(I am saving the Christmas gratitude post for my next column. This is the holiday kvetching post. It ought to have “first-world problems” as a hashtag. You've been warned.) Dear Alexandria: Where do your teens and tweens hang out when they aren't in school? Is there a hidden roller-skating rink or an ice rink where everyone goes on Friday or Saturday nights (or Saturday afternoons, perhaps)? Is there a park or promenade that adolescent flaneurs like to stroll? I'm asking because I have two teens and a tween who are relatively new to the area, and — even with school and some extra-curricular …

Now that the election is over, Alexandria parents can focus on the other early November milestone we wait for — the end of the first quarter for Alexandria City Public Schools. This is our first full academic quarter with ACPS. It is also the first quarter that I have paid (relatively) consistent attention to my kids' day-to-day schoolwork and academic progress. So, it only seems fair to give us both grades as the first report cards of the year come home. INSTRUCTIONAL QUALITY: I give ACPS a B+ for the quality of my children's teachers and the curricula they present to my kids at the …

Our neighborhood seems pretty safe. The neighbors in our Beauregard corridor apartment complex are quiet. I see lots of children playing outside by day. Fancy it ain't, but I see less loitering and fewer police cars by night in my rental community than I did in the neighborhood where we owned our townhouse in Maryland. My husband and I differ on whether it's safe for our 10-year-old daughter to play outside unsupervised after school. I tend to believe she'll be fine. Her father doesn't like the fact that we don't have a line of sight from our apartment to the playground. If my better half …

My fourth-grader's back-to-school night was this evening. Her brothers' back-to-school nights were earlier this month — one for the seventh-grade son at Francis Hammond Middle School and another for the 10th-grader at T.C. Williams High School. Last year I skipped the younger kids' back-to-school nights. But last year they were at the former school in Columbia, Md., where they and their older brother all went before we picked up and moved to the West End of Alexandria last spring. That was when a family crisis propelled us out of our underwater mortgage and our three-hour daily commutes to …