Well, S19 came home unexpectedly Friday. A friend who graduated with him is getting married today (yikes!) and he caught a ride home with another friend. We had no interest in returning him to the campus tonight, just to turn around to get him Tuesday, so he is taking a car for a couple of days.
And it is unfathomable that one of his 18-year-old friends is marrying (and baby on the way in March). She seems so young…
@SammoJ Wow. I can’t imagine. His friend is way too young to get married IMO - and a baby on the way. Crazy young for that.
Different topic - I am struggling with what to get my kids for Christmas this year. I’m going to ask them directly for some ideas at Thanksgiving - but I can tell you the answer already. “Surprise me”. Augh! This is my holiday stress: presents! It’s hard being mom and making Christmas day “amazing” I do pull it off each year - but it stresses me out “finding” the amazing gifts. I’m not a shopper at all. I budget well and have Christmas cash set aside - it’s just I have limited time and going out and seeking gifts is not fun to me.
I love everything else about Christmas: the music (such as holiday concerts), holiday strolls, driving around looking at Christmas lights, Christmas light parades on Main Street, boat holiday light parades (yup, we have that too - we live on the CT shore - Santa arrives by tugboat), making holiday cookies, getting the tree and decorating it - it’s all great! I love the spirit of Christmas. It is just the act of finding the right presents that stresses me out. And then there’s filling the stockings… Augh!
Any ideas for some cool presents for college kids?
BTW my D19 made it back safely to campus today from her two day road trip to Montreal. Phew!
Enjoy having your kids home!
We are not having a big Christmas this year.
With two in college, car and furnace repairs, there isn’t a lot of extra money.
Two of the kids asked for some big ticket items during the year already, and the oldest will mostly get money.
I do want to get them each a few small things to open.
Most of all I just want us all to be together.
@Stuffedquahog I hear you about what to get for Christmas and/or Hanukkah this year. I had a little light bulb moment last week for D19 who is at school in LA. She loves to bake and Milk Bar has a flagship location in LA with classes. 2 other moms and I are going to gift our girls a birthday cake class at Milk Bar. Maybe there is some “experience” either where they’re at school or for a time when they’ll be back home. Would love to hear other ideas!
Christmas gifts - S19 is getting a tee shirt quilt (that I had every intention of making for graduation - it has tee shirts dating back to preschool), a nice travel mug to take coffee from dorm to class, stocking stuffers, and gift cards for the stores where he likes to get clothes.
S21 - nice sunglasses (in the hope that he is now old enough not to lose them), tickets for he and friends to go to an escape room, new cozy robe.
In a last minute decision, D did what @momtogkc ‘s D did (they also had some Mon/Tue classes canceled and she decided she could cut the couple left) and came home on Saturday morning. Luckily we could change her flight to NOLA to be from here rather than DC, and not only did southwest not charge extra for that, we actually got a slight refund! FYI: It appears they honor “wanna get away” fares availability based on initial ticket date, because when I first searched as a new ticket no cheap fares were available (and it was looking unaffordable for her to change her mind) but when I used the “change ticket” option on her existing ticket, it came up as 3 available (with the small refund). Might be useful info to others flying southwest, I did not know this before. I really don’t like their no seat reservation policy, but boy do they make everything else easy.
@SJ2727 yes Southwest is the best. Even though S19 can’t fly direct home on SW, I think we are going to stick with it for his flights. I also changed his flight home for winter break and his flight back to Bowdoin with no charge and both flights were fewer points than the originals. Fingers crossed for no delays on flights and no issues with changing planes!
DD has put together a pretty good list of practical and affordable Christmas ideas. It includes gift cards for Walmart and Starbucks, 2 more Wii remotes so 4 can play in her dorm room, batteries for the remotes, leggings, snacks, a tire cover for her Jeep, and kitchen stuff for her next year apartment. A few other random things. That list will be given to extended family too so I’ll have to see what they pick from it. I always get the girls a Christmas ornament too, so they have a collection for their own home someday.
Today is a suspenseful one. Mr. InfiniteWaves and I are at our offices. S21 is at school. S19 bummed around all day yesterday watching the three of us prepare our parts of the house for family to arrive tonight.
