Be careful with this one. We tried three times with amazon to get the edited soundtrack and all three times they set a set with two copies of one disk and no copies of the other one.

My first exposure was completely cold and it was tough, but there was definitely no dozing off physically or mentally during the show. I was tired and energized at the same time.

I didn’t know what to expect walking into the theatre, but it was unlike anything else I have ever seen. It seems tough to put Hamilton and the Sound of Music into the same bucket even though I love them both.

We are so excited! My son and I saw it unexpectedly in London last summer. We weren’t going to see a play, but we saw the marquee coming out of the train station and my son knew it would drive his sister crazy if he saw it first. Probably should have previewed it before seeing it with a 13yo boy, but oh well. It was tough to keep up with the lyrics, but the experience was amazing. We were both on the edge of our seats the whole time. My 17yo daughter now has it memorized. When we realized it was coming out I told her she had to finish up economics before she could watch. The 7yo has prohibited everyone from singing or listening to anything Hamilton related for the last month so the drought ends tomorrow and she plans to be done with economics tomorrow...we can’t wait 😊

I love all the stitching, but ever since my fourth kid my eyesight isn’t what it used to be and I can’t see well enough to stitch on linen. Boo! Here is my lockdown project...when the schools shut down first we made a run on the library the afternoon it closed and the next day I made an emergency trip to the yarn store. I have never attached a picture to a post so I hope it works.

I did something like this several years ago when our garage was a disaster and I was tired of repurchasing things I knew we had...somewhere. The week I had all three kids at day camp I took every single item off the shelves in the garage on put them in piles on the garage floor with like items. Every night he had homework when he got home from work to sort through what he wanted put back and what should be stored together. I don’t think the shelves had been wiped down in decades. I bought totes for the shelves and labeled them. It is about time to do it again to at least clean the shelves, but when I mention it I do get a bit of initiative. But no, you can’t decide what is valuable to someone else although my mother tries to do it to my father without success. Interestingly, my husband cleaned out his closet of his own initiative the first couple days of the stay at home order (boredom?) and then it sat on our cedar chest for 3 1/2 months. I was SO very happy when the resale shops reopened. I can’t handle the visual clutter, but the rest of family could care less.

I believe Roger Ackroyd was my first as well when in middle school - so 12 or 13. I love Dorthy Sayers as well - Lord Peter Wimsey series is fun.

My daughter just started back to job as a library page two weeks ago and they are quarantining the returns for 72 hours before they shelve them and there is only library staff in the building. The staff is all wearing masks inside the building. It seems to be the same at the other libraries in the area so it must be library association recommendations.

Leadership does make a huge difference - even within families AHG- our troop has done next to nothing...no zoom meetings, nada. We had one outside meeting with the older girls a couple of weeks ago when the state opened up outside meetings. Indoor cancellations I get for compliance with state regulations and insurance through our charter, but it was like the leadership dropped off the face of the earth. I don’t even feel like the national organization has been all that proactive either. Trail Life - many of the same families, but they have had some “unofficial” canoe trips for older kids who have a high adventure canoe trip this summer and now that campgrounds are open they are having a campout with individual vs. group sites, families tenting together instead of boys from separate families in the same tent. They have also done some zoom meetings, encouraged the boys to work on badges at home, and are currently doing a weekly bible study via zoom for their religious award requirement. There are things that can be done, but the leaders have to get creative and want to do it. We do have a mix of super outdoorsy type dads and overweight out of shape dads and in between dads, but there is a core group of individuals who are committed to supporting the boys in whatever ways they can. I would say to ask your son if he is interested in doing more with Boy Scouts and checking out some other troops. It sounds like the dads in your troop aren’t too into the scouting ideals. Problem might be if your husband doesn’t want to participate. Our troop requires some amount of parental involvement in order to maintain two deep leadership at all events.

We have had takeout Starbucks...ours have been order ahead or drive through as in the building ordering only started this week I think. My biggest beef with a Starbucks drive thru is they are SO VERY SLOW. They back up onto the road and one car might have multiple drinks. I much prefer the order on the app and they bring it to the door locations. I just take it as is, but removing the lid wouldn’t be that hard (unless you are drinking it while driving)

I like the alphabetical order idea. Thanks!

That makes more sense. Thank you.

Can you clarify 3800 or 360? Not that either is good, but I am just confused.

My daughter received an email for Miami University that they would be test optional this coming year...except for homeschool students or for schools that don’t give grades. My daughter tested in December(?) of her Junior year and scored a 34 because she wanted it over with, so she is set, but how do they expect homeschool students to accomplish a feat that others can’t? Either the test is offered or it isn’t.

I haven’t been to San Antonio since college, but my favorite restaurant was La Fogada for Mexican food. It was back in a neighborhood and wonderful. It does appear to still be open, but I don’t know much more than that. I really want to go back to Texas to eat my way through my favorite BBQ and Mexican restaurants. There is nothing here in Michigan except a Mexican grocery store restaurant near my MIL that resembles authentic Mexican or BBQ cuisine.

