It's the Han Solo route?

SI

My daughter is getting married in November. Finally. They have been together since sophomore year in high school. She is now 26. I just have to survive wedding planning 24/7 till then. It is not going to be easy. At least she has finally gotten some of the biggest things (venue, flowers, catering ,photographer) decided. The dress is still to come.

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Who ever said kids get cheaper as they get older is full of shit.

Don't know who would say that. College has been the most expensive for us.

Texted son this past weekend. What are you doing? Cooking a weeks worth of minestrone soup.

I'm not a leftovers guy and didn't think he was either. Hopefully, this is an indication of him saving money now that he is working and not using my CC.

It is amazing how much trash a kid makes. My wife and I may go through one trash bag a week. Our girls come home and it is 3 bags a week. Crazy.

One of my mother's favorite stories to tell is how she would always buy quality shoes for me when I was growing up because of my flat feet. When I started working, I decided I wanted more of a variety than just the shoes she bought. So I went to Foot Locker to buy my new shoes and realized that just one pair of the shoes I wanted would cost me more the 3/4 of my paycheck. I then went to Payless and bought two for $9.99. :lol:

Williams College, my son's school, announced today that they are no longer requiring student loans as a part of their financial aid packages. They are replacing them with grants, dollar for dollar. They are also no longer requiring work-study, and providing the difference in grants as well. That is on top of the dropping of summer work requirement last year, and the long standing provision that all students on any financial aid received free books, course materials, health insurance and travel expenses for study abroad. I am just amazed. That is significant money on top of their already generous aid package. My son is basically getting a $80k a year education for a couple of thousand a year. I knew for awhile that my son made the right college choice, but now it just seems like an incredible decision.

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Had to ask son to get his 1098-T (college stuff from last year) to us. He sent it to us in an email titled "hate the IRS".

I thought, yeah, you'll be saying that annually for the next 35+ years or so. Welcome to frakking adulthood.

Got word from the son that he got a part-time research assistant job yesterday which should run through the summer and next year (he was accepted into the combined Master's program a while ago so he'll be staying a fifth year). Hopefully this will be a big help in landing an aerospace job after he graduates.

Made the news that the '98 XJ is going to need a lot more money poured into it to get it back running a lot easier to take (he insists he still does want it for the future as a project car).

My brother went to Williams! This was 25 years ago when it was still expensive but not WTF LOL. He got a scholarship for skiing, though.


Yeah, he doesn't know the half of it. The amount I pay in income & property tax alone is roughly 5 or 6 times what I made gross in my first job.

The kids aren't leaving home (yet), but this topic qualifies (I hope) as support-related.

The 13-year-old wants us to put Snapchat on his phone. My extremely limited understanding of Snapchat is that it's primarily used for people to send each other risque to NSFW pictures of each other. Am I wrong and there's a reasonable reason he should have it on his phone?

My 14 year old has not asked to get Snapchat on his phone as of yet and does not seem interested in getting it . I just asked him what do kids use Snapchat for? The word salad description he gave led me to try to simplify it as being TikTok but for pictures. His exact quote in response was "No, you can post videos on there too but mostly it is people taking pictures of themselves when they get out of the shower."

Do with that what you will.

Hahaha, that does nothing but confirm my worst suspicions. :D

Well, we're in the home stretch as tomorrow is prom, next week is (likely) the end of softball, and in 2 weeks, graduation. It's coming fast and furious - one milestone/ending after another in rapid succession.

Since Mack decided against playing basketball in college, this softball season is it as far as sports goes. About 5-6 years ago, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that she would play sports in college. Even though she loves basketball more, I always thought she'd play softball simply because it is much easier to get on a college roster than basketball. But she's always been injury-prone - she's had 4 concussions and broke a bone in her foot 2 times (or 3, depending on which doctor you ask) which cost her 2.5 years of sports. We pulled her out of travel ball and told her that first priority is a healthy high school career. Once she proved she could stay healthy, we were going to get her back into the travel/recruitment circuit during summer of 2020 and then Covid hit ... and that took care of that plan. She got an offer to play basketball off of one recruiting camp but decided against it. I think she was afraid she wouldn't last and didn't want to be at that school for another 3 years if she wasn't playing ball.

Last year was her first full season of softball in several years and she struggled. Lack of reps, trying to figure out whether she could slap or hit normal (she's lefty and fast so slapping made sense), anticipating injuries which made her tentative at the plate and in the field, etc. She lead the team in strikeouts and clearly didn't play up to potential. It was frustrating to watch, but understandable since she just didn't have much time on the field.

