@NerdMom88, Middle Earth food, hmm? I hope it was more like Bilbo’s birthday feast than Denethor’s final meal.
@snoozn Of course! We had Ithilien stew, mushrooms (for the Hobbits), Hobbit tea cake, Dwarven seed cake, honey cakes from Beornings and Lembas wrapped in Mallorn leaves from the Elves. Our “daughter of the heart” made painted goblets for the occasion. Lots of fun!
@NerdMom88, wish I’d been invited!
@NerdMom88 Me too!
@NerdMom88 that would have been a hit in my house too. DH and S20 played their LOTR DVD trivia game last weekend.
Interesting that you can put a housing deposit prior to accepting the offer… I wonder how many schools allow that.
@Fishnlines29 I think many of the large public schools allow it. We have 3 housing deposits down right now.
@snoozn @itsgettingreal17 @MA2012 Our D15 wanted to be there, too! We Skyped with her while DotH (Daughter of the Heart) was there. DotH is D17’s high school friend, but we’ve adopted her and she spends quite a bit of time at our house.
We promised D15 we’d do it again – maybe with The Hobbit films this time – when she’s on spring break. So mark your calendars for the third week in March, in central Illinois! 
We are going to put a housing deposit down tonight for ASU’s Barrett, just to have S in line for the type of dorm he wants. Waiting to do that at OU until we hear from the honors college. ASU said the housing deposit is refundable as long as you request the refund by May 1.
On a lighthearted note (because I came home deeply annoyed by a douchey family at my local Atlanta publix in full Patriots gear-all matching and strutting around proudly- ugh, have some manners and respect the losing team’s home city and fans, please, and save those shirts for an actual game day-as a Boston native I was embarrassed by them)…
anyway, all the stickers that have come from the schools have been decorating our giant trashcan. It’s looking very festive! This is a neighborhood thing, btw-it’s not to throw shade on the schools. Trashcans are like our car’s rear bumper here, except you can really go crazy with them 
@MotherOfDragons - Never heard trashcan decorating, but sounds interesting
@MotherOfDragons – so do people use stickers only from schools the students will attend? Or from acceptances?
No one has sent a sticker yet, so I am intrigued by this.
Nice surprise in the mail today. A revised FA letter showing a 2K music scholarship at Allegheny. Actual admissions award letter hasn’t even arrived yet lol.
@CT1417 the trash cans reflect the families that live in their house-so you see a lot of Rosemary Beach/30A stickers (georgia/bama people will understand this reference), um, sports stickers, those white oval stickers from places you’ve been.
People with small kids have a TON of stickers on their cans because, you know, small kids love stickers…
I’m still waiting for Bama and Northeastern stickers. C’mon, give me a husky and an elephant!
We are a weird, weird neighborhood
@itsgettingreal17 Good to know. I guess I will start looking into that a bit.
@MotherOfDragons The sticker craze sounds fun!
@eandesmom That’s funny, that happened to us too! D got a financial package 3 weeks before the Congrats, you’ve been admitted letter!
:))
@Fishnlines29 he was already admitted with merit, but the official additional scholarship letter will come from admissions. The FA office just beat them with the revised letter showing the additional award. It’s just kind of funny as we have no clue what the terms of the scholarship are! I am assuming it’s ensemble participation and audition yearly but who really knows. Still, nice to now before we visit in a few weeks.
@eandesmom gotcha, it is nice to have it for the visit, for sure.
@MotherOfDragons DS had a Bama sticker in one of his packets. I can’t remember if was from the honors tour or acceptance packet. I would send it your way if I could!
My daughter’s gotten Alabama and Kansas stickers after acceptances, and Oklahoma stickers in a “Please apply to us!” mailing.
Interesting: One of the schools D17 decided to take her list this weekend was St Thomas (I know there’s at least one St Thomas alum on this thread, so, sorry about that!) but got something today from them that was fun anyway—they have an intriguing honors program, but it has a really, really hard to write essay as part of their application process. Well, apparently if your stats are high enough you don’t need to write the essay, because she got an acceptance letter for it in the mail today! Not going to use it, but a nice little ego boost, you know?
I should probably dig through the giant box of college flyers and see if there are more stickers in there that I missed.
Does anyone know when the UA kids will hear back from the Blount Scholars people?
I made the joke yesterday to one of my friends that not only are my ducks not in a row right now, I don’t even know how many ducks I have, or even where the hell they are. Ducks all over the place. I just want to be able to make some plans…