I am a huge Costco fan - we have bought our laptops there - but I would still wait. The opportunity to have it serviced locally is impossible to quantify. We have bought the extended service on our latest laptop which gets it to the three year service point, but when we had to send it in it took just shy of a month to get it back because they were waiting on a part. Even though we did a backup of the drive before we sent it in it was additional time to get it back up and running because it was wiped clean. Our problem was the battery wasn’t charging. I can’t imagine the drama if my child was at school out of state and that happened. It was just shy of fury filled for me. The school computer may not be the “best” or least expensive option, but I would go with what can be serviced locally and what they have the most experience working on. There is nothing about college that gets the least expensive designation so just chalk it up to mental health insurance for you.

Michigan does 3rd party driving tests, but they aren’t being allowed and new driver’s licenses still are not being processed at Secretary of State offices...”not essential” supposedly. Appointments make sense, but here it has never seemed to work out well. It is more hold my place in line rather than an actual appointment. I try to avoid the place at all costs even during non pandemic times, but my daughter would really love to get her license.

Thanks everyone! I think I will have her just list a couple of comparable schools. She really hasn’t picked out too many schools yet since we haven’t had opportunities to visit anywhere.

Oh, she certainly is considering it. She knows that is where she will likely attend since she doesn’t want to borrow any money if she doesn’t have to. I think she honestly likes it on the surface. My husband went there for undergrad and my company paid for my MSME there. It was not on my list coming out of high school (I live now in the house I grew up in ) because I needed to get some space from my parents. I was the youngest and my mother would have been perfectly happy to cook and do my laundry for the rest of her life, but I needed to get out of dodge for awhile. My daughter is in a different place and the school has grown so it will be okay. I do think she would be happier long term at a more academically minded school that aligns more closely with our values, but it is hard to justify too great a cost difference. It may end up being more than $1200 because they haven’t published their scholarship info for next year, but it has been tracking steadily at that approximate level for a long time so I doubt they will drop it entirely. My guess is they are trying to figure out how to package it since it was an act or sat vs gpa table...find your box and that is your scholarship type of school and so many kids haven’t been able to take the test yet. Even full pay isn’t bad since she can live at home (15 minute drive and 2 miles from my husband’s work location when they go back).

I don’t know how to figure out if they consider demonstrated interest. She has visited them at college fairs (at local high school and at a colleges that change lives fair and a at a local admissions event that she received an invitation to) and she attended their summer science camp last year so she is probably ok there. I don’t know if there is an advantage to filling out the college‘s own application vs common app, but my thought was if she filled out their application early she could just list one or two other schools. We had a longer list of schools with competitive scholarships she was going to apply to, but we are a bit less enthusiastic about out of state schools right now.

They have binding early decision. We have one local state school with automatic scholarships where she could live at home and attend nearly free (<1200/yr). I doubt we will qualify for much financial aid, but without some amount of scholarship money it would be tough to justify. That is why I am nervous about ED.

My daughter was checking out an application and it asks for a list of other colleges she is applying to. It didn’t appear to be marked as optional. How does she fill that out if she doesn’t have a full list established yet? Do all schools require this? It would be her top choice school if she received enough money to attend. I don’t know if they ask this question if applying through common app. Thoughts?

Rain gear - yes!! I don’t know if my freshman year was a fluke at Baylor, but I don’t remember ever seeing so much rain in my life. It seemed that every afternoon at about 2:00 the sky would just open up and create rivers along the sides of the roads. Umbrellas were a bit useless because it was so windy that they just flipped inside out. I remember my sister asking if I wanted to be picked up for Labor Day weekend (she was in Ft. Worth, but in the process of moving) and I emphatically accepted her invitation. The one thing I needed was RAIN SHOES and to this day I still have those rain shoes. Luckily, that pattern didn’t repeat with such regularity in following years, but Lanny makes a great point about figuring out local weather. That same year on the first of April (it was a Wednesday night) we had the biggest hail storm that I have ever experienced. I don’t know where you are from, but in Michigan hail is at most pea size while this was baseball size plus. The campus looked like a war zone and it took them two years to reroof every building on campus. Make sure he pays attention to storm warnings! I also second the placement exam unless it is crazy expensive. I thought he was a CS Major, but if he doesn’t need it then people go on to lead very complete lives without calculus. If he thinks he will want it then I wouldn’t leave a big gap between precalculus and calculus. The placement test might give him credit for precalculus if he tests well. I know my English placement test I took there completed my English requirement even though my AP Lit score didn’t.

My daughter used Foerster for Algebra 1 and 2 and used Jurgensen for Geometry. We used lesson plans from Memoria Press. Really it was mostly odd problems from the A and B sections. I did find a used copy of the solutions manual. I looked at the text that Math Without Borders used and it seemed OK and Jacobs seemed a bit cluttered and busy. I wish there had been videos to accompany the text. My son had a few issues with Foerster- well he had issues with being immature- so it took awhile to complete it successfully. He would like to try Thinkwell for Geometry. He isn’t going to self teach math well and geometry was never a love of mine. I was always more of an algebra gal.

Thanks for the help! Now I just have to write it.