College Move In

Today is the big day.  We moved our oldest child into college, and we managed to make it home again before Hurricane Irene began to dump serious amounts of rain on us. 

I remember his first day of kindergarten like it was yesterday.  The confusion, the lines of excited parents and children, and the very confused siblings.  Our daughter was 1 1/2 when the oldest one started kindergarten, and she was standing next to her brother, holding his hand up until he walked into the door.  She was very, very upset that we would not let her follow him into the kindergarten classroom.

This morning was amazing.  The same experience; excited parents and children, lots of chaos, and some very confused siblings. 

We moved after our son finished 6th grade, as did several of our friends.  We had some amazing people that we had lost contact with over the last couple of years with the stress of raising teenagers.

And here's the amazing part:  My son's best friends from that time in his life are also attending the same University with him.  They are all in the same dorm.  They are all on the same floor.  We saw the parents in the dining hall at lunch time, and it was like old home week!  It was wonderful. 

The boys all slunk off while we crowded around the middle of the dining hall, hugging each other and shaking hands. 

As I started to walk off with our second child, he was stopped by several kids that he's met at the regional robotics tournaments over the last couple of years.  They were all like "hey, how's it goin'??" And doing that weird handshake that they do,  and then he introduced those kids to his brother, who will be the student there this fall.

Move in was amazingly smooth, and textbooks were purchased within 20 minutes of walking in the door of the bookstore.  We left at 1:00, just as the first of the weather was arriving.  We got home safe and sound a little while later, and I'm sitting here now, listening to the rain pound down on the house. 

I still have mixed emotions about him going off to college, but I feel much better knowing that he already knows several kids before classes even begin...

All packed and ready to go!  I hope we didn't forget anything important!

Now this was cool.  It's a line of about 20 Power One electrical maintenance trucks from Florida.  They were headed East on  Highway 70 when we saw them.  Thanks for the proactive help!

And here's all of the stuff, waiting to be moved in.  The University actually had Office Movers on hand, with big carts - think of the carts that industrial laundries use.  They were there as soon as I took the picture, loaded the stuff into the cart, and took it upstairs with our son.  Total move in time: 10 minutes.

Nifty clouds.  These were swirling around as we were getting ready to leave, dumping lots of rain on us.

Eagle Scout Ceremony

Our oldest son had his Eagle Scout Ceremony on Saturday afternoon. 

His Eagle Project was to build a set of risers (or steps) onto the existing stage in the fellowship hall of our church.

His original Eagle Project had been approved by the district, but when he went through the county permit office, the project was denied, and he had to start again, from scratch.  At the time of the denial, he was 17 years old.  He had less than a year left to find a project, get it approved and carry it out.

I have to say, I have never seen him so motivated.  He found a new project and had it approved by the end of April.  It passed through the county permit office in May, and he began fundraising in June.

He carried his Eagle Scout project out on the third weekend in August - hey wait- that was the exact same weekend that we held his Eagle Scout Ceremony!

And then, he had to wade through the write-up.   His birthday is in January, and he didn't finish the write-up until December. 

He had his scoutmaster conference a week before his 18th birthday, and turned his paperwork in three days before his birthday.  Our advancement chair turned the paperwork in the very next day.  Good thing, too.  As he was leaving the Council office, it started to snow.  The area roads were shut down and schools were closed for the next two days!

His ceremony was wonderful.  All of his living grandparents were there.  His Eagle Advisor was there.  His co-workers from the Boy Scout Camp where he works during the summer were there.  And we all had a great time, talking, laughing, and reminiscing.

So much work on his part.  So many things went wrong, and yet, it all came together in the end.  Preserverance saw him through the project.  Like the rest of life, the race is not always won by the fastest, but by the one who sticks through, until the very end.

Congratulations, son.  I am very proud of you!

Coming Events: Eagle Scout Ceremony

Our oldest son earned his Eagle Scout Rank this past spring.  He received the notification from the National Office that he was an official Boy Scout about a month before he graduated from high school.  A week after he graduated, he went off for his summer job at a Boy Scout Camp.  Between his camp schedule and his work schedule, this weekend was dubbed to be the weekend of the Eagle Scout.

I have been dilligently preparing for this event all summer.  I sent out the letters to our Congressmen, Senators, and President months ago. As the letters have been coming in, I've placed them inside of the plastic page protecting sleeves and put them into a notebook.

