Friday, the 16th

The pictures above are from Carl's Hooding Ceremony which was held bright and early on Friday morning. The best advice I have received all year was from the former coordinator of the MD/PhD program who told us to sit in the box seats for the ceremony so that Lily could play without disturbing anyone. It was perfect! She had a wonderful set-up with snacks, books, various toys, and her current favorite play item, coins. (Her other current favorite is rocks.) There were only 3 chairs in our area so Carl's dad and brother sat with us while his mom and sister sat in nearby box seats. It worked out beautifully.

Unfortunately, once again, I fell through for the big event. My camera died about 2 minutes into the Hooding Ceremony, and I did not get any pictures at the graduation. Through it all, Lily was such a trooper. She finally had had enough at the actual graduation ceremony after all the chaos going on around her AND not having a nap that day, and who could blame her? We all were exhausted by the end of the evening.

On Saturday, Lily spent the morning with Ingrid and Carl's dad and brother at IKEA and then spent the afternoon with Ingrid and Carl's mom at the park while Carl and I cleaned the house. Jean, from Carl's lab, came over during "final hours" when we basically unloaded a bunch of things that we could not bring with us on anyone who was willing to take them. Everyone was even gracious enough to take some trash bags to throw away since we could not leave trash behind! We finally got on our way at around 7:00 pm on Saturday night, Carl with Terra in his car and me with Lily in mine. We drove for about 5 hours through the most difficult part of the trip (always) - Pennsylvania. We slept in a bit on Sunday but were back on the road at around 9:00 am. We pulled up to my parents' house at 6:45 pm on Sunday night. That pretty much covers the time up to our move here. I will update with post-Baltimore info later. But, I must say thank you so much to Carl's family for all their help in Baltimore. We were so glad that his dad, mom, brother, and sister could all be there for this huge milestone in our lives. A special thank-you to Ingrid who did a lot of driving and helping out in so many ways. We can't thank you enough!