August 23rd

Hi, It’s Christina –

It’s five in the morning. After five hours of tossing and turning, I gave up and got up.

We finally got out of the house yesterday around 10:30, three hours later than I had wanted to leave. We drove through torrential rain and snarled traffic, and finally arrived up here a little after six. My normal six hour, door to door drive took almost eight hours. When we were almost here we realized my husband left our toiletry bag on the bed at home and I forgot my body pillow (which I need to sleep because of my bad back).

When we got to the hotel, I dropped off my husband and girls and ran to the store for the toiletries, then requested extra pillows from the front desk hoping they would work in place of the body pillow (yeah, NO). We all showered and went to pick up my daughter’s roommate to bring her to dinner. Because of all the luggage in the car, we needed to send my youngest with her grandparents so there was room for Rhea to sit.

A two car caravan is easy enough to deal with and we managed to find the parking deck with no wrong turns – far better than the last time I tried to find it. The last time we were up here, we had dinner at a really good Irish pub and we planned on going there again. All nine of us trek down Church Street to the pub only to find there is an hour and a half to two hour wait for a table. Thank you, no. I don’t care what restaurant it is, there are none that would warrant that kind of wait. Unfortunately, the wait time at several other restaurants was the same. Can someone please tell me what could have possible been going on in Burlington, on a rainy Thursday night, to cause such a backlog?

We finally find a place where the wait was only half an hour. It was not because it wasn’t good, but because they offered tables on a first come, first serve, and you needed to be present (no list of names being called from), so I think a lot of folks had walked away. Anyway, we finally got seated, had a yummy dinner and the whole bill, including a glass of wine for my aunt and two beers for my hubby, came to $140, including tip. $140 for nine people for dinner – I think that’s great.

By the time we left the restaurant, the rain had stopped so we had a nice leisurely stroll up Church Street back to the cars, dropped Rhea off at the dorm and returned to the hotel. My daughter was still insisting she did not want to show up at school with stuff in three cars, so we took everything out of my mom’s car and my in-law’s car and packed my van. Now the game plan is I drive my daughter and her stuff to the school for 8:00, pull up in front of her dorm and let the swarm descend, follow the directions to the off-site parking, give the rest of the family the address for the off-site parking so they can meet me there, and we can all take the shuttle back and help my daughter get situated.

How we think we will be able to get eight of us in the dorm room and be able to get anything accomplished, I don’t know, but the grandparents wanted to be part of this experience, so I don’t want to deny them. This is their first “sending a kid off to college” for any of them. My husband, my sister-in-law, my cousin (remember I said my aunt came with us too) and I all went to colleges locally and commuted daily from home.

Oh well, the time has come to wake my daughter up so she can get ready to leave. I will try to hold it together as long as I can, but I am not making any promises. Seeing the refrigerator in my van set me off yesterday. Tackling a highly emotional day on virtually no sleep, does not bode well for me keeping my emotions in check, so my goal is just not to embarrass my daughter.

The internet is down here at the hotel, so I don’t know when this blog will be able to be posted. So until then… have a great day and happy writing!