I think you need to not worry about fashionable at this point. My D, who goes to school in Connecticut has cute boots for the cold, but for inclement weather she goes to her LLBean Boots or her snow boots from Timberland. None of them are cheap, but since I assume her feet have stopped growing, they will last forever. Go on their websites, they may be having sales since it is late in the winter shopping season.
Check out Kamik boots. They are a Canadian company and have boots rated for below 45 degress F. Warm and cute! My D received a pair for Christmas. She has put them to good use, with all the snow we have in the NE.
Hi all! I bought her a cool pair of llbean boots and brought them to her yesterday…she didn’t like them grrr. appatently everyone is wearing some kind of boot…I wonder if itis the kamik ones? Tomorrow is surgery (completely inconvenient for my schedule but when is surgery every convenient right ha ha) so I’ll have her look online after some recovery and show me the ones she wants.
Also I talked to the safety people there and they are having their insurance people call me next week…they will cover all of our out pocket medical and hotel bookings! Thank God for that…already up to over a thousand sheesh!
Oh and another person slipped and broke her wrist too…ouch
That speaks very well of the school, @cakeisgreat. Glad to hear it!
Also, check this site out to see what “all the kids are wearing” at the schools they attend:
http://www.collegefashionista.com/school/quinnipiac_university/
@luciethelakie ^^ I love it thank you!!
Those collegefashionista boots are cute, but are they functional for snow?
I am off to cold and snowy Cleveland to visit DS for a mom’s weekend at his fraternity. I do not own a pair of Bean boots but I bet I will be wishing for some by the end of the weekend! I do have a pair of cold weather boots but they are meant for relatively mild DC winters, not a Great Lakes one. All of the events are indoors but no doubt there will be some walking around. At least I have my long down coat. Not fashionable, but warm.
@2014novamom, Living in Cleveland, I can report that (for the now at least) the roads and sidewalks are all clear, but resemble bobsled runs with 2 to 3 foot walls of snow on each side, carved out for the pedestrians. Equally important to the warmth of the boot can be protection from cold winds, sometimes whipping off Lake Erie. Have fun exploring University Circle/Little Italy!
@vandyeyes thanks for the real time update. I went to undergrad at northwestern so lake winds are familiar to me. the bobsled runs are a different story! At the last minute I filched my daughter’s boots which are taller and warmer than mine. She won’t need them as it will be cold but dry at home this weekend.
DS has 4th snow day at BC. 80 degrees at home. Spring Break beckons.
Back yesterday from the weekend visit to Cleveland and I really lucked out with the weather. No precipitation and actually fairly warm for February!
It was a very nice visit. Took DS to dinner in Little Italy Friday night, then we met up with his fraternity brothers and their moms at the basketball game. After the game some moms went out but I was too tired so just went back to the hotel. DS also went to bed early in consideration of his roommate who had to be up very early for a track meet.
Saturday involved lunch at a funky place called Melt which specializes in all things involving grilled cheese. They have a small outpost on the Case campus but my son wanted to go to the real place because of a more extensive menu. Plus it is near the Target and no parent visit is complete without a Target run! Then we hit the Cleveland Museum of Art which is a really lovely place. Surprisingly uncrowded for a Saturday afternoon, actually.
Then we had dinner at the fraternity house, with a meal cooked by some of the brothers. I was amused when DS told me that they had to borrow “nice” plates and chairs from the sorority next door, which also lent them some centerpieces. Each mom had to submit a funny childhood story about their son, and these were passed out randomly and read out loud and folks had to try to guess which boy it was about. There were some pretty funny anecdotes!
After dinner, we trekked over to a house leased by 4 of the brothers for an after dinner “wine and cheese” (the fraternity house is dry – national policy). It started off as a sedate gathering but eventually turned into a raucous 80s dance party and sing along. Around midnight a few undergraduate girls wandered in thinking it was a regular party and looked confused to see all these middle-aged women dancing with the boys! At one point there was a conga line. My son tweeted that he hadn’t danced that much since middle school, LOL. I left at 1:30 since I had a flight to catch the next morning and it was still going strong.
It was interesting to hear how many moms met their husbands at fraternity parties (I was one of them) but not surprising in retrospect. And I definitely think some of the freshmen saw a side of their mothers they hadn’t seen before!
DH goes in a couple of weeks for dad’s weekend. Somehow I don’t think there will be 80s dancing going on, but who knows.
@glido – as I am sure you know, Boston is getting SLAMMED this winter. After four years of Ithaca winters, I ended up living in Boston. I didn’t make it through the second winter before I moved down to NYC. The winter just starts earlier and lasts longer (not unlike Ithaca, but with more sunshine). I can’t imagine how anyone is able to drive in Boston with all the snow piled on the side of the roads.
@2014novamom – love the fraternity party story. How sweet that they plan that!
