<p>owm your story brought tears to my eyes. I am so happy for all of the outcomes your family has shared.
RM, you cracked me up. Now for those us who are Latin-illiterate, what are you guys saying? (I know only semper —thank you Marines)</p>
<p>ohiomom, I second that.</p>
<p>I’m also amazed by the hysterical sense of humor here. BI and OWM, I’m rolling in tears. I spent a lot of my childhood in Italy, heard masses in Latin, and walked about Rome w/ my mom on daily chores. Never saw that inscribed on a building, but I’ve certainly heard it before. It’s been a while. What a hoot!</p>
<p>Good news: my S just heard from U of Michigan EA, and he’s accepted. We’re waiting to hear from another school this afternoon but it definitely feels good to start the day w/ an acceptance in hand.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>college4three - OWM’s would probably make it through, I’d be censored, no doubt… you’ll have to google. 
These are not necessarily for the latin-literate. Once you know them, you’ll commit them to memory!</p>
<p>RM - Congratulations on the U of Mich EA, whoot-whoot!!! :)</p>
<p>RM - Congrats on U of Michigan acceptance. Crossing our fingers for later news.</p>
<p>Hi All</p>
<p>OK so I had to google the Latin 
too funny. I bet my student knows that phrase though I am pretty sure it wasn’t on the AP Virgil exam last year</p>
<p>Love reading about the sweet and touching stories of our group here, the kids, families and so on…</p>
<p>OWM- this Christmas will be special with your grandson–I love how babies just are amazed by the tree, lights and wrapping paper. At 10 mos, and a 1st Christmas, it will be really special.</p>
<p>Yeah!!! Ds accepted to UMichigan also!!! It’s his first choice and you will be happy to know I didn’t spoil the news because my computer was locked up with a virus and I actually couldn’t get into his email inbox (I was checking it all day until about 2pm when it froze, darned email is timestamped 2:15pm) until he came home so we found out together on his computer. WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!! RenMom - yipeee!!!</p>
<p>Congrats amanda and renaissance. It’s a nice way to start off the weekend!</p>
<p>Amanda/RenaissanceMom - congratulations! Great news!</p>
<p>OWM - your story was very touching. It’s not a road you would have chosen for him, but it is great that they have your support and advice - can’t be easy being parents at that young age.</p>
<p>Just heard from D - two of the top kids at her school are in at MIT. A good friend is in at WPI - anyone else here looking at WPI? I know there were several in the past couple of years, but I haven’t heard it mentioned much in this thread.</p>
<p>amanda - I’m so excited for your daughter!! What an awesome school! More happy dancing (seriously, my kids see the dance and ask…who got in where now? lol!)</p>
<p>RenMom and Amanda: Hail to the victors valiant! Michigan is our “second” home since my mother has a lake cottage there that we hope to keep in the family. Such a great school.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for the kind comments about our family. We have all learned a lot about sticking together in the last two years. Now imagine all of us going to my mother’s in St. Louis for Christmas. Since this is a college community, you can envision this very interesting educational collage.</p>
<p>Matriarch (85): Principia College 1947, math/accounting</p>
<p>Older brother (60): Yale 1972, French; wife Marymount University (Va.) one year; oldest daughter, Indiana 2012, Keller B-School, (job already in hand); younger daughter, kansas 2014, partying and journalism</p>
<p>Next older brother (58): UVa 1976, architecture; wife UVa 1977, social work; daughters–Sarah Lawrence 2008, art and film (gainfully employed in NYC); Bard 2012, opera/theater; and an alternative high school junior</p>
<p>Us: Husband (50) Tulane 1982, mechanical engineering; me (55) Mizzou, Journalism, 1976; older son: Calvin College (media production would have been 2011–who knows where and when now) and his wife (special education degree from local directional perhaps by 2013) and their adorable child; younger son, Mizzou/Purdue/MIT 2015, nuclear engineering/physics</p>
<p>Baby brother (50): Middlebury/Mizzou Journalism 1981; wife, Mizzou (social work) 1983; daughter, Rollins College 2010, psychology (now working on RN) and a scholarship swimmer; son, Rollins College 2014, undecided and a scholarship baseball catcher</p>
<p>We are an amazing bunch and have not been all together for probably 10 years. Can’t wait for next week!</p>
<p>Hope all your holiday family gatherings will be as chaotic and hilarious as ours!</p>
