<p>scoutmom ~Congrats for posting the first picture on the Shutterfly website :D</p>
<p>2education: thanks for setting up the site. I remember putting a photo album online the week he was born, feeling like I was quite the techie. Could it be so long ago?<br>
I appreciate all the good wishes on the news from Penn. Makes the wait for pi day a little easier.</p>
<p>^^excellent news re Penn. Great to have that bird in the hand.</p>
<p>emmybet: let me know if you’ll be around for another visit…</p>
<p>Thanks 2education for setting up Shutterfly account. Not only do we have a nice bunch of children, but we obviously have some beautiful ones too.</p>
<p>Avon - Congrats on your good news. Son was put in a similar last minute bind to fill out a scholarship app a few weeks ago too. The principal asked #1, 2 & 3 in class (S is #4), one rep from each of band, theater, sports, ROTC plus GC to join her at a scholarship luncheon. Rather long app with fin info required. When one person did not turn in app, my S got to be the replacement if he could finish app overnight. Fortunately he had essays he could modify from a different scholarship. They’ll miss a few hours of school and lunch at the Breakers on Palm Beach. La di da.</p>
<p>Congrats to Scout and Scoutsmom on Penn - what a great surprise when you think you have longer to wait. Can we all dream of magical early e-mails?
S here is waiting to hear on admit from 4 schools, including his top 2, and waiting to hear about big scholarship from one other - which will become TOP pretty quick if it happens.</p>
<p>Thank you for the get-well wishes. Slept 16 hours last “night” and has been working on hw all day. We leave tomorrow for a three-day competition - speaking, presenting, written tests - he missed being leader of the fun part of the trip, but he will do the important events. And in between - SLEEP. I may be offline, though :(</p>
<p>And thank you for the shutterfly acct - I’m excited! Will we do the baby pics?? This will definitely help the next 30 days go by :)</p>
<p>The shutterfly account will be fun. I put my picture in with my son as my profile pic and so did Amandakayak and FLmathmom!</p>
<p>Welcome rockchalk and jackief! We love new posters, especially former lurkers!</p>
<p>Sorry to hear about OWGrandson. Hope he’s feeling much better soon.</p>
<p>Puma, so very sorry about your son. I was hoping his mono might be a very mild case but sounds like no such luck. Rotten break.</p>
<p>Regarding the Shutterfly account, you will now learn that I am the least tech-savvy among us. I think it’s a great idea. Expect to see sb in there sometime next year. I should have it figured out by then. :)</p>
<p>I’m still trying to figure out a way to upload a recording of her 2 audition pieces (remember that insane just-before-Christmas recording we had to do?) for those of you who expressed an interest. First, I guess I better ask her permission. :)</p>
<p>If we do an actual get-together, I think we should still try for a national one, in a hub somewhere centrally located. Then, if that isn’t doable for some, they could arrange regional one-offs. But the national one holds great appeal (for me anyway) because many of you who I would really love to meet live in widely dispersed locales, and I’d end up having to go to all the regional get-togethers to meet all of you. </p>
<p>Scoutsmom, excellent news! Congrats to you and scout!</p>
<p>MOSB: I just uploaded a pic to the shutterfly acct and believe me, if i can figure it out so can you b/c I’m terribly out-of-date when it comes to anything tech. i still can’t figure out facebook, LOL. only joined it last summer when I attended a week-long program at Kripulu, the yoga retreat in lenox, MA and my group started a facebook page to keep in touch. Eight months later and i still don’t “get” it, although to be fair to myself, I haven’t given it much attention!</p>
<p>Scoutsmom, Pepper and everyone else who has received good news in the last few days --Hurray!!! I love hearing your good tidings – this is such a fun team to root for.</p>
<p>OWM, hope that party for your grandson gets rescheduled soon. In the meantime, happy birthday to the little fellow, high school class of 2028 (did I figure that right?)!</p>
<p>Puma – hoping for a speedy recovery for your son. Good luck to him on his EC event.</p>
<p>I’m keeping my fingers crossed so hard for all of us this month that I’m not sure they’ll ever function the same again. I find this waiting so very hard because I’m a planner by nature and not knowing where my S will be next year is tough. And not being able to plan the revisits in April is making me nutty. I’m usually so patient as a personality but apparently I’m really not when it comes to college admissions. Thank God i’ve only to live thru this once more w/ my younger son (hopefully I won’t feel the same about grad school for them, but let’s see – the jury is still out).</p>
<p>Thanks again 2education, for setting up the shutterfly account! It’s going to be great fun to see what these kids (that we are rooting so hard for) actually look like. I included a group shot of the family and my favorite pic of my two girls. MOSB, it really wasn’t too hard and I’m not really very techie, either. I also think you might be able to upload the file of your daughter singing, just as another file when you load your pics. </p>
<p>I’m just sitting here, listening to the quiet, thinking of things to come. Six months from now, D2 will be in the final throes of packing (her school starts mid-September) and then she’ll be gone in the blink of an eye. I guess I need to get serious about making that list of things I will do when H and I are empty-nesters! Gosh, it’s going to be hard to go from 100 mph to 0 but maybe I’ll enjoy the slower pace!</p>
<p>Enjoy your week everybody!</p>
<p>ohhh MOSB, hope you can figure out how to upload songbirds audition tape, would love to see it!!!</p>
