Sometime's it's just nice to post a selfie. Elaine had a new dress and we were invited to Virginia's birthday party at FMW with dinner and dancing. It was fun experiencing the space in event mode instead of meeting mode, and while we didn't join in for the contradancing, we enjoyed the music and had a great night out.
Sneaking in one more cuddle time family selfie before Noa turns 16 and Owen heads back to college :-)
While the festivities were all on Saturday, we had tickets to Billy Bragg that night which, coupled with the fact that Noa didn't have school on Friday, suggested that we front load our St. Mary's celebration. After Noa's parent teacher conference on Thursday (note: they attended while wearing a fake mustache, but since they had all As and A-s, we decided to just go with it) we headed down to St. Mary's, picked up Owen and went out for a lovely dinner, and checked into our airbnb before we all crashed for the night.
The next morning, Allen scoped out scenes for our annual holiday photo with some input from Noa. We usually use our friend Maria, but this year we weren't sure we'd be able to get in a DC-based photo in with Owen and have the pictures done in time to for the holidays, (and importing Maria to St. Marys seemed impractical). So instead, Allen decided we would all suffer through an extended photo shoot over the weekend, using a tripod that he specially ordered. Which also looks suspiciously like a selfie stick.
Allen insisted the morning shots were just tests as he was adamant that the light would be better at sunset. So while we played around with the best angles and poses, we didn't worry about Noa having their headphones on. Once satisfied, We headed off to Point Lookout State Park to take in the views and learn about how to housed a Confederate prison during the Civil War.
Then we headed back to campus where Owen showed off his fencing gear and gave us a campus tour, including the cemetery (where we looked for the "Hidden" grave). Noa enjoyed the cemetery so much that they opted to hang out there and read a book while Owen, Allen and I went on a tour of the replica of the Maryland Dove – a 17th Century cargo ship that miraculously made it from England to Maryland and then disappeared on a return trip a year later. Afterwards, we grabbed takeout for dinner, did our official and unofficial photos, attempted to watch the comet, enjoyed a fire, and then had a lovely game night of Headbanz.
The next morning, we grabbed breakfast and packed up before heading to St. Mary's for Hawktoberfest. As soon as we got there, Allen was recruited to record a testimonial as a Seahawk dad. Afterwards, we attempted to watch the St. Mary's varsity vs. alumni baseball game, but as it started an hour late and we were then inundated by a barrage of foul balls, we decided to head to an art show and then have lunch. Afterwards, we went to the river and sampled the food trucks before boarding our river cruise, which Noa was less than excited for. Afterwards, we dropped Noa off at Owen's room for a nap to recover while the rest of us went to play pool in the commons and then enjoyed the "Great Bamboo Race" where teams build a boat out of bamboo, plastic bags and duct tape, and then one of its members races it on the river. It was pretty exciting and while four boats sank, no rowers were harmed in the racing.
Afterwards we grabbed Noa and headed to dinner. We knew that Noa wouldn't be into a crab boil, so we purchased a vegetarian option for them. What we didn't realize is that 1) Noa wouldn't enjoy sitting with other people as they enjoyed the crab boil; and 2) while Owen loves crab cakes, he was pretty horrified to see how the sausage gets made. In the end, the kids sat on bench outside the eating tent while Allen sucked down twelve crabs after which we bid Owen farewell (he headed to the dining hall to grab a less adventurous meal), jumped into the car (while still covered with crab bits) drove back to DC, dropped off Noa and headed off to see Billy Bragg.
It was a pretty amazing first parent's weekend, though we might tweak a few things for next year...
(To see all the pictures, click here.)
The day finally came when our first-born is leaving the nest and moving in to his dorm for college. We've been getting in all the Owen time we can this past week, with 18th birthday celebrations (steak at St. Anslem), one last EPA softball game (Owen hit a home run!), lots of Doctor Who (we finished the Capaldi era!), and of course family cuddle time before packing up the car. But I'm not sure you can every get enough Owen time.
When the morning finally arrived we hit the road early to arrive at Owen's dorm in time for his 9:30am move in window. Unfortunately, so did seemingly every other freshman's family (except maybe for Owen's roommate Theo) and so there was a bit of a wait to actually get to his dorm. Once there (and once we finally located the email with his actual room number), the St. Mary's Move-In Crew helpfully unloaded our car for us and carried Owen's belongings to the his hall.
We quickly started wiping things down, moving things around, and putting stuff away. We ran into a couple of hiccups with his refrigerator (too big to put under his bed, not a long enough cord to plug in anywhere else) and in hanging things on the wall (we didn't have the correct adhesive for Owen's Zelda canvas) so after we got things initially set up and briefly met Owen's roommate and his parents, we headed to the bookstore to pick up those items and a book Noa wanted.
We headed back and got the last thing put away and then went to the dining hall for lunch. After another stop at the bookstore to get a few things off Owen's syllabi (The Gulag Archipelago, Suicide of the West, and Intro to Macroeconomics), we took an extended tour of campus, including the waterfront.
By the time we headed back to Owen's dorm, they were getting ready for a hall meeting and were officially kicking parents out. We got in our last hugs and a final selfie before Owen walked us out the door. We didn't cry at the time, which was kind of amazing (though likely because I had cried profusely the night before while I wrote Owen a letter, and Allen and Noa being of stoic, Fawcett stock), but it was a pretty quiet drive home which was mostly spent wondering what Owen was doing now.
Which was literally going over the rules of the dorm, but figuratively starting a whole new and exciting chapter, that we happily toasted to at the local wine bar.
(To see all the move-in pictures, click here.)
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