it's also been almost a year since I started this post....Leaving the nest.....

*written 10/2012*

This post has been a long time in coming.

This was us packing up in late August. 

I've been a bit busy lately and posting is hard.

We wanted to take our natural gas car to save money but we weren't sure we could fit it all in.  She was an amazing packer and although we couldn't see out the back window or use the rear view mirror (which unnerved me)

We got it all in!



Mark delivers down in Delta area so we talked to him as we drove hoping he'd be in an area we could meet him without taking him out of his route too much. 

Perfect Timing!

Then we were off..

2 women on the road to her future!

Documenting every moment...

Even the silly ones



My mom and dad live a 30 minute drive from her school so we stopped there the first night.

Grandma had all kinds of groceries and supplies for her so we needed to take 2 cars to SUU the next day!

She's stuck with the top bunk...

Her roommate is a few years older than her and from Norway.  Carly is excited to get to know her.

This is one of the campus dorms but a REALLY old building.  Nothing matches furniture wise and the kitchen is so tiny for 5 girls. There is NO counter space.  NONE!  There are 2 showers but only ONE TOILET!!! 

But-- it was super CHEAP housing... Now we know why.

She said "well, I don't mind this being my first 'on my own' apartment because anything will be better after this! "

Way to think positive CarCar!

It's a really beautiful campus and I hope she loves it. I hope she makes lots of friends and loves her classes and has an amazing year.

I LOVED my first year of college and my 2nd... My 3rd was my hardest and it was in Hawaii... but that is where I felt the most alone.  I hope she doesn't feel alone.  

I hope I've prepared her enough.  I hope she is sure enough of who she is.

I hope her room-mates are nice.

I hope, I hope, I hope.......

(and hello... we found her a purple bike... That has to be a good omen right???)

*********************************************************************************

August 12, 2013

That's what I had written and it sat for a year while I wrestled with how to find x and y and planes and functions.

I expected to be doing this again.... taking Carly Bocanegra back down to SUU to start her 2nd year of college.... but she's really off on her own now.  Married.  Part of a new family.  A little less mine. I expected her to be a little less mine, I suppose, as she tested her independence.  I just didn't expect the little less mine to to become someone else's.  I thought the little less mine would be owned by her and her alone.

A lot of the things I hoped for her didn't happen.
She hated her classes.  Somebody stole the handlebars off her purple bike and cut her brake line. She didn't have great roommates.  She forgot for a little while who she was and what she was capable of.  She was lonely.  She had different lessons to learn than I did at her age, harder ones and I don't know why.

She changed her major and her name and has a very different outlook on life and different priorities than the girl I drove down to SUU a year ago.

This post is not about the changes being wrong or right- it's about expectations; the expectations I had as I began to write this post & the feelings I have as I finish it a long time later and the disparity between what I thought then and what I see now. It's very strange and I had a lot of emotion I didn't expect.  Writing does that I suppose.

In the end... Carly Forsyth is incredibly happy.  I'm glad that she's happy.

But...
I don't know why she had to grow up so fast.