Moving Day

We moved oldest child into his apartment over the last couple of days.  This is a totally new experience for me.  I went straight from my Undergraduate Degree into the work world, and I moved back home after I graduated until I got married 2 years later.  I completed my graduate degree as an adult, with a family and a job to juggle.  His experience will be different.  His school is giving him a stipend to study.  Must be nice - to be paid to go to school!  THAT was never MY experience!

Anyway, he and a friend are both going to the same graduate school.  They found an apartment townhouse, and found a third person to share expenses.  I met the third person, and really like him.  He worked in the real world for 3 years in order to save enough money up to go back and get his PhD.  Nice young men, all of them.

Anyway, this is the progression of events over the last few days:
Cleaning out his room.  Remember I said I had to sit down with him in order to get him to clean out under the loft bed?  If you look closely, you can see that under the bed is clean!  As of Tuesday afternoon, this is what the rest of his room looked like.  His brother's stuff is all shoved firmly under his loft bed.

This is the pile of stuff in the living room that he had sorted out to go.  To be fair, not everything is his.  Daughter's pile is next to his pile.  She's adding stuff to one of her boxes here.

The van, with seats removed, packed and ready to go.  We went up in two cars.  Husband and oldest son went up together in the van.  The rest of us went in the Civic.  It was a beautiful 4 hour drive, straight up into the mountains.  I would have had one of the kids take pictures while we were driving up, but somehow, a camera phone just can't quite capture the majesty of the mountains.

The day after we moved him in, we went exploring around campus.  Of course, his mother is a librarian, and he's going to be working on a graduate degree.  What do you think was the first place that I insisted we go and visit?

The library.  Isn't this gorgeous?  I just love this atrium!  What an awesome place to curl up and study in between classes!  It's nicer than my library where I went to school!

The Leisure Reading Room of the library.  I could live in here!  I wonder if they're hiring librarians?  Wouldn't that be a hoot?  To go to graduate school at the same university where your Mom works? Livin' the dream, that's what that would be!

Says it all, doesn't it?

I have many, many more pictures, but you would get sick and tired of looking at them all and never come back and visit my blog again!

He lives in a sweet spot. He's far enough away from campus that he should be able to get some peace and quiet.  His neighborhood is mostly graduate students and young professionals.  They are within walking distance of a grocery store, and on the bus line, with a bus stop at the end of their street to get them back and forth to campus.  For now, he is going without a car.  He doesn't think he's going to need one to get back and forth to campus, and the walk from any parking lot would be much, much longer than the walk from his door to the end of his street.  

Before we left, we took him grocery shopping.  We bought his "start up" groceries for him.  Before we left, we made a chili and left it in the slow cooker for his dinner.  Unfortunately for him, he left his graduation cookbook home.  I am under strict instructions to send it to him ASAP.  

Moving him in was an experience.  I'm looking forward to going back when he's been there for a while and he can walk us around and give us a campus tour!  

I really do hope that he enjoys himself!