Bye bye, Baby

Li'l Hodge in her new room. :)

Yesterday we left little Lu at Sonoma State for the school year.  Today will be her first day of classes.  We all drove down and unpacked her stuff in a whirlwind.  I think we made record time.  The drive down took a lot longer than expected and of course we left the house much later than we'd planned to originally, so by the time we got there we were pretty sick of sitting in the car and also pretty hungry!  In just about 45 min. we got all her stuff out of boxes and put away.  The only thing left for her to do was hang pictures!

How long do you think it will look this good?

For dinner we headed over to my Aunt Kitt's house and it was lovely because my cousin Sarah and her kids were visiting at the same time so I got to see little Rowan before he's ten, as it turned out. ;)  We spent the evening playing with the kids, laughing and teasing each other and chatting with the adults.  Dinner was wonderful.

My parents stayed at my aunt's house but we girls decided to have a sister sleep-over at Lucy's apartment.  One of Lucy's best friends from Portola (they've known each other since pre-school) is living with her this year.  She joined us for dinner and then we decided to all crowd into her room for the sleep over since Lu's other roommate was home and asleep when we got back.  

Sarah and Vince didn't know what to make of us crazy cousins!

Lucy's little apartment really is cute.  Seeing how excited she was to begin hanging pictures and get her stuff moved in made me think about my own years at school.  Getting all that stuff into boxes at the end of the year wasn't ever much fun, but it sure was exciting to unpack and reorganized my things in a new room/house.  I think about all my room/housemates I had through college and since then, and I'm excited for my sisters.  Living with people isn't always easy, but at least in my experience you have a whole lot of fun.  

I think perhaps what really makes the college years so unique is the novelty of each new year.  Every year there is so much change--new roommates, new house, new classes...  I certainly never lived in the same place for more than the nine-month school year all through college and even after that I was moving every year until the city hall of La Roda granted me our little piso for a second year! (Perhaps that explains my strange attachment to that place.)

All that moving and change is stressful and looses it's luster after too long, but it's fun to look back and reminisce.  I remember how sad I always was when the school year came to an end because I knew there was just no way I'd ever get that year back.  Of course that sounds silly since you can never repeat a year, but the end of each year meant an end to the fun and memory-making of day-to-day living with my roomies... at least in that setting.  I have maintained those friendships though and it's always fun to get together and remember all the fun we used to have.  I can't wait for Lu and Maggie to have those same experiences. 

Camry "Wousel" and Maggie snuggling. :)

Sunday morning we woke up and all went out to breakfast.  We found a funny little hole-in-the-wall place, The Friendly Kitchen.  The Chinese couple who ran the place wasn't quite sure what to think of us crazy Wilbanks at first, but we had our waiter in stitches by the end of our meal.  He even made a few jokes himself and then very seriously told mom and dad that Lucy would be the Sonoma State beauty queen. ;)

Our good-byes were tearful, but it's been a great summer. I'm so happy Lu and I got to do our little road trip and that she and Maggie both got the time off to accompany me to Portland the last time I was there.  In these past few weeks at home I've been going through my things in the barn and among many other long-forgotten items, I found boxes of old letters that I've saved through the years.  Maggie, Lucy and I have decided to revive letter writing and I'm sure we'll be in good touch throughout the school year.

The whole crew for breakfast at The Friendly Kitchen, Rohnert Park.