Leaving for Santa Fe and taking a break

[Float On]

Leaving here in a bit to get the rental car and need to consider packing our bags. We'll leave early in the AM. Son#1 checks into St John's Sunday afternoon. Son#2 decided not to go with us (something about a foreign exchange student's last week in town before she returns to Spain) so my parents arrive today to stay with him (and keep him fed). So it looks like husband and I will get to explore Santa Fe alone! I've rented a little Casita, we've made plans to meet cousins in Albuquerque one day and I'm hoping the expected rains will knock out some of those forest fires because we'd planned to do some hikes.

I'm going to take a break from being on-line so I'll see you when I'm back.

[danna]

Enjoy your time away!!

[Gardenarian]

Sounds fun! I hope you have a relaxing and restoring vacation!

[Selah]

Oooh, enjoy! Santa Fe, Taos, and all those little places like Madrid along the Turquoise Trail are just great places to visit. Funny, I was just thinking about how delicious a wonderful plate of Taos Huevos Rancheros would taste right now! :)

[Spartana]

Have a great time Float On. I'm jealous! Visit Taos and the Taoe Pueblo if you get time .

[catherine]

Sounds great! Have a wonderful time!

[CathyA]

Have fun Float On! Tell us all about it when you get back!

[Tussiemussies]

Sounds like a great vacation. Have fun!

[Sad Eyed Lady]

And pictures too! Have fun, rest, rejuvenate, refresh, and all those much needed things that a time away can give us.

[pcooley]

The Summer Academy kids looked like they were having a great time whenever I saw them on campus. I hope your daughter enjoyed herself. I resisted the urge to ask whose mom goes by the name Float On.

[Float On]

pcooley - I wondered if I spotted your scooter! We only have boys and my son was the tallest one during the last week (their biggest group). What a beautiful campus! The meet/greet dinner the first night was really good - got to visit with our mid-west rep a bit. We dropped him off and left for our little casita off the plaza. The casita was great and we walked everywhere. We had a full kitchen and a laundry room. I think we ate out only once. We went to Bandelier one day and did drive up to Taos just to drive out and revisit the Rio Grande Gorge area (where I fell across the bridge...thankfully not over the bridge), several other little day drives just to enjoy the views, we went to the Opera the same night as the St John's kids but kept far away from them so our son wouldn't see us. We did the flea market. We also spent a day in Albuquerque visiting family, took the Turquoise Trail to get there. I only took around 500 photos. When I put them somewhere I'll share a link - lots of doors, an abandoned town, etc. Our son will be applying to St John's - he had a great experience. Now to work on scholarships!

We did see a lot of the cow crossing signs on the way to Taos where people keep adding UFO stickers.
As usual when I'm in NM.....I didn't want to come home.

[Tussiemussies]

Enjoy your excursions! Sounds like a great time!

[Gardenarian]

Sounds fun!
What's with the cow/UFO stickers??

It sounds like you and SiouxzQ may have crossed paths, too! (See her thread.)

ANyhow, nice to have you back!

[pcooley]

I've been working full time while my boss is on vacation, so I have been riding the scooter more than the bicycle. It's been out in the motorcycle parking at the college. I'm glad you had a good time. Good luck with the scholarships. I know that St. John's tries to be generous with financial aid. (I'm still not sure how I made it through on my own. My parents made me claim financial independence because they had only saved so much for me and were not going to borrow or pay more. If I wanted to go to an expensive private college halfway across the U.S., on my head be it. I don't think you can claim financial independence at such a young age now.)

I'm still not clear, as a parent, what the expectations are in terms of our paying for our children's college education. I absolutely do not want to borrow any money, and I would prefer my children not borrow money. We've paid off the house, so we'll be able to cash flow college a little more easily. We have not saved anything for college yet, but we plan to start when we have a three month emergency fund in place. Our daughter will be a freshman in high school this year, though, so there is not much time for saving. Hopefully, she will want to go to St. John's because we, as employees of the college, get free tuition for our children. Ditto for my son, though he's made it pretty clear at 12 that he does not want to go to St. John's.

My daughter has been thinking about Harvard, and she ran our financial numbers through, and we are right below the cutoff for $0 parental contribution. I will probably be moving to full time, however, in the next couple of years.

I'm worried that colleges will look at our home equity and our retirement which makes it look like we have a $350,000 net worth instead of at our $150 savings account balance. Colleges wouldn't expect you to take out a mortgage on your house to pay for your children's college would they?

[larknm]

Float On, my sister and I cried in the car every summer as kids when we had to leave the mountains of NM. That's why I live here now--in SF and the mountains. Last night driving in SF, I had a familiar thought: how I couldn't stand to live somewhere flat again, and how great it is to be able to see the mountains, and be in them when I am, and how this feels like the way the earth originally was (this part of it was underwater), and how I love the untouched, natural way the mountains are--though not for long, in the last few years there are fewer kinds of animal tracks, the bark beetles are killing the trees, and the yearly threat of forest fire makes our sense of the future very fragile. But oh, it's still the most magnificent place I know.

[SiouzQ.]

I feel pretty sad every summer when I have to turn around and leave New Mexico and head back east to Michigan. The sense of vibrancy in my body and soul that I feel when I am there is telling me something; I feel in my heart that I will move out there at some point, but I need to stay in Michigan a little while longer for family reasons. I'll be back next summer though, I'm already planning next year's road trip in my head and thinking about how much money I need to save up, because I am going to have even more paid vacation time then anbd I want to be traveling for at least three weeks, if not a month :)

[pcooley]

larknm - I don't know about fewer animal tracks. A porcupine was removed from a tree on our street - Cedros Circle near Rodeo Plaza. A mountain lion brought down a deer a few hundred yards from the St. John's Library. We see coyote running down the street in the morning. I saw a bobcat crossing the road near the museums on my bicycle ride home. A few years ago, I saw a gray fox, but it's been a while. The drought seems to be driving animals down into the city, though the recent rains may lure them back up into the mountains.