S19 is home. And he is supposed to finally do the cleaning of his room that he was originally supposed to do in August before leaving for school. Because his (female) cousin will be sleeping in there while he bunks in with S21.
WILL IT HAPPEN?!?!?!
WILL THE FIVE INCHES OF DUST CRAWLING UP THE BOTTOMS OF 80,000 FUNKO VINYL FIGURINES DISPLAYED ON SEVERAL SHELVES FINALLY BE REMOVED?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I will find out at approximately 4:30 pm Eastern time. Yes, I am leaving work early to allow time for making him do what might not be done. But I am remaining hopeful.
He might be in AROTC, but in this battle of wills, the parents must prevail. LOL! 
In theory kiddo could come home for Thanksgiving now. The UK teachers are on strike this week so he doesn’t actually have classes. He has a few papers due but they’re mostly written.
But then exam period starts next week and he’d have jet lag on both ends and this is a terribly expensive time of year to get last minute flights. And he has plans with a couple of friends to get together and improvise a turkey dinner.
We went to the high school play yesterday. I brought the phone and called him on WhatsApp and handed it around to everyone who knew him. They were all on a high from finishing the show and it was loud and they all screamed into the phone and waved and it was cool. And then we went home without having to wait for the kid to do his assigned cleanup duties.
It was a great production except for the actor playing the main character. He was absolutely terrible - hadn’t memorized over half his lines, carried a little book around stage and read large chunks of his dialogue. It got so bad I had to turn away whenever he spoke. This was the same kid who had been kicked off of previous productions for failing out of classes and for not memorizing his lines. I would really think the teachers would figure out not to cast him by now. But it’s no longer my problem, like waiting for the kids to come off their post-show rush and get to cleaning the stage is no longer my problem. Smile and a sigh.
We are having TG in LA with my parents and brother, and D19 is going to travel there all by herself. While she has taken the train too and from Urbana by herself in the summer between Junior and senior year, she has never flown by herself (it never actually came up). So she has to get up in the morning, catch the bus to Burlington, a plane to Newark, and then transfer to a flight to LAX. So her first flight on her own is going to be a pretty serious one - she’s catching the bus at 6 AM, and she’ll arrive in LAX at 11 PM (8 PM her time).
I think that she may need some support over the phone on the way over.
She’s finally feeling the sadness of the fact that we are leaving Chicagoland in December, and that, when she comes back her at the beginning of Winter break, it will be to say goodbye to her middle school/high school life (we moved into this house when she was starting middle school.
We’re actually scheduling the movers a day or two later than planned, so she can have a couple of days in the house as she remembers it. We’ll move all the stuff we’re taking with us, make sure that it arrives, and is partly unpacked, and then come back for our last Hanukkah party here. We’ll probably travel back and forth over the next semester as we get the house ready for renting it out.
@MWolf Your D will be ok. Remind her that she can ask questions at the airport. There are uniformed workers everywhere. S has only flown once on his own and it was a direct flight so he, too, will have a new experience this time since he’ll have to transfer planes. I have heard that Philly is a nightmare of an airport and sometimes you have to change terminals to catch a connection and you can’t walk to do that. Embarrassingly, I called today to ask which gate his flight will get into and which gate his connection will leave from. At least right now they are in the same terminal. I really hope the whole thing goes smoothly because my H is also so negative about the distance and how hard it is to get back and forth. S19 being delayed and/or missing a connection will only feed into that!
Thanks! I hope that your S’s flight goes smoothly. I’ve never flown through Philly, luckily, though I did fly through Newark just before they opened the monorail. Getting between the terminals was a mess. It was also my first visit to the USA since I was a child, and I was transferring from an international flight to an LAX flight. I remember taking a shuttle which had to fight with the airport traffic.
@MWolf yeah I get changing terminals if you have an international and then a domestic flight. I don’t get it when both flights are domestic and on the same airline. Weird! I just hope his gates stay where they told me same terminal and close to each other.
OMG.
Penn State AROTC has made my boy into a man. His room was spotless when I got home. Everything dusted. Yes, even the shelves with the 80,000 Funko figurines. Bed linens washed. Bed freshly made. Floor vacuumed.