His Cub Scout album was finished a couple of years ago, and that will be going with us. 

All of the fun badges that he's earned over his 12 years of Boy Scouting are on his badge blanket, and that is also going to the ceremony.  His Arrow of Light has been tracked down, and we will be taking it with us to the ceremony.

I slapped together a display board of his Eagle Scout project, and I submitted a press release to our local newspaper.

I found this awesome book at the scout store a month back.  It's a fabulous handbook that lists all of the segments of an Eagle Scout ceremony, and gives the scout the opportunity to choose which type of material he would like to have read for each segment of the ceremony.  We spent a couple of nights during our vacation choosing what he wanted to have in each segment of the ceremony.  Somehow, he managed to talk his sister into participating in the flag ceremony- with her in her Girl Scout Uniform.  How he did that is a mystery to me, but I am so thankful that he managed to talk her into doing this.  Talk about memorable!

What is proving to be the hardest for me is getting the food planned out. 

I will be ordering a cake from the grocery store tomorrow.
We're going to have a veggie tray, a fruit tray, and chips and crackers. 
Water Bottles in a tub, and a 5 gallon thermos full of lemonade.

I feel as if we should have more, but I am at a loss as to what else we should put out. 
I'm open to any and all suggestions......


This post originally appeared in my now defunct "Mom's View" blog.  I moved it to this blog at the request of my kids, who wanted to have all of the various posts that accompanied their high school years in one place.  I've matched the publication dates here to their original post date.  If you're reading these posts, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to go back through them all!  

Course Registration Day

I am definitely feeling a little blue and very nostalgic this morning. Our oldest child is at college this morning. It is their orientation experience. The kids were checked in last night at 5. The parents were "shooed" away, and the kids spent the night on campus, getting to know the University a little bit better and meeting other kids who will be majoring in the same field as them. I don't think there are that many kids double majoring in Math and Physics, but they did have a pretty full house when I left last night. I think the commonality there was the Math major. Anyway, the parents are invited to come back on campus this morning at 9, when we will get our own orientation. I'm wondering if they will have a workshop for us entitled "What to do when one of the younger siblings needs help with their math homework". It doesn't seem all that long ago that we were going off to our college orientation. I went to Virginia Tech. My Dad and I went down the night before and stayed at one of the hotels just off campus. We went in early the next morning, and he sat with me through all of the presentations, the course selection, the meetings with the advisors, and a campus tour. I remember him choking up as he said "I really envy you! This will be one of the best experiences of your life. You will always look back on your college years as some of the most meaningful, best, and carefree times of your life. Much of your adult life will be shaped here over the next 4 or 5 years." Personally, I was more excited about moving out of the house and being on my own than I was about the endless opportunities that lay ahead of me. Over the next five years, I suffered wonderful failures. Spectacular dissapointments. I learned much about myself, who I am, and what I truly believe to be important in my life. I found that money isn't everything, and pursuing what you are passionate about is much more important than earning a high salary at a job that you hate. I made life-long friends that I still keep in contact with. No matter where we are, when we get together the years melt away and I could swear we are all 21 again, with our entire lives and a future of possibilities laid out ahead of us. I even met my husband. Honestly, I met him the first semester we were there. And then, I was introduced to him again a year later. We finally met up and became friends our 4th year in college, when we were both singing in the choir. We started dating just months before graduation in our 5th year. Here we are now, 23 years later. I look at my son, and I see the endless world of possibilities laid out ahead of him. I see the lifelong friendships that he will make. I know that he will suffer specatcular failures, and learn more from those than he does from his successes. I also know that, more than anything else, he is looking forward to moving out of the house and being on his own. To be honest, I'm kind of looking forward to him moving out of the house, too.

We're Really Roughing It

My son and husband are celebrating Senior Week by camping and hiking in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.  I received this picture in a text message yesterday, along with the caption "We're really roughing it!"

Senior week presents a special challenge for parents.  I live in the Mid-Atlantic, and the kids here head to the beach for the week after graduation.  Ocean City is the biggest destination. Thousands of eighteen year olds descend upon the beach every year, full of hormones, youthful energy, and a lack of parental supervision.  Every year, stories filter back of the horrible things that have happened to the kids.  Rapes, pregnancies, and alcohol poisoning dominate the stories.  Kids come back with stitches, broken bones, and STD's caused by bad decisions made under the influence of friends, alchohol, or drugs.

