<p>Happy New Year all. Weenie - Dog is adorable, looks as if he is in his element among the ripped up toilet paper. Home from skiing on the non-snow this week. S drove the fixed car up to NH with other S and H for the weekend. He was sick first day and couldn’t ski. Second day they lost the keys to the previously dented car and couldn’t get to the mountain. H and I had gone separately to be there when the lifts opened. Car is still in NH, S is flying back to Pitt tommorrow for class. Will mail us the extra keys and we will drive it back. Thank god he doesn’t need it until the spring or so. Made myself a Martini before I paid his tuition bill this afternoon.</p>
<p>Congratulations on all the submit buttons. Hope for some breathing room in the next few months, until decisions start coming in again and they all have to make their minds up. Cheers.</p>
<p>^ Oh my goodness. That car!!! What a mess. I can just picture it sitting in a ski center parking lot, buried under snow. Hope it starts by the time you get back to it!</p>
<p>The funny thing about that photo of Troy with the toilet paper, is that the bathroom he dragged it from is quite far from that room. He was just as “clever” as a puppy as he is now. (not)</p>
<p>Hope you enjoyed your martini…I needed one today when we calculated our health care costs for the year while we were doing the CSS Profile today. And we’re not even sick! :eek:</p>
<p>I noticed the TM earlier but it seems to be gone now. Is someone being creative?</p>
<p>Just got an email from DS who drove the 15 year old car 6 hours to Chicago for a friend’s NYEve party before driving down to campus today. He reported he went all the places he was supposed to & met all his friends “without getting lost.” I wrote back that since we hadn’t heard from either him OR the State Hwy. Patrol we had assumed all was well. On previous trips he had managed to lock himself out of the car at a rest stop, but no major mishaps. </p>
<p>What can you do but keep your fingers crossed & make sure he has a credit card & cash!</p>
<p>Our creative drink this year on New Year’s Eve was white sangria. YUM!</p>
<p>Happy new years fellow sinners. Glad to hear about all of those submit buttons being pressed. Massmom, you got an extra martini (I feel your pain about writing the tuition check).</p>
<p>The girl and her dog are catching up on Greys after spending the day catching up on ugly betty. Tomorrow, it is back to the salt mines so I’ll have a tequila.</p>
<p>Car is at the hotel where we rent for the season. Plan is to drive it back this weekend. S just left house for his 8 am flight. Threatened to have younger S drive car back himself (3 hour drive or so) for long distance driving practice. With the pathetic NE snow season, he is looking at Colorado for next year.</p>
<p>Yes, you can just hope they have cash, credit cards, and a cell phone. What did we do without cell phones and the internet.</p>
<p>Anyway, back to the work week and school for HS Senior. Am taking my time this morning. Am going to a wake tonight for my first boss at the engineering firm I started at as a co-op 27 years ago. A great man, and a nice group of people that still stay in touch. </p>
<p>Tuition checks are electronic now. I log on, press a button, and the money evaporates from my checking account.</p>
<p>Went to a party with frozen white cosmos last month. Great drink, and doesn’t stain.</p>
<p>Sybbie has invited empty nesters over to SA for a drink and I see we are about to slip over to the netherlands of page 2…bump</p>
<p>Happy New Year to everyone…I am waiting for the insurance adjuster to arrive…bits of our roof blew away during the holiday wind storm! </p>
<p>To any new arrivals - grab a seat by the fire, drinks are always on the house, and everythings is available…sometimes members will share decadent recipes that make your toes curl…strong enough to even forget you have children!! :)</p>
<p>Welcome wbow & icesk8mom! Anytime you’re feeling blue drop by, usually we are good for some laughs! </p>
<p>My DD will be leaving this fall, and while I have been imagining her far away in her new abode having a great time…it only just hit me that her doppelganger won’t also be living in her indigo blue bedroom down the hall…Yikes…Bartender…a flaming Sambucco if you please :)</p>
<p>brace yourself. i don’t know what you could do to prepare yourself for next fall. i am having some of the most painful days ever right now. i did get a most pleasant surprise call from a dear friend–she has a married daughter and other kids still at home–but she called because she knew that i would be sad and that she was thinking of me. it felt so nice to know someone was thinking of me. </p>