S19’s desktop is in there. When I got home, S21 was doing homework on the desktop while S19 was tackling an assignment on his laptop. All surrounded by sparkly cleanliness.
WHAT IS THIS STRANGE NEW WORLD?!?!!?
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. 
@InfiniteWaves that’s great! Funny how they change in ways we might not imagine!
My son is a complete slob at home in his room, so I was amazed at how neat and organized his dorm room is. We were up there several times this semester to watch his games so it wasn’t like he just cleaned it for Parents Weekend one time. Sometimes I think when your “home” is one small dorm room versus living in a family home, being organized/clean becomes a little more important to them.
Mine gets home tomorrow night but it’s a 5 hour drive w/o traffic and I suspect they will hit rush hour either in NJ, DE or MD depending on when they leave. So thankful that an upperclassman/teammate, who has a car at school and lives in our area, offered him a ride and saved us from either making that RT or paying out the nose for a train ticket home.
Last night I texted him offering to make a nice meal for dimmer Wednesday night but within reason since I’ll also be prepping for Thanksgiving. His response was, “I’m probably going out to eat with my friends.” Well, alrighty then! LOL I knew he’d want to hang out with his friends but assumed he’d at least be home for dinner!
Safe travels to everyone’s kids haven’t yet, or are still making their way home. Hoping no flight delays, missed connections or horrible traffic for anyone!
@InfiniteWaves that sounds absolutely DREAMY! Enjoy that new world of clean and order. I’m making notes about ROTC for my 14year old ; )
Congratulations @InfiniteWaves ! Enjoy that brave new world. Meanwhile I’ve been asking my D22 to please dust her desk, yet the layer of schmutz seems to be getting thicker and thicker.
Yesterday my D19 called and mentioned that she was going to be one of the last ones out of the dorm after finals. I told her I can reschedule the flight, I just need to know when she can actually leave. So I was able to re-book on a flight a day and a half earlier, for only a 362 points, which I think equates to less than $6. So, it’s done. She wants to make it a surprise to her father and some others that she gets home early, but how am I going to pull that off when her flight gets in at 7:30pm? Maybe I’ll have a run to Target I have to do. Lol. She has never flown solo either, but this shouldn’t be too bad. The only iffy thing is in Phoenix the airport is tacking on some big surcharge for the share-ride services, and Lyft isn’t going to drop off/pick up there after the new year. A taxi would cost $30, and Lyft is around $9. That stinks.
Since I’m not seeing my D19 this week, I am sending her a finals treat box in a few days. I’m putting some Texas stuff in there to remind her it isn’t that bad here, maybe she actually misses some things here, some holiday candy, and other fun stuff. One thing that she needs is the box I’m sending it in. She rented a book from Amazon and they keep sending me reminders that the book is due December 17th. Hello, that’s a while from now! She doesn’t have a box, even with all of the things I’ve sent to her. Ugh. She can buy a box but since I’m sending stuff anyway, I hope the box makes it un-smushed.
@crknwk2000 Thank you for that idea! I will use it! I just looked up experiences such as that in Boston and as you can imagine - there are many! From dinners to desserts. I will give this gift to my S16 and his girlfriend with a theme of “an evening out”. I think I will wrap each of their gift cards up with a chef’s hat just for fun. I bet they will pick how to make an Italian themed dinner with dessert because they love going to the North End. Thanks for the great idea!
Happy Thanksgiving to all! Enjoy your loved ones while they are home.
@InfiniteWaves , I loved your story. It seems they do change quickly at this stage. Our D19 is on his own with friends this week, as an international roundtrip wouldn’t make sense, and the amazing thing is that he is actually Christmas shopping for the family. This is the kid who really never got the idea that the giving part is just as important as the receiving part, and now he’s suddenly having fun thinking about what people will enjoy. Now I am REALLY looking forward to the holidays, so I can experience this new person! I am also in the group that agonizes over flight arrangements, layover times, terminal changes, etc. Coming home in December, he’ll have one transfer from a domestic flight to international, but unless things change, they should both be out of the same terminal. I’ve been trying to get him ready for this for the last couple of years, having him lead us through the airports when we travel as a family, but I still worry! He’s fine, of course - he’s always got an app for everything.