So this year, the coach decided her best use would be as a pinch runner and late inning defensive replacement. She wasn't good with it, lol. Eventually she got an AB here and there, showed she could hit, and then when a couple of seniors left the team for a week to go on a senior trip to NY, she started and hit everything. She went from hitting 9th to 2nd and now she's leadoff. The team is good but young, 15-12 on the season. Worst season in at least 10 years, from before Caitlin joined the high school team as an 8th grader. We regularly put kids on college softball teams for over a decade, but this team doesn't have a ton of talent, and very little pitching - first team in a decade without at least one eventual D1 pitcher on the roster. We've had it pretty good...

Anyway, she's hitting .544 this year. It's unbelievable. I've got parents of former players, umpires, opposing coaches offering to put in a word for her with some smaller colleges because they know she could absolutely kill it as a slapper. She'd hit .350-.400 in college the way she's going right now, easy. But... she's already chosen her path, AND her foot - after 3 years of being healed and causing no problems - is starting to hurt again. She's been wearing specially designed inserts that we have to refurbish every 4-6 months which have worked up until now, but the doctor said the next time it's going to be surgery, which will make the foot unstable and drastically curtail any serious athletic endeavors going forward. So it feels like her body is telling her this is the end, and she's going out playing at a level she looked like she'd be at back in 7th-8th grade before all the injuries. Kinda bittersweet.

I think the kids today (unsure what age range I really mean by that) do use it for relatively private communication at times.

The NSFW stuff probably exists too but I'd wager the percentage of that content is much higher for "adults" than for "kids"

In the two high schools I've taught at last year, it's mostly people just using Snapchat for pics in class and sending them to each other. Every once in a while, I'll hear about some epic rant video that feeds the gossip mill for a few days. I'm sure the NSFW stuff happens, but like Jon said, I suspect it's far more the adults than the kids

He hasn't asked recently, so going to let it lie low for now. Thanks miami_fan, Jon, & Izulde!

Wife and daughter went wedding dress shopping. She bought the first one she tried on. She looks so beautiful.

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Nice! Unfortunately my daughter said she’ll never get married … we shall see

Kid is home as of last night, his intention is to take not only the summer off but the fall semester as well.

He has no regrets about going back to finish the semester but also acknowledging the need to now take some time for grief, emotional and intellectual healing, etc and et al.

That's good, definitely take some time.

Again, sorry for your loss.

That sounds like it could be good for both of you.

Softball season isn't over yet! We avenged last year's upset loss to Collins (and a loss earlier this year) to advance to the district finals and guaranteed a spot in next week's region tournament. The local sports guy posted a cool pic of Mackenzie:

The Lady Jackets beat Collins, 5-1 to advance to the 30th District Championship game tomorrow night. pic.twitter.com/TS4eiHq5gL

— Bill Caine - Woodford Sun (@BlackandGoldDa1) May 21, 2022

Love to see that passion!

Riley graduated and moved back home. Her intention is to take off the summer and next Fall before she starts her Masters online. She wants to work and ae some money. Cori home for the Summer as well. 1st time we have all been together like thins in a couple years.

Oh, yeah. Son will be playing in the pre-race festivities again for the Indy 500. Expected to only be part of the parade but got the word he'd be part of the smaller group.

(This was him last year, in the right corner at the beginning.)

Simon came home safely Tuesday. Both kids are going to be home for the whole summer for likely the last time, with my daughter getting married in November.

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Daughter will be a junior in college next year. She hinted about grad school so assume 2 + 2 more years.

It'll likely be a GA school and in-state tuition is reasonable. I'm okay with it assuming it really helps her future job (and job growth) prospects.

I am so happy that son found his job last Nov. The climate has changed and can see companies tighten up hiring with the market angst & recession looming on the horizon for this years graduates.

Graduation is over for Mackenzie. All went well and we got through the loooooong weekend with family. She was named to our region softball all-star team and we had a banquet for that last night and they play an all-star game next Tuesday against another region for fun. So, rather than a loss that ended her season/career a couple of weeks ago, at least she gets to go out having some fun in a non-stress environment as her last game on a field. Tomorrow night is her team's banquet. Apparently she ended up breaking the school record for single-season batting average, so she'll always have that to hang over Caitlin's head, ha!

Caitlin ended up taking a new 4th grade job at a different school, unfortunately for her about 40 minutes from where she lives. But she said she will make it work. She's also doing the paperwork to start classes for an online master's degree at NKU.

Good to know that I could have owned 2 Ferraris without kids. (But probably couldn't afford the maintenance)

But TBH, it didn't feel the kids cost that much growing up. It was only when college tuition hit that those costs became much more evident. Sure would be nice to get 2 x $10K credit on my tax return.

Re Snapchat, both my kids have it and it's mainly used to send useless pics while sitting around doing nothing. I don't get it. I've still never taken a true selfie (unless the one pic I snapped to show my wife something I thought might be cancer on my neck qualifies) and I generally hate pics. Most of my kids favorite pictures of me includes either one or two extended middle fingers.

