Our last month in Maryland was full of a lot of fun. Above all else, I will miss the amazing friends we made there. I showed up in Maryland with Grant already having started residency, 36 weeks pregnant, with 2 kids, in a new house, in a new state, across the country...and just like that, I instantly had friends taking care of me already. I learned a lot about friendship and how to serve others while living there, a lesson I hope to never forget. And through this, we all made some incredible friendships which I know I will never forget! So here are some highlights and random events from our last month in Maryland :)
Chuck E Cheese...my kids are obsessed! And to make it tolerable to me, we found out that if you book an "event" with 10 or more kids, you can get an insane deal. So these kids all got 2 pieces of pizza, a drink and unlimited play for 90 minutes...for $10 each! Compare that to normal Chuck E prices and I can't even believe it. So we had a church event to celebrate the end of school with some close friends from church :)
Cafe Rio in Olney. What can I say? This was like my second kitchen ;) We ate dinner there every single Monday (we probably missed less than 10 weeks in the entire 2 years-and it was only that high because Rowan had soccer practice on Mondays in the Spring). When we first got there I was pregnant and craved their crushed ice so went almost daily for drinks, and then we had an ongoing dinner date every Monday with Mike and Alexa for Military Monday 50% off! Our entire family got food for $8 total. That's a deal you can't beat. We will miss the food and the company a lot!
Another thing we liked to do often the last several months was go for walks with Tamela. She was a nursery leader in our ward so got to help Boden when he hated it and then hang out with Dylan when he turned 18 months. It's a fun little lake with tons of geese and ducks and the kids would always get to feed the fish and ducks at the end of the walk.
The pediatric dentist at Walter Reed was awesome and would see our kids, so we made sure to get them one last check up to make sure all was well before we moved and have to find a civilian dentist. This was Boden and Dylan's first check up (forgot to get a pic of Dylan) but they both did amazing and the dental assistants were super impressed. Pediatric dentist offices seriously have a gift for making the dentist so much fun! Boden was bitter the time before because Rowan got to go and he didn't :) 
I had not belonged to a gym in years and have somewhat prided myself on being able to get a workout without going to a gym. But in December, Courtnie had a free 12 day membership and she had been going regularly and said they had awesome childcare, so decided to try it out for free. I did several classes those days and fell in love with the different kind of workout I was getting, and it also provided structure to my days on these cold winter Maryland days. So, I decided to join and had a blast the months leading up to moving. Mondays I did a sprint cycle class, Wednesday body pump, Thursday HIIT workout, Friday sometimes body bump again. I was feeling stronger than I had in a long time! Kathryn, Maisy and Courtnie were my workout buddies which was so fun. And my kids had a great time in the Kids Club, and Daisy was so sad to see Dylan especially go. He was her "little man".
Little dinos watching the trash truck from their bedroom window. Trash here was the best. There were actual people who threw the trash into the truck so you could leave whatever you wanted on the curb and they would get rid of it. So easy.
We had a pool date with our favorite preschool teachers...it was so sad to say bye, wishing that Boden was going to get to have them this year...but we know that change can be good too!
Luke's birthday party at the fun Germantown splash pad!
We loved our neighborhood and walking to school and playing with friends after school, etc. We did lots of chalk, tree climbing, ninja playing, bike riding, etc on Kipling Rd. We will miss all our friends there.
SO grateful I was able to be there still for Rhonda to delivery her twins! Because we didn't live real close, we used every one of her appts at Walter Reed to get together. We had lots of Chick Fil A dates followed by me watching Ethan during her appts. On what turned out to be her last appt, our 20 mins with Ethan turned into 24 hours :) I was so happy we could help out while she was admitted and got settled. We got to visit a few times during her 2 weeks admitted to antepartum and then immediately following her delivery and visiting the babies in the NICU.
These were Grant's residency clinic shoes. He was determined to not throw them away until the bitter end. They had definitely seen better days. The soles had holes, the tops had holes, and I think he got great satisfaction out of tossing them in the trash as we cleaned out his office.
We were so grateful to have overlapped in Maryland with the Longs. We were connected by a mutual friend and they were moving from Pendleton to Walter Reed, so we were switching places. We were both able to offer each other some really good insight on the new place we'd be living. The only terrible part was that we all got along so well and loved hanging out...but only got to be together for about a month. We had some good times while it lasted though! And we hope to overlap again sometime.
Girls night for Sharon's birthday. I will miss these girls. Such a fabulous group of friends
We will miss Blake and Amy and Shanghai Taste. The dumplings and green beans were amazing! And somehow my kids always behaved well in this little tiny restaurant. (Terrible picture but amazing food and memories).
And mixed in with all this fun was a LOT of packing and moving. We decided to move ourselves, for a variety of reasons, many including the fact that we had heard so many horror stories about moves from DC and also because Grant had a car he needed to move anyways, so we though why not just do it all and make a little money in the process...
I waited until after the boys birthdays to start packing. We used the TV room and the office as staging areas and just packed a little at a time. It actually worked really well and I felt blessed to have a house that was big enough to have separate areas where I could store boxes and not feel like we were living in a moving mess for over a month. Dylan LOVES to help, and he's actually really good at it. I would try to give him the wrong tool, etc so that I could use the tool I needed to take stuff apart, but he knew exactly what he wanted and if the socket didn't fit on the nut, he would be mad and make me switch with him. He got very good at unscrewing things in this process.
My good helpers
I needed them out of my hair for awhile so I told them they would earn points for every time they wrote their name on a box.
Of course the weather was way hotter than it had been the previous several weekends but I was just so grateful that there was NO rain forcasted. It made everything about the process better to not worry about that.
Both of our parents flew in a few days before and were a big help with everything from playing with kids to loading the truck to cleaning the house. It was a great team effort for sure. I made these cups for all of us (Maryland to California 2019). I really was so grateful to have had the family support that we did. Alexa and our neighbor Jim also helped with some loading and were huge in helping us be efficient. Overall I was proud of our packing skills and thought it went well.
And the hardest part to watch about this move was seeing my kids say goodbye to friends. Rowan and Thomas got really close and loved playing together. He a few times before we left talked about how much he would miss his best friend and then since we've moved he still talks about him being his best friend. I know this will continue to get harder and harder with every move. We were lucky to have good friends that lived right by us so the kids got to play almost every day after school.
Goodbye awesome climbing tree and friends. Kipling Rd, you were good to us
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