<p>watching little miss sunshine with the family right now–hangin tight for the last few moments…</p>
<p>welcome to SA. this is the place where you can check your inhibitions at the door, dance on top of a table, sing a torch song (we had some doozies in the old days) drink all you want and never gain a pound or have a hang over.</p>
<p>Hey, we’ve got a cast of characters for you raniging from sons from hell and evilneighbors, to happy fairies and marmots (we’ll have the marmots drag your kids back home if things get too bad).</p>
<p>So pull out your best sparkly outfit, kick your feet up, what out for the wookies, peanut shells and other unidentifiable objects or people on the floor and have your self a real good time.</p>
<p>And, as an extra added benefit, you can configure the environs to your preferences. Want a surfside hula bar with mai tais and coconut white shrimp? Voila. Want a dark and smoky pub with small-paned windows and ancient foxhounds slumbering by the fire? Voila. Want a bar high in a streamlined skyscraper in an unidentified modern city, full of chrome and uncomfortable Italian furniture? Again, voila.</p>
<p>We aim to please. And to mitigate child-missing. And to celebrate child-acceptances. And to boo anyone who dares harm our children in any way. And, of course, to regale eachother with tales of evil neighbors and wayward teenage sons and adorable pupsters. Welcome.</p>
<p>it is so sweet of you guys to welcome us new empty-nesters! any ideas why post holiday goodbyes are harder than the fall goodbye? i am really driving everyone else (and myself) crazy with my melancholy…</p>
<p>who would ever come home again to see this! and then i feel even worse!</p>
<p>i pick the surfside hula bar with a huge strawberry daquiri…the warm sun and a warm breeze. that would certainly lift my spirits!</p>
<p>wbow: Is your kid a freshman? I remember being heartbroken after Christmas last year. It was REALLY hard to say goodbye. Now, this year, ahem, well, BYE BYE. ;)</p>
<p>On a more serious note, I had a really hard time last Christmas, sending the oldest back to his second freshman semester. This year, I’ve become more used to reality, I guess. There was a point over this holiday week when it suddenly struck me that WHOA! He’s UPSTAIRS in that bed he used to sleep in! I had gotten out of the habit of imagining him occupying that room, being part of our physically-together family unit. And I realized how sweet it was to have him with us, but how perfectly OK it’ll be for him to head back to Boston on Sat.</p>
<p>((hugs)) to everyone going through this for the first time. It’s so very hard: we spend 18-ish years preparing our children to be able to go off and begin their own lives, but we don’t really spend the appropriate time preparing ourselves. It’ll get better. I promise.</p>
<p>yes, he is a freshman. it has been so nice having him home. it has been so nice having his friends in and out, it has been so nice going to lunch, dinner, breakfast with him…he is a wonderful kid to be around. it’s breaking my heart today. </p>
<p>his older brother was home for 3 or 4 nights, too, and that has made it even more special. </p>
<p>i want my old life back–at least right now i do</p>
<p>Thanks so much y’all (hey, I went to college in the South…lo those many years ago!)for the warm welcome. Given the winter (with the not so winter weather here), I’ll still opt for the glass of wine by the fire…hold the smokiness…</p>
<p>My husband and I are going out to dinner soon (not up to cooking after the goodbye today)…do you think he’ll figure out I’ve been here??? (I’d make a smiley face if I only knew how!)</p>
<p>I think because we really brace ourselves for that first goodbye. We know we are going to cry or as in my case sending only child off to be with those people and almost becoming physically sick from letting go. When we see them again, they are so gracious with letting us fuss over them, we feel as if they are going to stay a while. </p>
<p>we’re so happy to have them home that we tend to forget what it was like when they lived there with us full time (or we care not to remember because it might ruin our buzz)… Just when we think that we know them, they go through this wonderful transformation and turn into people that we like and wouldn’t even mind having as friends. </p>
<p>But hey, we ain’t letting them in to the alley!!</p>
:eek: 
:mad: :o :rolleyes:</p>