<p>Count me in among those who dream of being done. Yesterday I even looked at the academic calendar of the school she’s currently most likely to go to, so I could start imagining planning the winter vacation we’d like to take! And I am starting to be curious just which week of the summer will be the crazy pack-and-drive period for us. </p>
<p>But that’s all pretty trivial when I remember how this is all about HER, and her FUTURE, not my 2011 calendar!</p>
<p>Anyway, D’s recovery period from the audition phase is moving along nicely - she’s eating better, in a much better mood, even looks healthier. So if this is really a marathon, in Boston terms I guess she’s past “Heartbreak Hill.” The last few miles will seem so much easier in comparison.</p>
<p>She spent the day yesterday with a friend who had her wisdom teeth out. She said it was really nice just to sack out for once. Today she starts tech for her new play, but for her that’s just tons of fun. And she’s only onstage for about 1/3 of it (she’s the nutty comic relief part), so she can do homework there.</p>
<p>Sunday’s countdown is:</p>
<p>MIT (March 14th) - 8 days to go. Almost down to a week!</p>
<p>The big “H” -24 days to go based on a reported March 30th announcement date.</p>
<p>March 31st schools - 25 days to go.</p>
<p>Waltz lessons today for my son and me. Mandatory preparation for the Cotillion for Achievement Ball on March 19. The 20 finalists had their interviews yesterday. All are guaranteed a scholarship. The top boy and girl get a largerl $ amount.</p>
<p>My mother is coming for the ball. It will be her first airplane flight in four years. She has postponed her next skin cancer treatments until after the big event. More surgery and grafts, this time to her legs. She will need to stay in the hospital for five days to keep her leg elevated to allow for the proper healing.</p>
<p>Grandson is doing better but his breathing sounds so horrible as he is happily running around the house. His parents got him a puppy for his birthday. (Shaking my head here.) They already had a perfectly trained, low maintenance 40year-old Welsh Corgi. But thought the boy needed his own dog so they got a “free” lab mix from a local farm. He is adorable but possibly not the wisest decision.</p>
<p>Hope everyone has a great week!</p>
<p>So much good news here! </p>
<p>And for those of us still waiting the wait is getting shorter. Just trying to breathe through it. We may hear from a number of schools D auditioned for this week. She is blissfully unaware since she doesn’t scour the theater forum here for clues but I am a bit on edge. The rest of her non-auditioned programs may not notify her until the end so I will be following along with AvonHSDad’s countdown right up to the end.</p>
<p>She survived her first auditioned rejection. Every bit of tougher skin she develops through this will serve her well. But an acceptance (or two!) this week would be a really good thing. We’re off for spring break next week so that will be a great diversion from waiting. And worrying.</p>
<p>Lots of good thoughts for those who are sick. And empathy for those disappointed with aid offers. I spoke to an old friend whose child is at Cornell and he said they appealed her initial offer and were able to get a very good award which enables her to attend. Maybe there is hope if the issue is need-based aid. </p>
<p>We are in that same boat of probably not qualifying for need based aid and hoping for some merit to ease the way. One of her auditioned schools is particularly expensive (they all are really) and we talked about it before she even applied. At the time she said she would rather try for it and then have to say no if the money didn’t work out. We’ll see how she feels if that reality actually hits. These are tough choices. But what I hear so clearly in this thread is that these kids are supported and cared for so deeply and they have to know that they and their parents are on the same team. That is heartbreakingly not true for every family.</p>
<p>Its a very rainy Sunday here and I have to go entertain 2 dozen 5-8 year old girls this afternoon when I’d like to just curl up with a book and a cup of tea. Wish me luck.</p>
<p>LofP - Good luck to you and D on this week’s decisions. </p>
<p>This week the things will start happen, WUSTL and American U usually send their decisions around March 10th, and then it’s the pi day. </p>
<p>Keeping my fingers crossed for all our kids.</p>
<p>Posted some pics on shutterfly-it was pretty easy to figure out.</p>
<p>I have become pretty good with computers the last few years and one of the keys was realizing I couldn’t “break” them and enjoying the challenge of figuring them out rather than getting frustrated.</p>
<p>Great talk today with my son. He actually has been doing more thinking than I thought about “The Choice” (TC). He told me the reasons he was not interested in several schools and they were excellent ones and actually indicated he has been doing his homework.</p>
<p>He has it boiled down to this- Plan A-Harvard says yes and he crawls there over broken glass-OK that’s doable! :)</p>
<p>Harvard says no and he goes to plan B (after needing a couple of days to lick his wounded ego)-deciding between URochester and the mystery school I won’t name yet because he hasn’t been accepted. If he gets accepted at either of the other two Ivies we’ll run those numbers as well but he is focusing on those two schools since one gave him a really nice offer already and the other one will if accepted offer him full-tuition as a NMF.</p>
<p>He said how hard it is not knowing which we all agree on and I said the best thing we all could do at this point is just enjoy life! I also told him (and I think emmybet told me this a while back) to focus on what we do know right now-next year he will be in college, and a very good one at that, and he will be starting a whole new exciting chapter of his life-he liked that idea very much so I think that’s what we are going to be doing around here.</p>
