<p>This thread is so comforting. I love, love, love knowing that my house is not the only one with rubbermaid boxes of Legos and two drawers full of the original instructions.</p>
<p>The most treasured Lego creations are on a book shelf in the basement. The two large tubs of miscellaneous pieces are on the bottom of that shelf. Two other creations are on the bookshelf and dresser in his room. As I was cleaning, I accumulated a Tupperware lettuce keeper bowl full of space pieces to take to the basement.</p>
<p>I believe that at least a small box will go to college. DS2 still likes to make Lego creations as a winding-down activity before going to sleep.</p>
<p>His bedroom set is still the loft bunk bed we bought when he was seven. He refuses to let me replace it because he loves the “tunnel” effect of the lower bunk. It runs on the “opposite axis” to the top bunk which is attached on one side to a tower of five drawers. (Those hold Lego magazines and Lego instructions and the original containers for some Lego Technic toys.) Lower bunk rolls out (or use to before the wheels fell off) but has two “walls” that create that tunnel effect. One is the set of three shelves under the lower bunk where DS2 keeps the current books he is reading, clock, iPOD, Lego creations (and stuff I found yesterday that was just gross.) The other side wall is the desk that he long ago outgrew!</p>
<p>Question for everyone: I have a 20% off one item coupon at BB&B that expires at the end of the day. What should I go buy for the dorm room?</p>
<p>Pepper and Kinderny - I found things settled down quite a bit after graduation - D hit a rough patch the last couple months of school but now that she is done, the negative vides from the past few months have gone away. It has only been a week but HS is quickly becoming a distant memory!</p>
<p>We still have all our building toys - legos, Kinex, basic blocks - when the little cousins are around, they pull them out. I still thinkthey like them and use the cousins as an excuse!</p>
<p>We went to brunch and the Museum of Fine Arts yesterday for an early Father’s Day celebration. We checked out the Chihuly exhibit and it was fascinating…the museum is right across the street from the school D1 is going to attend and I can definitely see how they use it as part f their extended classroom. It is times like this that I have to congratulate my D on her wise choice of school. She was accepted into more established and prestigous programs but now I get it. They they don’t have the same access to outside resources as the one she chose…and she had the insight to understand that.</p>
<p>We have a small thing of legos, a tub of Zome (hmm, should bring that back out) and a huge tub of wood track train stuff. The young nieces and nephews love it. One SIL asked if she could have the train stuff since our kids are older. Not on your tintype–those are expensive! That’s being saved for the hypothetical grandkids.</p>
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<p>IIRC, we’ve set age of complete control at 25. 30 sounds rather old to me, but it certainly depends on your child’s maturity and the size of the estate. ;)</p>
You silly girl, they never really expire!! They take those WAY past the date!!</p>
<p>btw, we had every tecnic creature in triplicate…yes, lucky me! Three boys means three of everything that could be bought for under $10 and put in an Easter basket, stocking, or bought with lawn mowing money!!</p>
<p>@ SlitheyTove - your SIL actually asked for your BRIO set?! That’s brazen!!</p>
<p>Hi, everyone. I’m back from our week’s cruise to Alaska. I have Evelyn Wood-speed-read the last week’s worth of pages, so I hope I didn’t miss the post that said “let’s give cgpm’s DS a $20K scholly”. :)</p>
<p>Alaska was so totally gorgeous. And, SeattleMom, do you recall the weather in Seattle last Saturday, June 4? Beautiful clear blue skies and warm temps? That’s the day we sailed from Seattle. It was gorgeous. First day at sea (west of Vancouver island) was cloudy and a little bumpy, but sunny and warm (relatively speaking) in Juneau and Skagway, cloudy and chilly (appropriately so!) in Glacier Bay National Park, sunny again in Ketchikan and Victoria. We ate what must have been a ton of food between the four of us. Saw bald eagles everywhere, a couple of bears, humpbacks and orcas, sled dog puppies, three glaciers up close and a couple of others far away, plus lots of beautiful snow-covered mountains and icy fjords. And then we left Seattle this past Saturday, June 11 – it’s 56 degrees. Fly home to Austin, where it is 100! Our lawn is brown and crunchy. Our a/c in our house ran for 20 hours straight yesterday and STILL never got the house cooled down all the way.</p>
<p>Welcome home. Ugh.</p>
