July

July started with our offer being accepted on our house. We spent a lovely 4th of July weekend in Santa Barbara with Lane's brother Ian and his wonderful family. We hit the beach, the pool, bbq'd, had a great view of the fireworks, went to the drive-in, and got frozen yogurt. As usual, Gabriela spent every waking and not waking moment at her cousins' sides and we hardly saw her the entire trip. Although I did catch a glimpse of her in a fashion show in the living room one afternoon. 

The rest of the month basically flew by. Our loan and the inspections all cleared, and we closed in 3 weeks. This meant I was going all over town getting boxes and packing up our whole apartment while entertaining two kiddos. Thank goodness for totally awesome friends who watched Gabriela for the entire day a few times so I could get stuff done. 

Somehow, we made it down to Gilroy also and had a lovely dinner with Noal and Elizabeth and then spent the following day with grandma and grandpa at Gilroy gardens. We also got in some visit time with Grandma Chaney. 

We signed the papers for the house on my birthday. We also had a fun bday dinner including Cynthia and Dan (so glad they are on the west coast now), Matthew and Banu, and Theresa and Andrew. Theresa baked me a cake even. I love my family. Somehow, we were able to get seated at our favorite restaurant, Burma Superstar. While we waited to be seated, the kids made faces and acted goofy to the couple dining on the window. Danny Glover sweetly smiled and entertained their need for attention before I shooed them away. 

The next night my totally awesome sisters came back to watch the kids so lane and I could go on a date. I'm not really sure what those are anymore. We went to a totally decadent dinner hosted by Lane's work where I surprised myself by successfully engaging in adult conversation. Who knew I still had it in me?

There is nothing like moving one weekend before throwing a birthday party. Gabriela requested a rainbow bday party this year. I tried to keep it simple and it was a hit. We had rainbow fruits and rainbow veggies, rainbow cupcake papers for our vanilla cupcakes with strawberry whipped cream frosting and rainbow sprinkles. We gave out rainbow watercolor paint sets and rainbow crayons and called it a day. There were easily over 40 people there. There I go, keeping things "simple".

On our anniversary we got the keys to our new house, lucky 13, baby. We had a family picnic dinner on the floor in our empty house and went home to pack. 

The next thing I knew, our apartment was empty, we had two 14 foot uhaul trucks filled to the brim and then emptied again in our new place. We had quite the (totally awesome) moving crew. 

Thank you Cynthia, Dan, Matthew, Banu, Grandpa, Nate, Heather and Serkan. 

We are nearly unpacked but haven't yet hung anything on the walls.  Things don't seem to be slowing down either.