This is what we received from Coe College: With over 30 years of experience in financial aid, I have worked with thousands and thousands of families to assure that their college education is affordable. I, along with my colleagues, know that financial aid plays a critical role in the decision-making abilities of a family, and we support that wholeheartedly. Your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) submission has been received at Coe College. However, the Department of Education (DE) has alerted us that your application is one of the many applications that must be reprocessed because of a federal system processing error that resulted in an incorrect Student Aid Index (SAI). DE will initiate the reprocessing once they’ve corrected their system, and you do not need to take any action. The reprocessing of your application is causing a delay in providing you with a financial aid offer from Coe College. In addition, if you listed any other colleges on the FAFSA, they are also delayed in getting accurate information from the DE about your eligibility for financial aid. We anticipate receiving your reprocessed application with the corrected SAI within the next couple of weeks. We anticipate being able to provide you with the most accurate financial aid offer within three weeks. Your patience throughout this process is very much appreciated. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this additional delay may cause and will be sure to reach out to you as soon as we have your official offer. If there are any other developments from the DE, we will reach out to you directly about your financial aid and how best to navigate any other issues. Of course, we are hopeful and have every intention of assuring you have your offer from Coe College soon. Please know that we take your financial investment in your college education seriously. We are here to support you as best we can and invite you to reach out to us as you have questions or concerns.

School let us know. We haven't heard anything from Federal about the error.

Well, we just got word that DD's FAFSA was one that was messed up. College is waiting - hoping to get us some information on package within 3 weeks. We shall see what happens.

I don't do taxes (except family members), but 'tis the season:

I don't normally like this cat meme, but this one made me giggle.

Kids did Build Your Library 10 in 9th and 10th grade (2 kids together). It has Biology paired with "Nature Art". BYL has the following resources scheduled: Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling The Curious Naturalist: Nature's Everyday Mysteries The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature (although I don't think this was a book when my kids did it a couple years ago). I wasn't too involved, as I had just started working again. They just followed the guide mostly for that subject with some input from me, so I don't really have any helpful information.

Our budget is squeaky tight, but we do have a few splurges: A weekly yoga class (with youngest DD) every other 6 week stretch, a weekly (Casey's or McDonald's) coca-cola, the black card level at Planet Fitness, and the YNAB app.

No, but my cat's name is Eclipse, and she wondered why we talked about her all day...

We were going to travel, but stuff came up and we had to cancel. Our area was at 91ish% totality. My kids thought that 91% was pretty cool, so eclipse viewing was still a hit. My 80+yo next door neighbor thought it was awesome! He had the biggest smile on his face the whole time - that alone was worth it to me as his wife recently passed and he's been pretty depressed. All of us were shocked how cold it got all of a sudden.

One of my kids has ARFID so a couple of years ago when she became a teen I stopped cooking for her. She now lives on mac n cheese, Vandekamp's fish filets, cheese pizza, cinnamon rolls, chicken nuggets or fingers, shakes, and chocolate. Her only condiment is ketchup. She will eat a pbnj sandwich when she needs a packed lunch, but she has to choke it down. The other two weren't as picky, but it was difficult since the picky one kind of set the menu for many years.

Most of these are pretty well-known movies, but quotes we throw around the family a lot. Better Off Dead: "I want my two dollars!" Monty Python: "'Tis but a flesh wound..." The Princess Bride: "Have fun storming the castle!" Despicable Me: "He's so fluffy, I'm gonna die!" and "The physical appearance of the please makes no difference." Toy Story: "The word I'm looking for I cannot say, because there are preschool toys present."

My kids used various levels of BYL for 9th grade (level 8, level 7, and level 10) depending on where they/their siblings were in history. Lots of reading. Weekly 1 page report on a topic that caught their interest. 1-2 longer reports per year, 3-5 pages. No quizzes. No tests. We discussed, and they narrated. Two of the kids did the narration cards from BYL as projects, about 5 or 6 a year (not quite monthly).

