It is finished.

You never get to leave like you wanted to, no matter how well you planned. West Point has been an unbelievably special two years for us, and I had big plans to say goodbye. I didn't do one last run up to our favorite Catskills swimming hole, or a final jog across the Bear Mountain Bridge. I never did take the kids to Coney Island, or even the Statue of Liberty. We skipped the Hudson Valley Taco Fest in favor of a Target run for packing tape, and our last trip to Grasshopper Grove got rained out.

The movers came as scheduled.

Somewhere in there Seth got promoted to Associate Professor,

and our beloved Superintendent, in one of his last acts before retiring, made time to pin LTC rank on me--in what was accidentally the most funny, lovely ceremony on this very beautiful day. (Seth's insistence on Loughran's catering did not go unnoticed, either, and the party afterward was nothing short of terrific.)

The kids had a great time roaming Trophy Point, oblivious to the million dollar views. This last picture I took of Finley and Tommy Ryan will always be one of my favorites.

Having survived a pressure cooker of a couple days, we fled to Bull Pond. It was a happy accident of fate that we had won (literally) the lottery and reserved an entire lake, a boathouse with boats, and two cabins for a mini-vacation while movers carted all our belongings away.

Mom & Dad were a godsend,

Finley and Ford had a blast,

absurd amounts of s'mores and hot dogs were charred and consumed,

zero fish were caught,

and a good time was had by all, as we started our rounds of farewells in earnest.

(This picture cracks me up, since it appears to just be kids jumping off a dock, but if you look closely it's also Mom on the paddleboat with the beer resupply FTW.)

And then it was pretty much over. There was a flurry of work and evals and replacements and last BBQs every night for a week

(punctuated by a move to the Fort Montgomery Holiday Inn, which would have been super nuts if the kids hadn't cared about one thing and one thing only: the pool),

and Saturday morning I drove north with the kids for a quick jaunt to Rhode Island, and Seth drove south with a uhaul full of guns and liquor (no kidding.)

And, unceremonious as it was, shoving kids in PJs in the car at 6am, West Point really was in our rearview mirror.  I've been a little nostalgic about it, which goes against the grain of an Army kid, as the dust has gradually settled.

Luckily, Rhode Island and New England sunsets and catchup time with Bex was chicken soup for the soul.

The kids slept all the way to the NJ state line this morning, apparently summered out already.

Naturally, five minutes after I took this we had a tire blowout and spent an hour on the side of I-78 in PA before limping- via Uber- ruefully back into NJ to await the intervention of a Monday mechanic.

Road trips with toddlers are not for the faint of heart. Luckily, we found a hotel with a pool and kids are resilient.

But we may never escape what Finley calls "stinky New Jersey."