@carolinamom2boys my H never did either. He grew up on a pretty terrifying hill and even though he won 2 bikes over his years of being a paperboy, he gave them away rather than learn to ride. D is perfectly fine at it, though.
We have a small house-we met later in life, during the housing boom and affordable homes were scarce.My two oldest are long gone. And we’re still underwater. So we’re staying put until we can’t manage it anymore. But prices are going up again, so hopefully we won’t be underwater much longer!
What we’ll likely do is keep D’s room as-is for a year or so, but in my experience, after that first year is when kids start coming home less and less, until their room at home isn’t really their “home” anymore. It will likely always be a guest room of some kind, though, since right now any guests have to sleep in the living room on the air mattress. We have a basement that H wants to turn into a man cave, but not unless we win the lottery. It needs more work than even my super-handy son could manage.
@2manybooks , glad your son is better. My cousin and his wife got mono when they were first married and it took months for them to recover.
D graduates June 11 and leaves for college almost exactly 2 months later. We don’t even have 6 months left!
My graduation is 4 months from tomorrow and exactly 2 months after that my sister goes to college and I head off later that week. Crazy. On the bedding front, Bed Bath and Beyond has the softest sheets! The brand is Pure Beech. So soft!
I picked up some dorm sheets for S in Macy’s sale (ok, they always have sales) right after the holidays. Extra-long twin, normally $74, cut to $29.99, and for one day, $14. Sold!
S says he feels “totally fine” - even though the mono test on Monday was positive. He’d had a horrible sore throat a few weeks earlier, though, and I’d taken him to the clinic that’s attached to where his doctor is too, and they spent two minutes with him, said “not strep, viral” - and sent him on his way. Now it’s pretty clear that the sore throat and general malaise was the beginning of it all. He’s cleared to go back tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes.
One last bit of financial paperwork came through early this week, too, so I just finished taxes (eh) and FAFSA. (Whee!!!) Now I need to figure out how to get the updated FAFSA information to the schools (did a preliminary one to hit deadlines), and to update CSSProfile.
We did go to an alumni/accepted students’ reception a couple of weeks ago for one school where S has been accepted and given a pretty nice merit award. Of the three EA accepts, it’s likely his top one (would be the closer one, but they gave next to no aid) - but a lot still hinges on the 3 RD schools. He was REALLY impressed by the President, though, who attended and spoke, including directly to the students. We’ll see. Two more months and change, right?
Submitted the corrections to FAFSA today. So, done until next year’s, which will simply be a duplicate of this year’s (or, at least the tax info will be a duplicate).
I’ve already discussed the possibility of renting D16’s room out on airbnb, it’s a large second master, of course it will be available for her when she’s wants to come home and it will stay mostly unchanged but I have told her to plan to pack up her special mementos and valuables that she isn’t taking with her and generally de-cluttering her room before she goes off to college. She seems ok with this.
I have no plans to move from our house ever! I’ve spent the last several years converting the garage spaces into fused and torched work glass studios for my hobbies and I’m in the process of converting the homeschool room into a studio/office/design space.
We just got the fall garden planted yesterday. We are trying asparagus for the first time (this is a multi year commitment!), we planted bare root asparagus almost two weeks latter than recommended for our area. We misunderstood how the bundles were counted and ended up with more that twice the asparagus than we intended! Thankfully we have room for the extra. We also planted Boc Choy very late - if it works great if not, no big loss - the seeds were 40% off, lemon squash, zucchini, peas, parsley, basil, thyme, garlic, kohl rabbi, sun flowers, and strawberries. We also stared some very hot peppers by seed in the house to transplant later. We’ll pick up some tomatoes next week because it’s a bit early to put them in the ground here. We passed on corn this year because it takes up so much of the garden for so little yield. I’ll be thinning and splitting the artichokes next week and I’m terrified I’m going to kill them by doing this! We didn’t have a freeze this year so year so they didn’t die back at all so they’ll be cumbersome to work with. Next week or the week after we’ll plant tomatoes. We did not plant cucumbers this year but fully expect some to pop up as they did last year. We just can’t seem to kill those cucumbers! But this year I hope to contain them and transplant them in a spot where they can do no harm!
It’s taken us years to get the house/yard/garden the way I want it. DH can sell it and move after I die!
@2manybooks, hope your son gets on the mend and back to all his activities.
We will leave daughters room intact until she says otherwise. It will probably be used as a guest room. She has taken over the other bedroom too as an office and the for the closet space.
Daughter graduates in less than 3 months. Unbelievable…and this mom is going to be so lost without her. I am teasing her that I will move to her college location. :))
We are planning to downsize in less than a year. It will be hard. I love our house, but in the end, it is just a house. Our goal is to go mortgage free. We now have a 4 bedroom 3 bath house (we added on) but we will have one kid at home and one in and out so we really don’t need much. We think we can get a smaller house, in a less expensive part of town, and be mortgage free. We pay about $30,000 a year in mortgage (can I talk money?) and that can go directly into college costs. Luckily my husband is a contractor (plumbing) and this comes with a group of friends who do other types of contracting so we are thinking of going with a house that needs quite a bit of work and getting it livable and then upgrading as we go.
We have been limited also because of our school district. I have wanted to stay in the same city because I don’t want to deal with SpEd services in a new district, but since the S20 seems to be thriving with homeschooling we might be able to move to a neighboring, cheaper area because I won’t have to worry about schools.
I am happy to hear I am not crazy about my decision to downsize. I tentatively approached my husband and said, you know, maybe we could think about getting a smaller house in about 2 or so years to make college costs easier. To my surprize his response was: Why wait? Let’s start looking after the summer. Now he keeps saying, well if I change this or change that it would raise the sale value, every time he walks into a bathroom! Plumbing and moving on the brain. We romantically cruise Zillow together.
Ha! @LKnomad - Zillow is one of my most frequented bookmarks
With all of this talk of FAFSA, etc. I just checked on the website for our 1 missing document. The timeline is moved up to 3/18- woohoo!
I signed up of email notification & it said the site would be available 3/14- everyone cross your fingers & say a prayer I might be able to meet the 3/15 deadlines.
@3scoutsmom , will you please come and plant our backyard?
And @Sophmore1 my H teases D and I that he will have the house to himself because I will move to college with D! She is so much younger than my other kids that she’s an only in many ways and we’re very close. I’m already putting a list together of things I can do to keep busy, but I’m not sure how I’ll ever get used to it. She is so much more active in everything than her siblings were and so much of it is not accessible by public transit like their lives were that I’ve literally worked my life around hers for years.
@sseamom I need to be putting some things to do together or its going to hit me like a ton of bricks. I agree we will never get used to it but we will get thru it. D is my only child, my husband is ill and she and I do everything together as she doesn’t mind hanging out with me fortunately. I want her to go and have the best experience possible, that is my wish for her.
