Reply to "How do you help?"

Observer44,you're absolutely right, and most of the time the kids realize that and are in their element. Because this has been their dream and they are living it, when they DO start to get down, in a way it just strikes home a bit more because you know that they really are wanting to do this and yet it is still overwhelming at times even though they love it. That's when a parent's unconditional love comes in handy .

Sorry--as you can tell, the events of the last week kind of shook me up, shook all of us here up, and make us question whether we need to be concerned.

For some of the practical issues:

I am absolutely sold on Airborne as an immunity booster. You can laugh about it, but I live with 3 people who are Virus Importers, and since I've started taking it, I haven't been sick one day in 18 months despite more or less constant exposure to bugs. Son takes it too, has a good supply at school.

I buy cases of protein bars (ProMax from Trader Joe's has been the traditional favorite) and deliver them. Stanford dorms seem to have really healthy food so that is okay, but it's a problem on game nights because by the time they are through playing, it is late and everything except fast food seems to be closed often. Haven't come up with a solution to that yet. They do all have refrigerators but healthy hot meals during the season are often hard to come by.