Mary Moves into COLLEGE!

This is Mary happy and grinning in her new to her dorm room.

 And I am very happy that she is there and excited about taking off into this new chapter of life.

However, I must admit.... Saturday, was a difficult day for me. 

It was move in day for Mary... she got to move into her new cool dorm in the heart of very likely the coolest city in this whole country... a fabulous fresh beginning.
But with every move in day, there is a move out day.
With every new beginning, there is an ending.
And this is exactly the place where I will end these maudlin (and far too sentimental to be good for anyone) thoughts on college move in day. 

Here we are taking a break from lugging full tupperware bins to hugging outside her dorm building. 

It's a very nice newish dorm, on a lovely leafy street across the street from the new theater building where my girl will have most of her classes.

And still, I was getting a little manic with the hugging already.

And here we are upstairs- I don't remember exactly, but I think I made her take another hug break...

she said something like,

"...try not to look crazy and don't hug my head like a pony," as Karl took the photo.

So here I am doing my best to both not look crazy and/or hug my daughter in a pony face embrace.

It was challenging for me, but as you can see, Mary is quite happy.

Because she is a very good sport, Mary humored me by pointing and posing with the cheesy bumper sticker on my obnoxious + kinda gross maxi van.

Is it obvious that I really want her to remember her Buckeye roots?

Most definitely, but don't much care. 

 I am so very proud of my girl, who she has become, and I absolutely can't wait to see what she will do next.

ps/ We had an interesting morning at our hotel waiting for Mary's move in time slot.
Transformers 4 was being filmed outside of our room and we got to get up close and personal to the movie magic.
This is the helicopter camera flying at eye level to our eighth floor.

 We also got to see a robot arm pretend falling on a car and either Shia LaBeouf or Mark Wahlberg leaping out in a very action adventure-y and handsome, sort of way. 

It was a great and very distracting way to spend the morning.

Chicago is really fabulous city.