<p>Anyone have dates/suggestions of things to do IF we aren't sleeping. Probably a very big if so just the dates will be fine.</p>
<p>my only suggestion is not to plan anything....
play it by ear as to what your Mid wants to do...
by the time PPW rolls around, they have been told what to do, where to do it and when to do it, and the chance to finally be in control of their own time is paramount.</p>
<p>Get the room, but leave the rest of the plans up to your Mid. Relax, you will have a wonderful time no matter what you do. </p>
<p>Key word: semper gumby!</p>
<p>I concur with Navy2010.....your new Plebe needs to set the agenda for those precious few hours you have with them. In our case all she wanted to do was get to the home we were staying at....get out of military clothes...and sleep/watch movies/ play pool/and be a vegetable. </p>
<p>One little surprise we did was that we brought her brother as part of the visit. He is 3 years older than her and she was blown away by him joining us at Stribling Walk when we met up with her. One perk we parents learned was that she was happily babbling on and on to him ( just like old times and they clearly missed each other )about her experiences and in that process we didn't have to ask one question. We kept our mouths shut and simply listened to the 2 of them interact for hours and hours. We realized by having big brother along we got alot more from the time with our daughter, not less. She rambled, he learned alot about his sister and the military, and we parents had a ball.</p>
<p>I will add the USNA does have all kinds of other events planned the entire time of PPW - you'll see a posted schedule as the date draws closer...things like lectures, sports to watch, time to shop in the mid store ( A MUST!!), a parade, sailing. So a family has many options that weekend.</p>
<p>The only thing my son has mentioned is wanting cheap seafood and steak. Hmmm. Oh, and birthday cake from Coldstones.</p>
<p>We left it up to our plebe, after lunch on Friday it was sleep and more sleep and a movie in the hotel. Saturday met his sponsor family and by luck - the other mids that they sponsor were at the house - it was interesting to listen to the discussions from an upperclass point of view and have some great conversation with the sponsors.</p>
<p>Sunday was fast food for lunch, tour the yard and Christmas music when it was time to report back to MotherB!</p>
<p>Stay for the formation for dinner if you can.</p>
<p>There is plenty to do if you want other activities. Good luck.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder usnadad10_ma.....the Christmas music is a RIOT! </p>
<p>One more thing. Many parents waited around even after the final report moment for their Plebe come sunday afternoon. We were amongst them. That way you can still see their dinner meal formation. The parents who were there, every so tantalyzingly close to your Plebes, yet once again bound by their lives to act as if they were on another planet....stood quietly while the Plebes lined up and marched into Bancroft - to the loud cheers of proud families who stuck around to watch one last time that weekend.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^^^^ and all crying their eyes out!!! ( :o )</p>
<p>bring tissues- you're gonna need them!!! (ask me how i know!!! :o)</p>
<p>As far as I know, PPW will be August 10-12.</p>
<p>i don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to see bourne ultimatum at some point of my ppw</p>
<p>That and the Transformers Movie.</p>
<p>oh yea, lol, that was the first movie commercial where it hit me that i cant go see it at that date.</p>
<p>excuse me people! harry potter!!!</p>
<p>haha...i'm not even kidding :-P</p>
<p>^^^^Good! It should be a great movie!!</p>
<p>If i did anything like that it would more likely be locking myself in a room with the 7th Potter book. I'll have to be careful about what mail I open to make sure my friends don't ruin it for me.</p>
<p>One thing that I wish my parents had done was come to evening meal formation the night before PPW began... Some kids started seeing their parents around the yard, and even though you couldn't interact, you can't imagine the boost it would give! Especially since if they had come to formation I would have only been like 10 feet away...just don't acknowledge them at all, because that can get your plebe in a lot of trouble.</p>
<p>My advice for plebe summer is to send the most mail you've ever sent in your life to your plebe. Mostly just my parents wrote to me, occasionally my grandmothers....other kids would get 12 letters a night, and I would get MAYBE two. It doesn't matter what it says in them, and it doesn't have to be long -- quantity counts a LOT!! Just clip out a comic and send it to them, or do like my mom, where she found little cards that said "I've always believed in you" or "you're constantly in my thoughts" and sign it with love on the back -- send one of those a day plus a short letter. Any letters that you write, write in large handwriting with a dark pen -- they'll probably have to sneak reading them in racks at night, and it's dark enough in the room that plain ballpoint pen doesn't show up too well.</p>
<p>Wow, thinking back to PPW brings back a rush of emotions, some good, and some bad...believe me, everyone will cry but it will HONESTLY be all right in the end...don't stay out too late -- get back like 30 minutes early because invariably there will be all kinds of hell being raised about uniform changes and formation (and someone may be like me and forget to take out the contacts and make the cadre ****ed off about "ratey plebes")</p>
<p>but you will survive. Like everyone has. ahhhh, 9 days till herndon!</p>
<p>^^^^I want to come early and now I have a good reason. I'd love to see evening meal formation. Question, though, is where can I eat after that?</p>
<p>I've started a card collection for my son. Whenever I see them, I pick them up and put them in the stash. They are very similar to your mom's.</p>
<p>The Dry Dock is open after the meal formation and it's very close to the T-Court where the formation is held.</p>
<p>Rather than not planning anything and expecting your plebe to plan the weekend, have a plan but be open to change. After that summer your plebe might want to make decisions on what to do, or they might be sick of thinking and just want to follow your plan. It's probably different for everyone.</p>
<p>I can tell you one very likely Plebe request...based on last year's experience.</p>
<p>Your 2011 Plebe will miss this summer's blockbuster: Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Our 2010 Plebes missed Pirates 2 last summer.</p>
<p>The funniest sight was at PPW, when in August, well after this blockbuster had finished in most theaters, the very wise Annapolis Mall folk, knowing full well they had a host of teenagers turned loose after 7 weeks without media, would fill their seats if they ran Pirates.</p>
<p>So we went to the saturday mid-day show - my Plebe insisted we arrive first thing in the morning to buy tickets for the show we wanted to see. I told her that for sure they couldn't possibly sell out - after all - the movie was out for 2 months already! But she was right.</p>
<p>The shows all weekend long were filled with families, typically a mom, dad, sibling and summer-white-uniformed new Plebe sitting there munching away and enjoying Pirates 2.</p>
<p>So keep this in mind if your 2011 Plebe makes this kind of request come August!</p>
<p>^^^^Good idea! That and Harry Potter (I'm sure there are some plebes who follow it).</p>