<p>Will try and post a few pics on the shutterfly page in another day or two. Still trying to catch up on mail, both “e” and “snail.”</p>
<p>Hypothetical grandkids! I remember having that thought! Now that I have a real, adorable one I can attest to the timeless nature of the following toys:</p>
<p>Brio train set
Discovery Toys stacking cups and picnic set
Playschool heavy wooden blocks
Carnegie Museum dinosaur collection
Books, books and more books</p>
<p>While we really weren’t prepared emotionally to become grandparents, we were definitely prepared in the amusement department. Even a wooden child’s rocking chair that my aunt and uncle gave us when DS1 was born. Grandson watched Nick Jr in it yesterday while “reading” the board book version of “Runaway Bunny” to himself.</p>
<p>Unfortunately don’t have time right now to catch up on reading in here from the weekend.</p>
<p>Just wanted to say that we all survived grad weekend. don’t think it has really sunk in for any of us yet that D1 is now an official graduate (and survivor!) of the **School District.</p>
<p>Parts of the ceremony were great, and parts droned on. The main speaker was a teacher that the kids voted for, his speech was definitely FOR the kids–he has a rather sharp wit and can be very entertaining–and he was-for the kids and any others “in the know” about his class/philosophy, but I could see some very befuddled grandparents around me in the audience! That was D1’s favorite part of the night, otherwise she was very unemotional and “let’s get this over with” about it. Just ready to be DONE, done, done with high school.
But she had a BLAST afterwards at the overnight Grad Night, exhausted the next day but worth it!</p>
<p>Okay, now with my few moments left, will attempt to begin to catch up in here…</p>
<p>kinderny - I don’t get the alien reference, seems like a familiar face…hmmm must be someone we know?</p>
<p>pepper - isn’t there any option for dd? I wish there was a better choice, where at least the incompetencies are less well known to you. I have found there are a couple options here (all public magnet, or whatever you want to call them) which I should’ve looked into. Maybe by the time I’m at dd3, I will wise up and get her away from the big public HS - or maybe the band director will up and quit by then (or die, which is what I was really thinking).</p>
<p>cgpm - that is my dream trip. Give me a whale and a kayak, that would be heaven.</p>
<p>Ds blissfully bombed his recital yesterday - basically another very technical piece (that his teacher admitted he didn’t even tackle until college) that ds put off perfecting until this last week and geez, maybe that was too much procrastination. Altisimmo is not a beast to tackle in 7 days. Ah well. Enough is enough.</p>
<p>^^^Alien in that whole “what thing is different from the rest?” kind of way.</p>
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<p>While I can’t admire procrastination I must admit I admire his insouciance.</p>
<p>D was “delighted” to hear that the lockers at school were cleared out this am and stuff inside was dumped/trashed/taken even though 1) there are two more days of school for 9-11th grades and 2) seniors are coming back today and tomorrow for final parent/teacher/student conferences.** I wussed out and H is doing it on his own; we have had to do 2-3 per year and I saw nothing good of showing up this time in my current frame of mind. </p>
<p>**even money on whether the school failed to notify the seniors or D didn’t bother to read admin e-mails. la la la I don’t care.</p>
<p>Well, amanda, if your D has been nursing the “my brother is so perfect” image, at least the recital maybe broke her of that?</p>
<p>kinderny, I didn’t think the school would be able to come up with any more dumb ideas … but I guess anything’s possible. </p>
<p>Thread over on the musical theatre forum is all about how weird and frustrating HS casting is - everything from over-favoritism to under-favoritism. My D suffered from both, for years: the theatre person had her “little buddies” that got all of the parts, regardless of talent, and my D was told many times (and older D, too, now that I think of it) that because they obviously are more serious and have done more that they really should give other kids a chance at things. Wha…? D2 has heard this even though she never even HAD the chance! Somehow she knocked herself out of the running before she ever auditioned for anything, simply because she was already “too” into theatre.</p>
<p>Brings up interesting questions of what is educational vs. talent-based, etc. People are human, of course, too. Main lesson to be learned is that we all have to learn to roll with punches. And the final word is that HS <em>is</em> HS and ever will be so.</p>
<p>With every passing day since graduation, H and I are so happy to be seeing more of our “real” D coming back.</p>