<p>I too have my fingers crossed for all these great kids on here I feel I have come to know.</p>
<p>I would love to meet you all but since I will not fly I am limited to the East Coast. Maybe we can have a Skype session??</p>
<p>Congratulations on the recent acceptances and scholarships!</p>
<p>I feel terrible that I’ve only been lurking on this thread lately, but I feel so anxious about my D’s upcoming college decisions that I just don’t seem to have anything to say. She’s waiting on 10 schools, and most of them will likely be rejections, so… it’s a pins and needles situation here, as it is for many of you. </p>
<p>One of the schools she applied to sent out early writes a couple of weeks ago, and I was very disappointed she didn’t get one, because I consider her to be a strong candidate for that school. She doesn’t know they sent out early writes (she’s not on CC), and I didn’t tell her. I know it’s not necessarily a measure of whether she’ll be accepted there, or anywhere else, but for some reason it put me on edge and started me worrying. I’m a champion worrier. ;)</p>
<p>Then, just last week she suddenly threw another school into the mix - it’s a very good college within an hour’s drive of here, where she will more than likely be accepted, and hopefully with a nice merit scholarship. We’re visiting the campus in a couple of days. I feel a little better knowing about this possibility, because all of her other schools are so far away. It was definitely spurred by the fact that her boyfriend will be staying in the local area for college, but I’m still reassured to have this as an option.</p>
<p>Good vibes for all of you and your kids as we plod through this month and finally start making some decisions!</p>
<p>
O-Mom - Sorry to read that. S got deferred from a school I read as a match school and deferred from a second I looked at as a slight reach. Of course they are his 1st and 2nd choices. ;-( I am sure all our kids will end up in good places come Sept.</p>
<p>LoP: I will cross all of our fingers for you, since your answers are coming next week and my D shouldn’t get any for more like 2.</p>
<p>Pepper: How wonderful that you are having these nice, calm, grounding conversations with your S! Sounds like you two are getting through this beautifully together.</p>
<p>As for deferrals: D also get deferred EA at a match, and it does make me nervous. I myself was deferred ED and then denied, so it’s hard not to see it as a ding, as much as logic says they would look positively at them among their larger pool of applicants. You just would like to think a school would jump at the chance to have your kid. So I feel much like the rest of you! In our case, the deferred school is about at the bottom of her list now (too small, too close, and too familiar), but it doesn’t bode well for the others we are waiting for, which are all at least as selective or more so.</p>
<p>O-mom: it sounds like your D is being thoughtful and practical, and planning for any contingency, including if she realized she doesn’t want to be too far from BF. Having a D who’s been managing a 1000-mi relationship for 4 years, I’ll say that it is HARD. In some ways it’s nice not to be at the same school - they’ve both had to make friends, make their lives work, without the crutch of someone there joined at the hip, and also being “attached” has simplified their social lives in a good way. But they miss each other a lot, and recently with some great deals on flights and a good summer savings account they’ve done a couple of quick visits to break up the long separations. </p>
<p>What D minded the most was that her BF is at a school where travel is VERY inconvenient - not near any airport, and without any regular transportation to any airports (only on official break times). If he had had better access, things would have been very different.</p>
<p>D2 has a BF with no plans or indication that they would break up - but she isn’t trying to stay close, either. Both girls have dated boys a year behind them (my girls are young for their grade themselves, and the boys are on the old side). This boy I think is more likely to go to the same part of the country she’s in, actually, a bit more adventurous. I doubt they’ll be closer than a several-hour train ride apart, though. Being able at least to contemplate a weekend visit is awfully nice, something D1 really never had.</p>
<p>I wish it were I who originated the message that GOING TO COLLEGE, PERIOD is what these kids will do. I keep losing the link to the wonderful poster who reminded us of that - in fact, it was a HS senior a couple of years ago, who clearly had her head on beautifully straight. She was so sweet to remind us parents that no matter where the kids go they will get to have this incredible experience that we all want them to have, and the details are just gravy. I have clung to that message tightly over the past few years. </p>
<p>I’ll put out yet another plea to anyone who remembers the post or the poster to copy or link to it for us. She put it all so well!</p>
<p>I look back now at posts I made about D’s decision a month and a bit ago and see how far we have come. D is totally not stressed at all. Just figures her first choice (totally affordable) is a go- until she goes to accepted student day. If she does not like it, she will deal with it then as she has other really good options. We are so very lucky. I ache for those of you still struggling with where and what if and how. </p>
<p>On this gray rainy day I am making almond cream Heath bar layered brownies for a potluck. I am skipping the potluck (D will go and H will join her later) but will make sure a few of the bite sized ones stay behind. 
Have a good rest of the day all.</p>