I dunno, the health costs (e.g. paying the deductible) alone....

Daughter had asthma so needed the inhaler stuff. Son was pretty healthy but did do braces for him (about $3k).

Nothing ... let me repeat, nothing compared to out of state college tuition for him!

We had dinner with daughter last night. She hinted at grad school and we told her to go for it. She knows and we restated that she's not costing us as much as son did so we're happy to fund in-state grad school for her.

One thing I'm learning about college in the 2020's is that cheating is far more rampant and accessible then it was in the 90s. The internet has made just about any class attainable with a fraction of the time and energy investment. It's also rather accepted as a necessary evil rather than some ethical conundrum.

In class or online?

I remember early on taking classes online and taking test as a group project. The wife has taught college classes before and is teaching a couple of online classes this summer. It is amazing she is still getting papers rated above 70% plagiarized. I have to believe other teachers are accepting plagiarized work at least at the undergraduate level.

Both, it's not that it's writing that is necessarily plagiarized, it's that with the internet the resources specific to that class are nearly limitless, and if it's not that class exactly, it's one similar to it. The internet has made each class sort of have a bottomless amount of 'accessible research' for it and it never goes away.

FWIW, I'm grateful my son found a nice job last year. I can only imagine this years graduates are going to have a hard time.

Also grateful my daughter will be a junior in Fall. It'll give her a couple years for this mess to recover.

The wife and I took a short getaway for the weekend, 90 minutes down the road to Madison Indiana where we've really enjoyed as a little place to escape. We're drinking at a winery when my youngest calls. He's been waiting months for this weekend, as the pro disc golf tour is on town and he's working with one of the production companies who create content on you tube, as well as provide next day coverage of certain cards.

He says, I need you to come home now. He would never say that normally. He'd just been in an accident. Someone made a left turn into oncoming traffic on a somewhat blind hill. Here wasn't seriously hurt but he went to the ER to get checked out. His car, his favorite thing ever, is totaled.

We got back while he was still in the hospital, got him home and settled with his brothers and were able to get back to our hotel by 11p. Rough start to the weekend but happy he's ok and that his brothers will take care of him.

Now I hope the insurance company takes care of us.

oof. Glad he is ok. Someone making aa left in to traffic is generally cut and dry with regards to liability. Did he file a police report? Do you know if there were any witnesses?

If you have any questions LMK here or on facebook. Enjoy the weekend.

Ugh. Glad he is okay, PM.

Yes, they had to call 911. There other driver was an elderly lady and I think she was knocked out. Once he realized he wasn't seriously hurt he ran to check on her and she was initially unresponsive.

There were witnesses and the police are filing a report we can get on Wednesday.

He's up and moving today, but he has a lot of bruising and a neck sprain.

Hit her doing like 35. Hit these brakes and pulled the emergency brake to try and stop.

Glad he is OK. My son is on the road back to us from Nashville. Reading that gave me chills.

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Yikes! Glad he's doing ok.

We take Mackenzie to EKU to move in tomorrow morning. The wife has already got a head start on crying. Mack's way more emotional than Caitlin so I expect this one to be tougher. Aside from being apprehensive about her adjustment to college, my emotions are definitely more on the excited side for both her and the wife and I as opposed to sad. When high school starts up and especially during basketball this winter, we will really feel the void. But I'm generally more philosophocal about these things - this is the way it's supposed to go, kids have to transition to fully being their own person at some point, and we've reached that point.

Riley got her 1st big girl job. She is working with foster kids and transitioning them back home or to another foster family. She is living at home right now and will start her masters in January.

Cori leaves Friday.

Ksyrup, I really miss watching Cori play BB, to the point I want to go and watch her play intramurals.

Yeah, I hear you. She finally played her last softball game last week - a region vs region all-star game that was supposed to happen in mid-June but got postponed because of 100 degree weather. While everyone else played all summer, she didn't touch a bat or ball for 2 months and went out there and did pretty well. It was nice for her to have a final moment on the field in a non-pressure situation to finish it up.

We keep joking with her about taking her equipment with her so she can show up at tryouts for basketball and softball. She'll definitely take advantage of intramurals though.

Daughter is going to rent a house with 3 other girls.

I saw the draft lease and they have the 4 girls and my wife down as a tenant. We told the realtor that we do not mind being a co-signer for daughter's obligations but seems he took it to mean for all the girls.

I've let the realtor know this was not acceptable and there needs to be a way or form that all parents can guarantee their own kids liabilities. Realtor has not yet replied back.

Does anyone have any experience here?

The apartment my daughter had with teammates in college, everyone had their own lease. I co-signed with her.

Yeah, this is how it was with my daughters leases. But I didnt have to co-sign, just pay rent every other month. Ugh.