CT - DS has no car in Beantown, so doesn’t have to worry about driving in the snow. The City closed down the T, so he has been confined to campus. There was a bomb threat tonight. The university sent out text to confine everyone to campus, DS said - “We already are!” The temp has dropped to -4 - I told him to cover up all his skin if he goes out at all. He just does not know what -4 means.
Glido, my son said that he once got a text from his track and field coach that said, “I don’t do single digits,” as he canceled practice when it was six degrees outside! So, my son took advantage of the situation, and rolled back over to get some additional sleep.
Speaking of my son, registration for housing has not gone as planned. He thought he would be living with his current roommates, but none of them has registered for next year. Given the situation, he called home a few nights ago and told me that he plans to move into the fraternity house. He will have his own room (bigger than the one he has now) and share a bathroom with a friend. It will save about $400 a year in housing costs and $150 on his dues. He also likes that the house has a lovely kitchen, so he can cook some of his meals (okay, so we are dreaming). I agreed to his choice, as long as his GPA remains where it is, as it could determine if he lands an internship next summer.
My first winter at Northwestern it got to -80, with the wind chill. And yes, that number is correct. It looked so absurd that I actually had to look it up and I found news articles talking about the record low temperatures that year, with a record of -83. Temperature of -23 plus a 29 mph wind combined for that record! But Northwestern never cancelled class! The news advised that people should not be outside for more than 10 minutes at a time and back then no two buildings were more than a 10 minute walk apart so class was on. That was quite a shock to a California girl, I’ll tell you. It is apparently super cold in Cleveland today so hopefully DS is bundled up and staying warm.
@momreads – my DS is moving into the fraternity house next year also. Almost all sophomores and juniors live in the house. It really won’t be much different for him, given that about half his pledge class lives on his dorm floor (including his current roommate) and the other half lives on the other male floor of his dorm. DH lived in his fraternity house from sophomore year on and his grades did not suffer so we are expecting the same from DS. Case isn’t a big party school, about 80% of the fraternity are engineering majors, more than half are varsity athletes, and the house is dry, so living in the house shouldn’t be a big distraction.
@2014novamom: Sounds like we were at Northwestern at the same time! I had a high school friend from home come to see campus that week, and his parents could not understand why I just darted from building to building without showing them much of campus! By the end of our walk, they totally understood.
DD is working through housing for next year. It seems like a long, drawn-out process. She signed up right after the semester began, and has applied for one type of special dorm. Next week she will try for different specialized housing. And if neither of those work out, she goes into the pool for regular dorms. It will probably be the end of the semester before she has a final answer!
S14’s school (in Boston) has had 5 official snow days plus one early close evening. So far, he’s keeping warm, but the school just sent out a revised calendar and they’ve added days to the end of the semester to make up for some of the missed time. His biggest complaint is that since the T was shutting down in the evening, the dining hall cut back on the hours they were open. He can’t get his 4 meals a day and many of the local shops are closed. I think he’ll have a few more complaints after he has his first make up Saturday class. 
Interesting about the Boston make-up days. Was just speaking yesterday with a friend who has a son at BC and she was wondering how the college would handle all of these snow days. I imagine each school will have their own approach.
Cornell sent an email out to students b/c of the wind chill warning. Their advice included:
“Stay indoors during the worst part of the extreme cold.”
I wonder how the professors would take that as an excuse for skipping class?
@ -80 at Northwestern. YIKES! I can’t even imagine.
@2014novamom -80 at Northwestern. YIKES! I can’t even imagine.2014novamom -80 at Northwestern. YIKES! I can’t even imagine.
@momreads – younger son’s HS track coach does not have a single digit rule and it was one too many outdoor winter track practices in single digits that caused son to drop winter track this year. It may as well be called winter XC as the only indoor running is during Saturday meets at schools that have indoor tracks.
@glido – I hadn’t heard about the bomb threat. Scary! A car is not all that helpful in Boston. I had one when I lived there immediately after college, as my company provided parking, but Boston really isn’t all that big, and I would have been better off walking. Once I returned to Boston after living in NYC, I laughed at myself for the short distances we would drive, and then spend ages looking for parking. My parallel parking skills improved tremendously having a car in Boston, but even more so, in NYC.
Freshman is keeping me in the dark about housing. Hope he has somewhere to live next year! All I know is that it involves a lottery…
And it was another sunny day at the University of Wyoming. My daughter said she wore a dress today because it was so nice.
CT1417 - I haven’t lived in NYC for over 25 years, but I can still parallel park better than all of my neighbors out here. I get comments (Don’t have to do it much, though.)
BC has changed some class schedules - Monday schedule on a Thursday - to make up for some of the lost classes. I asked by DS how he liked one of his new classes, he said, “I don’t know. I have only had it once!”