Movie guy

 

For the last few years, Reed has been really into the lead-up to the Oscars. Two years ago, he and Tod even went to a special screening of some of the short film nominees. This year because of COVID, nearly everything was available to watch online. He watched most all of the major movie nominees, including foreign films. I had him fill out this ballot from the newspaper – he included what he thought would win and what he wanted to win. 

In other big news...

Reed has decided to attend James Madison University this fall. Yay! Harrisonburg is about two hours away, which seems like just the right distance – close enough for a day trip to visit, but far enough that you wouldn't want to do that too often. 

He was also accepted at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, with a $4,000/year scholarship, but after a visit to the campus he decided that wasn't the place for him. He was waitlisted at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. UVA offered him the option to do his first year at their campus in Wise, Virginia (in coal country, down in the southwestern corner of the commonwealth, near the borders with Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee) and if he had at least a 3.0, then he could transfer to the main campus for his second year. But again, after visiting the campus he decided that wasn't what he wanted to do. He was rejected from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. – their loss!

In all honesty, Reed doesn't really seem too excited about JMU, but he's also just not generally a kid who gets excited about a lot of things. If he's anxious about it, we will do our best to make the transition smooth – there's an onboarding session over the summer that will hopefully help. He told us the other day that so many kids from Freedom go to JMU that they refer to it as "Freedom University" – I knew lots of Freedom kids went there, but not that many! 

Tod and I aren't the best guides about what college life is like. Tod never set foot on West Point's campus before he showed up for basic training the summer before school started, and while there are some aspects of West Point that are like "regular" college, it's definitely not the same. And I have very few memories of my one semester at Radford, so my frame of reference is very small. We will learn together, and do the best we can.

I hope JMU is a terrific experience for Reed, I'm excited for him! 

Retired!

Last Friday, I wrapped up more than 31 years of service to Fairfax County. It's pretty hard to believe that I worked there for that long and even harder to believe that I'm all done!

Sheesh, I'm a month behind! – Amy is SIXTEEN!

I guess things have been hectic because I failed to write about this!

Amy celebrated her second pandemic birthday...thankfully the situation is a bit better this year so she was able to have a small celebration with her friends Molly, Annika and Riley. They came over and spent several hours together doing tie-dye shirts and just laughing and having fun. It was a happy sound and we are so grateful it could happen!

Then on her actual birthday, the whole Mitchell clan got together and did this for her – it even matched the tie dye theme (though would you expect anything less when Wanda is involved?!).

Amy has weathered a tough year of virtual school, and managed it pretty darn well. It's been a lot to ask of these kids to be on their computers all day every day, and then she has extra time for virtual rehearsals too. Her grades have been mostly excellent, though she has definitely not enjoyed in-class participation over the computer. Very much looking forward to a somewhat normal school year next year.

Amy still keeps her quirky interests (random podcasts and bands), which don't overlap with many other people she knows. The lack of Broadway productions for more than a year has been a real bummer for her and we can't wait to get back to in-person shows. She has kept up with her best pals despite not being able to see them much – we encouraged her to arrange more get-togethers but she hasn't wanted to do that. Amy continues to talk louder the more interested she is in a subject (as the person who sits next to her each night at dinner, that's fun!) and she has VERY strong opinions about most things (hint: a lot of things are "dumb"). Her vocabulary is something that tickles us, she uses so many words that many 16 year olds don't even know the meaning of – all that reading as a kid paid off. Wish we could get her to do more reading, but that hasn't been happening for a while now. If she's not at school or rehearsal, she's either drawing on her iPad/tablet or lately she's playing Minecraft. 

She took the PSAT in the fall and that started the endless stream of mailers from colleges – just when we finally were wrapping up Reed getting five million pieces of college mail! She doesn't know yet what kind of college she might want to go to or what she might want to study. She is still aggrieved that chores like doing the dishes and mowing the yard started earlier for her...dreaded "second child" syndrome (been there, done that, got the t-shirt!) meant we ended up having both kids do those things at the same time, despite Amy being 2.5 years younger. That's what she gets for being mature enough to handle it! (sorry!) Driving has taken a bit of a back seat (see what I did there?) since she's so busy with theater stuff, but she gets in practice from time to time and is really looking forward to being able to drive herself to school in the fall.

Our baby girl is sixteen! We are so proud of you, Amy!