<p>Wow! So many pages of new posts–I must call 'em as I see 'em:</p>
<p>scoutsmom, OWm, phbmom–MIT adcom are clearly idiots!!! OY! Hang in there. You will get good news in…time!</p>
<p>dignified1–MIT adcom are clearly geniuses!!! Yay! What a relief to have such a great EA plum.</p>
<p>madbean: LOL! That was wonderful.</p>
<p>Rennmom & amanda–Wow and Yay! Great U Mich news. It is, indeed, wonderful relief when awesome kids get reassuring results. </p>
<p>OWM, you are truly a role model of grace. I thank you for sharing your journey with S1 as it will stay with me and hopefully guide me in momdom to put aside pre-conceived notions of the path I see for my kids.</p>
<p>And a shout-out of thanks to SlitheyTove who stopped by so I could pour out some last-second college app doubts. S2 made a very late zig in major direction and I am fearing I did not fully zig in my mom research and guidance duties to compensate. :)</p>
<p>Olderwisermom, tell me…were you always this serene or did you ever want to strangle him? You are so supportive and I can hope that I would be but I don’t know…(actually if there was a baby invovled that would soften me quite a bit…)</p>
<p>Hooray for the UMichigan acceptances, amandak and renmom!!</p>
<p>
Oh, c’mon…don’t you know she has another screen name she posts under when she’s in a bad mood!! ;)</p>
<p>youngerstupiderdad? :D</p>
<p>madbean wins for the perfect response to a mix of good news and bad news. So…what she said!</p>
<p>But truly, the successful Michigan applicants should be especially proud because of the uptick in UMich applications this year. Yay!</p>
<p>OWM, your alias fits you perfectly. Thank you so much for giving all of us a model of grace.</p>
<p>^^ Blue
You are hilarious!</p>
<p>Serene? Role model of grace? Hardly. When the GF quit school and moved to be near him in college, we saw this as a possibility and we told them so. And you can tell from the list of colleges in my other post that this detour was not the norm for our family or my husband’s (both parents and two brothers Vanderbilt grads plus another Tulane grad).</p>
<p>I cried for days when we learned they were pregnant. Did I forget to mention that our son told us the news two days after he broke his foot on a moped and one day after his brother’s Eagle Scout ceremony? Or that my mom had been hospitalized twice that summer for mini-strokes? Or that we had put our 13-year-old dog to sleep just weeks before? Or that the youth pastor that would have performed the ceremony had just been fired for having an affair with one of our students…</p>
<p>I could not imagine what our families and our friends would say or think. We asked the kids to to tell their grandparents and they did. Then we pulled ourselves together to figure out what to do next. Had to get him back to Michigan, withdrawn from school and back to Missouri. Our daughter-in-law’s family is a really disfunctional story of divorce and alternative lifestyles, so she and I planned the whole wedding process in three weeks. Remember the ceremony took place 800 miles from here. but it was beautiful. Just the five of us, plus five in her family and two of our son’s friends–one the best man, one the photographer. Yes, I could write a book–or at least a Lifetime movie script.</p>
<p>Since they’ve been married then been through a job loss and search, an encounter with a deer that totalled their car, friends who don’t want to “hang out” with them because they have no money, her mother’s same sex marriage and petty struggles with various members of her extended family. But the main theme is: he’s our son and she is now our daughter and whatever we did in those first few weeks was going to set the tone for our relationship with them and our grandson. You’d be amazed how many people told us of similar stories in their past and offered that advice.</p>
<p>As you can perhaps tell since our son is in a ministry assistant’s position now, we are a family of faith. My friends reminded me to pray that God would soften my heart towards my daughter-in-law and show me how to be a mother to her. If you could read her Mother’s Day card to me, you would cry uncontrollably.</p>
<p>You are all stronger than you think you are and you all love your children dearly. Not that I wish this experience on you, but you would be fine. I had to remind myself that no one was injured or dead and that a new life was beginning.</p>
<p>And you know how everyone says the best part about being a grandparent is keeping the granchildren for a few hours and then giving them back? I disagree. The best party is watching your child become a parent.</p>
<p>Okay, time for a new box of kleenex.</p>