<p>amanda it’s a good school-and it will be a good place for her-as I did with her brother I offered to send her to a Catholic HS (those are big in this area) but she wants to stay in town. I am OK with it-just as I am OK with my son’s decision to stay here-the complete package was the best for him and I don’t think he would have grown into the young man he has become without some of the things he could only get there-not academically but socially. I am keenly aware, based upon my school experiences, just how critical fit is-and this school served it’s purpose for him in ways that in my opinion are at least as important, if not more so, than academics. It’s a balancing act as we all know. I have not posted much since I fear I come of as a whining and annoying person. So I try to say little and wait in hope for our college thread. I broke my vow to not post here anymore because I think I might lose it if I don’t vent a little bit of this.</p>
<p>amanda and emmy I am so sorry you have had to deal with these types-we have to some extent but nothing like that-</p>
<p>Emmybet - Unfortunately dd never takes it the way we would like, her read on it is how come he gets to have a recital? How come I don’t get to have a recital? (insert: waaah, waaah, waah!) Totally goes over her head that ds has just epically failed. Of course ds holds his head in such a way (and I’m one of the only people who knew the piece and how it is supposed to sound…) that some people think he rocked it. His teacher whinced more than once. </p>
<p>Anyway, Pepper - I have a good mind to come out there and give you a good talking to! You are neither whiney or annoying. (If you want examples of those, I have one upstairs) Vent all you want, I do owe you that. </p>
<p>I am having more than my share of weepy moments lately. There’s alot of lasts and firsts - last recital, first one without my mom who was ds’ biggest supporter and biggest critic. I gathered up with the girls, all the pics of him through the years to put on poster boards like suggested for the big party and it was impossible to not have pics of my mom and us because that is the way it has been nearly ds’ entire life. It really sucks.</p>
<p>Well - wishful thinking on my part. Having just come through 4 years (and more to come, I’m sure) of the chip-on-the-shoulder younger D, I was hoping so hard you had it easier!</p>
<p>I think these special occasions are very hard so soon after a major loss. My heart is with you, amanda. </p>
<p>On a more amusing note, D is going to a Murder Mystery birthday party tonight. It sounds incredibly fun - they all have silly characters to play. She is the bitter ex-wife of a mobster, who left her for a nightclub floozy; her new flame is the sheriff who has a hint of corruption himself… I’m looking forward to hearing how it all goes!</p>
<p>Shawbridge: Thanks for the info on NE travel options. I’ll pm you if I have questions.</p>
<p>Mathmomvt: We’re basically looking for somewhere to relax for two days. We’re looking for somewhere where we can do things outdoors. We’ve considered Cape Code or Martha’s Vineyard, but would prefer a beach on the way south, so the drive home isn’t as long.</p>
<p>Pepper: Please feel free to come here and vent if you need to. As Kinder has found, we’re on your side.</p>
<p>Amanda: Hugs. I know it only makes it harder now, but you’re lucky that you and your kids had a wonderful relationship with your mother.</p>
<p>On a lighter note, I went to a pool party yesterday where they had corn hole set up. Suddently it’s everywhere! It’s a great outdoor party game.</p>
<p>Back from D’s orientation program at Juniata College. It was fantastic! She had a great time and met lots of kids she liked (and oh yes, registered for classes and got lots of info).We had a great separate parent’s program where we got lots of great info and met some really nice people. We all feel really, really happy with her choice.
I need to TRY to get caught up with this thread…so congrats to all our newest grads!</p>
<p>Amanda: So sorry that it’s painful for you but what wonderful memories. I’m frustrated (again) with my mom not being honest with us about doctor visits, but so grateful that she was here for graduation. I realize not everyone is that fortunate. Hugs to you.</p>
<p>Today’s cleaning projects: DS2’s car and the top bunk bed (AKA extra storage space.) Found an IB Latin book in the car. Interesting because before each senior can be cleared foro graduation, each teacher has to sign a special sheet with a special pen to indicate that all books have been returned. Hmm.</p>
<p>Top of the bunk bed had five hoodies and several costumes from Homecoming themed “dress up days.”</p>
I broke my vow to not post here anymore because I think I might lose it if I don’t vent a little bit of this.</p>