Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The Big Move

We're not quite moved in to our new house, but we are finally moved out of our old place. Most of the month of May was spent slowly moving over car loads of boxes over to the new house, and putting in new hardwood floors upstairs. The hardwoods were finished while we were off at Joe's graduation, over Memorial Day weekend we were finally ready for the big move. With quite a bit of help from our friends last Saturday, we rented a truck and moved all of our bulky furniture the 1.7 miles from our old apartment to our new house. Jeff's expert moving skills (hard earned over several summers on the William & Mary moving crew) contributed to a very well packed truck and kept the number of trips to a minimum. We managed to not work anyone too hard and before too long we were breaking out the beer and burgers for our first bbq on our new back deck.

We spent the rest of the long weekend beginning the long process of unpacking and moving the few small things we had left. Mom and Don helped with transplanting all the plants from our old garden to our new front yard, and on Tuesday night Elaine and I cleaned our old place from top to bottom and said goodbye to our old home. Now we can begin the process of getting the house ready for the baby!

(click here to see all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)

Monday, May 22, 2006

Doctor Doctor

After 26 years of education, our good friend Joe has finally finished school and officially become the most educated person we know (Douglas’ JD/PhD falls to number two, and our PhD’s look like chump change compared to the double doctor). UVA granted him the MD portion of his MD/PhD over the weekend, and Joe and Cate were kind enough to invite us down for the celebration along with some of the Mettenburg and McConnel clans. Knowing that Charlottesville would be a madhouse over graduation weekend, they wisely rented the beautiful Hensley Hollow Lodge out near the Shenandoah National Park for us all to stay in for the weekend. The view was wonderful, and we all enjoyed the meals, the campfire, playing bridge, and the perfect weather. There were some great places to hike, but Elaine and I quickly found out it that it’s best to leave the hiking to the folks who aren’t six months pregnant. Some folks were lucky enough to see a black bear near the house, and others took advantage of the Newtonian reflector and gazed at the Galilean moons. We couldn’t have asked for better accommodations.

On Sunday we ventured back to Charlottesville for the graduation festivities. With pomp and circumstance, Joe officially entered into the practice of medicine, and we all could begin pestering him to diagnose and fix all our little ailments. Of course there was a little twinge of sadness about the ceremony, since graduation meant that Joe and Cate would be departing Charlottesville soon for the gateway to the west, St. Louis. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of chances to meet up in Iowa, and future versions of the beach trip will bring us all together, but we’ll certainly miss having such extraordinary friends close enough for a spur of the moment weekend visit.

(click here to see all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)