounding area is also very pretty, with art museums and such.</p>
<p>CWRU seems to be pretty generous with merit aid, although it’s not automatic like Alabama or other schools that tell you exactly how much you’ll get based on your stats. Based on a local information session we attended recently, however, it seems like my DS’s stats would put him above the 75th percentile for admitted students so hopefully that means he can get some merit aid. We will not qualify for need-based aid so that would be nice to have. </p>
<p>We have told DS that we have a chunk of money set aside for his undergraduate education, and how he chooses to spend it is up to him. Whatever is left after undergraduate is his to keep. So if he chooses an in-state school or a school that gives him generous merit aid, he could start off life with a lump sum well in excess of six figures. If he chooses to go to an expensive school where we have to pay full freight, then he will have very little or nothing (but then again he won’t have loans either). </p>
<p>It’s going to be a late night here. The athletic awards ceremony was tonight so we got home late, and it turns out DS has an astronomy test tomorrow. And apparently there is no such thing as a dumb jock at his school – they announced that the average GPA for all spring athletes was 4.29 (on a 4 point scale)!</p>
However, the goats and the horse need to be fed in our absence and DH can’t seem to find any first cut hay yet. Which means we’re paying an outrageous amount for last years hay. And the chickens & rabbits need food, too. All in all, it’s still cheaper than feeding Spyboy.</p>