Saying goodbye to Stanford

The day has come when Britton is done with school!  He's been a student for 21 years, but I think he is ready to move on now.  We are incredibly proud of his hard work these past five years at Stanford.  He attended the graduation ceremony in June, but all they gave him was a paper that basically said "get back to work."  So he finished writing all 252 pages of his thesis, and defended it August 3.  The Olson family attended the public portion where Britton gave a presentation of his research along with other students, friends, and a panel of four professors and one adviser from his time at Lawrence Livermore Lab.  The five people on his defense panel had to sign off on his thesis which was edited and triumphantly, officially turned in on August 19, after we moved to Brentwood.  That day also happened to be our sixth anniversary which we romantically spent editing Britton's thesis. 

After spending five years at Stanford there are too many things that we will miss.  The first is all the friends we made.  Pictured above is Will having tea with his favorite buddies at Rainbow school.  We will definitely miss that great preschool.

We will miss all our neighbors and instant playmates for Will.  There was mostly girls in our courtyard so Will had to be flexible and play a lot of house, tiger family, and sometimes even fairies.  He always insisted on being the prince, dad, or boy fairy.

We'll miss all the fun parties and events.  These pictures are from Will's fourth birthday party.  It was pirate themed and we had a bounce house and treasure hunt for all the kids. 

Elliot will miss his buddy Holt.  I hear Holt will still stand outside our gate and say, "choo choo."  He loved our toys more than us.


We had lots of fun activities with our neighbors.  Below we are checking out the solar eclipse together.  Since we only live an hour and a half away, I'm tempted to just show up to the next courtyard campout or Halloween party. 

I'll miss all the playgroups, running buddies, fun walks on campus, and easy access to Stanford sports. 
But we knew it would have to come to an end some day.  You know all your neighbors will move away, but it's still hard when they do.  And now I'm the neighbor that moved away, and someone else took our place. 
Now that I've written this post hopefully I can look forward.  There are some exciting things in our future including... a house!  A baby!  A minivan!  Don't laugh, I'm really excited.  Britton will be spending less time at work (I think).  We'll be living closer to Olson family, and we can always make some new friends.