THE BIG REVEAL...MY DAUGHTER'S NEW DIGS

Well, literally after a lot of blood,
sweat and tears
we moved my daughter into her new home for the next nine months.
I quickly came to realize it is quite different to move a girl into a dorm room.

We were given a limited amount of time to pull up in the fire lane
to unload her belongings onto a pile at the curb of her dormitory

and then go park the cars (plural in our case) in another location.
Right away we began to get a
sense of which students
were the minimalists
and which liked their "stuff".
Can you guess which my daughter is???
I thought I was going to get
the lecture when my husband
started looking around at the piles of belongings
from the boys on either side of us.
Eeeek, I knew her collection was going to be more plentiful,
but I wasn't expecting it to look
like Mount Kilimanjaro.
Thank goodness some other
females pulled up.
That certainly saved me the lecture.
I think I only got as far as the "look".
I quickly diffused the situation,
"Look Meghan, she has the same green Britta water pitcher as you!!"
Only girls would color coordinate their water pitcher to their room.
I'm going to bet college guys could care less about stuff like that.
The only green things they're probably going to be drinking
out of are beer bottles.
Needless to say, after enduring
many trips up the steps
with my daughter's worldly posessions, patiently waiting in long lines
for the elevator with filled carts
and making small talk with
all the other parents,
we made our way to her room.


Then all the fun began.............
Imagine 8 people in a 150 square
foot room for 8 hours
trying to put 2 girls worldly possessions piled
as high as...you got it,
Mount Kilimanjaro, away in some kind
of neat manner, let alone decorated,
was no small feat.
Remember, we had just met her roommate
& her family upon entering this space.
Making this all come together was hard,
especially knowing at the end of this task
my husband and I would be saying
goodbye to our daughter for quite sometime,
severing the bond we worked
for 18 years to strengthen.
I'm sure my daughter was trying
to keep it all together,
acting like this was all just an ordinary day.
The longest the 3 of us had
ever been apart was the
5 days she spent in Disney
World on her Senior Trip.
Here she was, just thrust into
this space with a person
she had never met before
(other than Facebook)
and was now going to be living
with for the next 9 months.
Oh yes, talk about a presure cooker!!

Here's how it all turned out

I love that she packed her stuffed dog
that has been her lifelong friend
and the backup one!

....and all of this was done without
putting a mark or hole in
the walls or the furniture!

Taking that all into consideration,
I'd say it all turned out okay.

Wouldn't you?
Did any of you take your
children off to college?
I'd love to hear your stories.
I'm sure I'm not alone!!
(My apologies on the quality of the photos,
they were taken on my cell phone)