I don't sleep well by any means, but this is my routine: Side & tummy sleeper. Never back. I flip from side to tummy to other side all night long. I have a super expensive king-size pillow (my mom actually won it in a sweepstakes) that I lay my head on, and a cheapo pillow from Walmart that I use to support my joints. I have EDS and my shoulder likes to pop out of joint in my sleep. Resting my shoulders & arms on this pillow keep my shoulders happy. A white noise machine helps a little. Eye masks makes me feel claustrophobic though. I haven't tried ear plugs because I was worried about little kids; I should try them now. All caffeine and all exercise has to happen before 10 am or I am up all night. I usually go no caffeine, but some mornings I cave. I can take magnesium for a couple days if my insomnia gets too bad. But any more than 4 days in a row, and I am up at midnight for 3 hours. I do the same with melatonin and nyquil and tylenol PM. They all work for 2-5 days, and then I pay for it. So I only use them if I am not sleeping at all.

We're not a nickname family really - my kids don't even have names that can be shortened. They've been called various things over the years (like pp, I tend to make up names for babies, kitties and puppies), but most haven't stuck. Youngest is "Missypoo". Neighbor always called her that. Middle doesn't really have one; we called her "Smoogs" a lot when she was little, but it didn't stick. Oldest is "Boo Baby" - I don't recall where it came from, but she's been that since she could talk. We also call her by her First and Middle Initials sometimes because it's close to her real name. Her name ends with "cee", and her middle name starts with C.

Quoting myself - it's been a while since I got hit with all of these crazy expenses, and I have been working more and trying to figure out the finances so I've been MIA. Thought I would come back and update. We are making some progress. Ugh, the budget is going to be so tight the next 6 or so months. First and foremost, DH, with my uncle's help, resurrected the minivan. It's now on the list to replace, but we're hopeful we can save up some cash first. I spent $600!!! in clothing this month, and Youngest still needs summer shirts. We've hit all the thrift and consignment stores, and now I have to go to the mall. Got the first bill for DH's PT. Will be working on getting that paid in April. Another month paid of Youngest's medication. Toaster oven is working out. Just have to think about not doing a large batch of anything. The oven is on the replacement list, but not at the top yet. Rent increase is going through this Monday, but we have that money already set aside. We did cancel our VRBO, and we got the cash back really fast. I'm really sad that we are not going, but the money was very helpful this month. Dryer still working. Still on track at work for taking over the new Maker Space in 18 months. I was able to fight for and get my assistant a really nice raise this year; she's like truly a superstar. So I'm pretty happy about that. My raise is not looking too shabby either (although that won't kick in until July). DH and I cancelled our 401k/pension contributions for the next few months, so we will have some extra funds to cover some of these expenses.

This came up in my memories on Facebook, since it's the time of year when I plan. It's super weird to have only one kiddo to plan for.

In our family, everyone was always Grandma First Name or just Grandma, although my brother dubbed our great-grandmother "Old Grandma" when he was 2. I'm not close to being a grandmother yet, but I'm open to whatever.

Well, March is not shaping up well. I feel like sticking my head in a sand bank somewhere. The minivan died last night. As it is a 2005, DH has deemed it completely dead. DH did make it home safely, and the dead car is now sitting in the garage. I honestly don't know what we're going to do about replacing it. Both DD's at home are in desperate need of clothing. We went out last weekend and hit all of the thrift stores/consignment shops and got some stuff for middle. She still has some other needs, but I don't know if that stuff will have to wait. Younger needs clothing too, but she works every Saturday. So, I've got to find time (and money) to get her out to the stores soon. I thought I had til May to pay for online classes to get the discount. Nope, writing for youngest (will be a senior next year) has their early bird sale in March. CLRC (foreign language class) has until May. DH has been having neck pain and found out he has some degenerative stuff going on. He's currently in PT which falls under deductible amounts, so I'm dreading the bills. Youngest's new medication is $150 per month (was $300 for the initial month last month). Our oven died 2 weeks ago - we purchased a toaster oven for the time being. The piece to fix it is about $200; it may be time to replace as it's 18 years old. Our rent increases 9% on April 1. We did have a road trip planned to see the eclipse early next month; that is on the chopping block in order to cover some of these bills. There's about a thousand in VRBO and set aside savings for it, so I can cover something with those funds. On a happier note: DH was able to fix our dryer for $30ish and a Saturday afternoon. One of my jobs is likely to hire me full-time just as Youngest graduates (about 18 months) if their current building project comes to fruition, so I probably will roll right into that.

My oldest had pretty good stats, and she was turned down at Illinois for engineering a couple of years ago. We're in-state and fairly low income, so it really hurt to send her out of state since tuition would have been free at U of I. She ended up at UAH.

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