<p>AvonHSDad: Congrats on the HOBY program! A nice honor for your dd.</p>
<p>kathiep: Nice touch – meals for sick kids. </p>
<p>We gave DH’s parents a digital picture frame a couple of years ago, but they weren’t overly impressed. In fact, when they moved to a retirement community last year, they said that they gave it away with lots of their other stuff. Not sure what I will get them this year. Something consumable, I think, since their space is more limited in their retirement digs.</p>
<p>Looking for gift ideas for a 15 yo. sophomore boy. I wish he would make a list like AmandaK and Pepper’s daughters (okay, maybe with small ticket items!) because I could use some hints this year. When I asked him for ideas, he said that he really didn’t need anything and that he liked surprises. He’s going to make me work hard on this.</p>
<p>mathmomvt: The house rental idea is nice! One year my family rented a house at a ski resort for a few days during the Christmas break. We’re not all skiers, but there was something fun for all. We don’t exchange gifts any more (though I will buy for my mom), but for several years the adults drew names and made hand-made gifts. Some of those were pretty funny!</p>
<p>several people got a stomach bug with vomiting while we were sharing that rental house, so it didn’t work out quite as planned (there was “bunny hill” skiing and ice skating available near the house that we never used). But we’ll probably do a similar thing again some year. We are fairly spread out, so renting a place in between made a lot of sense.</p>
<p>I think e-readers for older people is the way to go. Maybe someone could split it with you, kathie? Also, the basic kindle is under $100 now. There are TONS of free books, and library books are really easy to load, finally.</p>
<p>Two text messages last night, one from each son:</p>
<p>S1: I’ve been vaccinated for measles, right? The CDC wants to know, my suite mate has it…(um yes, but not since you were 5)</p>
<p>S2: So psyched, found a paying internship to apply to this summer at the American University in Afghanistan!!!..(my response: “…wow?!..scary”<br>
his response: “Scary slash AWESOME!!!”)</p>
<p>@ Yalemom - what the heck?! You poor thing! I think I would hide his passport. I know they are adults, but still no, just no. Please don’t slam me for being honest. :o</p>
<p>yalemom - Time for your phone batt to die, just don’t look at it, way too much for one mom to take, in one night! As for Afghanistan, wowee. Reminds me of those three young exchange students arrested in Egypt - didn’t they look like your typical college kids? one looked like deer in the headlights. And the one who went on CNN saying, “yeah - I purposefully wanted to experience the birth of democracy for myself!!” I could see my son and many of his buddies just going down to the protest to see what was going on, right? They really think they are invincible.</p>
<p>Emmybet, I disagree about library books being easy to load on the e-readers, at least for seniors. Or at least for my father. I don’t live close and I can imagine many confused phone calls. Unfortunately, I’m one of two children and my sister is in no position to help with any purchases. She hasn’t bought anything for our family for years and year. I usually send her a netflix subscription. The other problem is that my father’s eyes are getting worse and worse so it’s going to be audio books only before long and that means my mother would have to do the downloading and she’s even more confused on the computer. </p>
<p>kathiep: Agree that the e-reader would be too confusing for my MIL or FIL. My MIL isn’t computer literate at all, and my FIL, though the master of sending emails full of photos that other people took, couldn’t work his way through the downloads. Maybe for some it would work, but not for mine.</p>
<p>Ohiomom - congratulations to your son on his HOBY selection. Based on my recent and limited research, it sounds like a very legitimate and worthwhile group for the kids to participate in and for their college resumes and applications. DD told us that she thinks she will be going to the program at Dennison University in Granville next May. We haven’t received any formal notification beyond her selection.</p>
<p>OK, I guess I was being optimistic. I’ve seen so many happy seniors with them (reading with giant fonts!). My mother would be the last person on earth to get one - she can’t even turn on a computer, which is sad, because she is such an information hound.</p>
<p>I will say, just for the record, that most e-readers have audio conversion.</p>
<p>H’s family is getting one for his disabled sister, but we’ve all agreed that we will send the books to it (she has no access to a computer, anyway). She loves trashy crime and romance novels, and those abound for free, fortunately.</p>
<p>^Thanks to all for your support!! I like the idea of turning off my phone! Fortunately there is lots of time and other internships to apply to. However, that said, S2 has a will of steel (wish it were Kevlar, it would come in handy over there!), not much I’ll be able to do about it if he sets his mind to it. </p>
<p>S1’s suite mate was inoculated for measles as a child, but got them anyway, very disturbing. Incubation time is 8-14 days which puts us right at winter break. I think he should be fine :)</p>
<p>AK- I saw those poor kids too, I kept thinking “I bet one of them has a parent on CC just dying to vent!” Those poor boys, I bet they will never forget that experience!</p>
<p>AvonHSDad: My son doesn’t seem to know much other than he was selected to represent his school and he had to fill out a form at school today. He thought that it might be in May or June but didn’t have any idea where. I haven’t had time to do any research, so that’s all I know. Lots of time to fill in the details, I guess. I thought it was funny that he came home with this news after I had read about your daughter’s selection today.</p>
<p>ohiomom24 - from what I can tell the nominations process and announcements all take place around the beginning of December. Ohio appears to have serveral HOBY districts but there was nothing but general program information and a form to be completed and returned to school by Friday. It appers that we will get more information over the next weeks or months. The web site is [Hugh</a> O?Brian Youth Leadership | HOBY | Home](<a href=“http://www.hoby.org%5DHugh”>http://www.hoby.org)</p>
<p>Congratulations to your DD AvonDad and your DS O’Mom!! Bluejrjr applied for HOBY but wasn’t selected from our hs. I think he was upset, but I assured him out of almost 700 students it doesn’t indicate he won’t be chosen for another opportunity. He did a good job on the application and his GC knows he’ll put for effort into any other application process she puts him up for in the future. The selections for his school were made a couple of weeks ago. When I looked into the program during his application process it did look like a solid organization. I think your kids will have a good experience!! :)</p>
<p>Just a reminder, your student probably has the choice to change their meal plan for second semester if they were not thrilled with their first semester choice. Now is the time for them to do that. Bluejr will be going to more flex $'s and fewer meals based on how he found he used the meal plan first semester. I could have told him that from the get-go but he felt more secure having a set number of meals starting out (which he later found too restrictive because of where he had to eat…). No change in price but a better use of money.</p>
<p>Congratulations to Avon’s D and Ohiomom’s S. It sounds like a great opportunity. Sorry that Bluejrjr didn’t make it, but kudos to him for applying.</p>
<p>Thanks for the good wishes for D1. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she’ll be an independent adult next year.</p>
hope all works out fine!</p>
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