Doctor Doctor

Well, after all these years, Carl finally graduated from med school. And because that wasn't enough activity for one weekend, Carl and Kathleen decided that they should move to St. Louis at the same time. Needless to say it was a bit of a whirlwind weekend, but we all survived.

Last Thursday the moving truck (a huge semi) showed up at the house to load everything up. Carl had an awards ceremony that morning, so I came over to babysit and over see the moving process while he and Kathleen were gone. Lily and I had a great time watching all their stuff get loaded in. We watched the guys carry four huge boxes on their backs, move furniture and stack everything carefully in the truck. Amazingly everything in the entire house fit in the first quarter of the truck. Lily and I had a picnic on the sidewalk and when she got tired she opted for laying down on furniture pads outside so she could still keep her eyes on the activity.

Thursday night Mom, Dad and Zander arrived in Baltimore and Friday morning kicked off the big graduation day. We were up and cruising downtown Baltimore for parking by 7:30am. The med school hooding ceremony was first and other than being a little long, it was actually pretty neat. Then we had a few hours to kill until the actual graduation ceremony so we grabbed lunch at a local indian restaurant and then came back to my place to walk the dogs and try to get Lily to nap. That didn't exactly happen. Lily was much more interested in jumping on my bed than sleeping on it. Needless to say, by halfway through the graduation ceremony, Lily was done with sitting around listening to speakers, so we spent the last 1/2 out in the hallway running and playing on the payphone.

Saturday morning Dad, Zander and I took Lily to the great and amazing IKEA. It's one of Zander's favorite stores and we only had a little time to kill anyway. Lily was particularly impressed with everything IKEA had. She loved running from chair to couch to bed announcing how "Comfy!" each one was. I was impressed with how into it she seemed until I remembered she didn't have any furniture at the house. I think she was just totally psyched to have so many places to sit and lay.

Then in the afternoon, Mom and I took Lily to the park while Carl and Kathleen tried to finish up cleaning the house. Lily was quite the little daredevil and very impressed with her own skills.

We stopped at Target for a quick dinner (and gummies) and then headed back to the house. An hour later Carl, Kathleen, Lily and Terra were on the road to St. Louis. There were a few tears on mom and my parts, but all in all, it went fine and now, a week later, we are all in our appropriate locations.

I miss them already and can't wait for next month's roadtrip to get to see them again! It's certainly odd to not have family in the area, but I keep myself pretty busy and have a lot to do and see this summer so I'm sure that will help.