@SJ2727 Way to go fitting prom dress shopping in between college tours! I love that! Thankfully, D23’s prom was on March 30 so it was done before the final stretch of senior year craziness.
@milgymfam Good for you for figuring out hair and make up early! Do your kids get together with friends for pics before the prom? If not, that works out well. Parents can go and get their own pics (and share).
@MWolf Good luck to you and your daughter this weekend, and congrats to her on her talents in choreography! Having a daughter who has danced since the age of 3, and who is still dancing as a junior (in engineering) at Duke, I know how hectic being in 8 dances will be. Best wishes for a memorable performance!
@BrooklynRye, congrats on Northeastern! We’ll be living nearby—house hunting in Brookline right now. S22 will be a sophomore at Brookline High School and plans to play on the baseball team, and we went to a game this week—held on Northeastern’s field, which is in Brookline. Hope your S has a great experience!
@Doublekk2 they don’t really know anyone else at the prom besides my daughter’s teammate who is also going. It’s a homeschool prom, so they’ll make fiends while there- at least that’s how it worked at homecoming last year! They’re meeting her teammate there though, so I’ll take pics of my girls here and then a couple of the three together right before they go into the prom.
Saturday will be busy as my D19 has work all morning/afternoon and my D20 has a performance in the morning, and the prom is an hour away. I think everything is always at least an hour here. Ha!
So much fun stuff going on. S19 will be traveling for academic competitions this weekend. At some point, he’ll be going to Atlanta. We still have 6+ weeks left in the school year, but I’m sure it will fly by.
Question for all the parents here. I think we’re getting down to S19s choice. BUT, it seems to me that the food options at the school are really not great. Lots of online reviews complaining about the food, and there is only 1 dining hall. Any thoughts about how I can help supplement his food options from 5 hours away? I’m really concerned about this. He’s so thin to begin with.
@Trixy34 Is there a grocery store nearby? If he can have a mini-fridge in his room, he’ll be able to make himself healthy salads, sandwiches, wraps etc.
Talking about the prom, we have it this weekend and S19 still doesn’t know if he’ll go and if yes, with whom. He was planning to go with a company of friends and they were supposed to go to a restaurant beforehand, but obviously nobody can make any decisions until the last moment, when they likely won’t be able to make any restaurant reservations at all. I roll my eyes but am keeping out of it.
@yucca10 - yes, there is. It’s actually a small Wegman’s, which is great, but I think that might get old too. I actually just checked out the menu at the dining hall. It doesn’t sound so bad. But thinking back - my ex and I ate out a LOT in college, and by senior year, we were completely off the meal plan. My son is kind of picky - he’s really kind of a foodie, but I won’t be able to fund extra meals out, delivery, etc. His aunt has mentioned giving him a monthly stipend - he might need it for food. Lol!
@mom2twogirls - yes. Lol! Here’s the thing - we live outside Philly, and our local Wegman’s is probably about 10 years old - maybe less. But it’s HUGE. Like, so huge that I don’t even enjoy shopping there. I actually loved the Wegman’s in Geneva because I could find stuff quickly. But I didn’t notice what they had for takeout or salad bar.
Well, just like that four years of two high school sports are over. My son’s tennis team just barely lost the final match (out of 5 lines) yesterday to get knocked out of the playoffs. They made it farther than we thought they would, and came so close to the final four of the state tournament. Still a great senior year for S19 with a state championship in water polo and a great playoff run in tennis. He led both teams as captain and did such a great job motivating the players - so fun to watch him in action with both teams - they really looked up to him. I really have loved all his teammates and their families and so enjoyed watching both sports over the years. It’s going to take me a while to get over not being a part of it any more - but what a great ride!
@Trixy34 I grew up in a tiny town about 20 minutes from Geneva (rural minutes, not city minutes so it was at least 20 miles as well) and our only grocery store had two little registers and was probably smaller than most people’s convenience stores, lol. My husband is from Buffalo and his jaw dropped when I took him to my grocery store the first time. We would go to Geneva frequently for real grocery shopping (and fast food since we had no fast food restaurants either)
@Vineyarder - I just got a twinge! We spent a lot of time doing online house hunting in Brookline (before we immigrated), until my DH nixed Boston on account of weather. I love the suburb - spent a few weeks at a friend who lived there at one stage. Good luck with the house hunting! I’d still happily move there in a heartbeat
@mom2twogirls - I grew up in small town upstate NY as well. My mom gets a kick out of me when I gripe now about having to drive 15-20 minutes (6-10 miles) to get to a mall when she has to go 40 minutes/30-40 miles. On the other hand, we had a grocery store less than 1/2 mile down the road when I was a kid, and could pop in really easily every day. So, now that I have to drive 10 minutes to get to the huge Wegmans and Target 2.5 miles away and I feel like it’s a burden. Lol.
@Trixy34 don’t make the mistake I did with an almost empty tank of gas, if you head south from Geneva to get back to Philly. When I took S19 to HWS, we were coming from another college so came into Geneva from the east. I had about 30 miles worth of gas when we headed home (DC area) and assumed that there would be at least one gas station before we hit Watkins Glen down at the bottom of the lake. Unfortunately, Waze showed that there was a gas station, but it was out of business. We’d already been on the road at least 20 minutes and I was worried I wouldn’t make it to the gas stations down in Watkins Glen so we had to turn around and drive all the way back to Geneva for gas. I probably could’ve made it to WG but since it was fairly desolate along the lake (it was winter), I didn’t want to run the risk of running out of gas! I was so annoyed with myself as it just wasted 30 minutes of time to an already long 6 hour drive.
HWS was one of S19’s top contenders - I loved it, but in the end he decided on a different school that he felt was a better fit. If your son ends up there, and if you like shepherd’s pie, I can honestly say that the shepherd’s pie at the Beef and Brew a few blocks off campus really hits the spot when it’s in the teens, blustery and snowing!
@4kids4us - Good tip! I got a taste of the landscape when we visited in January - there really wasn’t anything between Ithaca and Geneva (we went up between the lakes). But funny story from this past weekend. We spent Easter at buffet with my family SW of Albany, then headed up through the Adirondacks to St. Lawrence for accepted students day on Monday. People were kind of laughing at me because I asked to wrap up my chicken salad and a roll from the buffet: 1) because it was delicious and 2) I knew nothing was going to be open by the time we got to St. Lawrence. Sure enough, the hotel restaurant was closing, the grocery store was closed - looked like maybe the convenience stores and the Burger King were the only things open. I had a bit of a hangry kid (he doesn’t do fast food), but I was happy as a clam with my chicken salad. Lol. You gotta have some survival skills if you’re going to make it in upstate NY. Lol.
It does look like there are a lot of good restaurants in Geneva. When I was up there with S19, we had the dog with us and we were basically trying to outrun a big storm, so we weren’t able to stop and eat anywhere. We just hit Wegman’s and stocked the car with snacks and sandwiches.
On the other hand @Trixy34 , if you enjoy wine, there are tons of wineries all through the Finger Lakes area. Lots of tourists go through in the nice weather, trying them all.
Of course, that won’t help your son with the food issues ?
@mom2twogirls - I’m not a big wine drinker. Ever since I got old, I just don’t feel very good when I drink. Lol. But a glass is OK from time to time. It would be nice to meet my mom for some finger lakes exploration once in a while. I really have never spent much time out that way.
We’re starting to hit the decline button on some colleges and it’s giving me anxiety for some reason. I guess after going this long, stressful process, it’s kind of hard to close the door on options when I’ve been waiting and wondering for so long.