Years ago, when I graduated from high school, we were living in Virginia.  I wanted to go to Virginia Beach with my friends, but my father refused to let me go.  Instead, he offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go in the lower 48 United States.  With no hesitation, I told him I wanted to go to California.  Two days after graduation, he and I were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a rented convertible.

Now, here we are, twenty-seven years after my high school graduation.  I remember my Dad telling me when I was arguing about going to the beach: "I remember what I was like at eighteen.  There is no way on God's green earth that you are going by yourself to the beach for a week."  I look at son #1 with Dad's voice echoing in my ears.  Once again, I realize that he was right.

So, we offered our son a trip.  Anywhere in the lower 48 United States.   Just him and his Dad.  He decided he wanted to go camping and hiking on the back country trails of the Smoky Mountains.

We are not the only nut cases who have taken this stance.  I know of another family that pulled their younger children out of school for a week and are currently in Disney World.  I know of another family taking both children- 1 who just graduated High School and 1 who just graduated College - to New Zeland for two weeks.  Another family I know is headed out on a cruise next week as soon as school lets out.  The daughter is currently picking up tons of overtime at work, covering for all of the kids who are currently "Down the Ocean".

As I think through the last 18 years, midnight feedings, broken bones, homework, chores, sports practices and games, cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night, refereeing fights, and trying to figure out where to get poster board at 11:00 at night, it dawns on me:  Those were the years when we were really roughing it.

This post originally appeared in my now defunct "Mom's View" blog.  I moved it to this blog at the request of my kids, who wanted to have all of the various posts that accompanied their high school years in one place.  I've matched the publication dates here to their original post date.  If you're reading these posts, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to go back through them all! 

Last Day of School for Seniors

My oldest son is a Senior in High School.  Yesterday was their last day of school.  I greeted him with a sign that said "Happy last day of compulsory K-12 school!" 

We talked at length about his last day of school.  The Seniors had plans to forma Conga Line at 2:15, but when the rumor hit the school administration, the kids were reminded that they could still serve detention on this, their last day of school.  He talked about his teachers, who have worked so hard and pushed him to do more and learn more than he thought possible.

These past two weeks have been a week of lasts:  The last orchestra concert.  The last track and field meet.  The last banquet.  The last... well, you get the idea.  It's been a time of reflecting back on everything that was, and has been.  It's been fun, remembering back to his first day of Kindergarten, laughing over the battles he had with his first grade teacher over the creation of fossils, the second grade teacher who yelled at him about reading ahead of her in the textbook.  We also reminisced about that fabulous Mrs. G. who convinced him that he could do more than he thought he could.  Mrs. M. who taught him Math for three years in elementary school, pushing him 2 levels above grade level by the time he was finished.  For the first time, he was challenged in Math, and thrived beyond all of our expecations.

He has taken as many AP classes as he could for his entire high school career, for a total of 10 AP classes.  He has continued to play his Viola, and he recently ran in his first and only Regional Track Meet.  He didn't qualify for States, but he did set a personal best at that meet.  He was the only distance athlete to do that, and he was very, very content with that result.

But, instead of looking backward at what our kids have come through, I'd like to look forward for a while.  These are kids that we, as a group of parents, have nurtured together over the years.  We've chaperoned them on field trips, had them sleep over in our houses, and gotten after them when we've seen them out and about without their parents and their behavior is... well... not what it should be.  I feel like all of these kids are mine, too!

I got my wish at our final orchestra concert this week.  Our band director, Miss J., read off a list of the Seniors.  Each student was asked to state plans for the future, major, etc.  I loved hearing the list of hopes and dreams.

The last three students were getting ready to approach the microphone, and I was feeling the bittersweet nature of the moment.

The first kid approached the microphone:  "I have earned a free ride through the Coast Guard Academy, where I am going to major in saving lives!"

The second student: "I am going to U**, where I will be majoring in Pre-Med, and Minoring in Awesome!"

The third student:  "I am going to U**, where I will be double majoring in Business Administration and Glory!!"

The past was fun, but I am looking forward to the stories of glory that we'll be hearing in the future.

Congratulations to the Class of 2011!