Final days in San Jose

Our last few weeks in San Jose were wonderful and stressful and happy and sad all in one.  We tried our hardest to spend as much time with as many friends as possible, visit our favorite spots one last time and pack up little by little every day.

We went to playgroups and soaked up time with all the wonderful young moms (and kids) we have gotten to be friends with.  Here Eleanor is with her friend London Toolson.  London was born just a week after Eleanor.

I had one last visiting teaching visit with this wise friend of mine.   Sure will miss talking about life and having you hold my baby Bethany!

I had to try Icing on the Cake before leaving the South Bay so my friend Hope was kind enough to respond to my spontaneous afternoon text and met me there with her son Flynn. 

^^Flynn is an incredibly smiley boy but every time he gets those glasses on he makes that "cool face."  Love it!

And of course, I had to get one last batch of macarons from my favorite stop!

Eleanor and I accidentally matched one day.  This seems to happen more days than not.

We played games with the Beans and chose a particularly complicated one to learn that night.  It even involved YouTube-ing a 15 minute instructional video to figure it out.  Richard won (he always does!) and we were just grateful for an opportunity to hang out with the Beans.  

I got sentimental thinking about how big Eleanor was looking in her bathtub and how these were her last baths in her first home. 

^^The post-bath eye wipe.

We tried our best to avoid the tons of eating out that usually accompanies moving so I made a couple last grocery trips.  I had never put Eleanor in the grocery cart chair before and she was totally terrified by the whole thing.  

But by the end of the trip she stopped clutching on for dear life and instead sat up and interacted with everyone in sight. 

We dealt with major attachment issues where all Eleanor wanted to do was lay on top of me when all I needed to do was get some packing done. 

The bumbo saved our lives though and I just carried it from room to room as I packed. 

And here's a random picture that is slightly blurred and has nothing to do with packing at all but I still want to include it because goodness she's cute. 

We had one last date night with the Millers, who are the masters of creative dates.  Hope came up with the idea of creating Jackson Pollock inspired paintings so we each splattered away on our canvases and made Pollock masterpieces.  We had brought over our pack n play and had both of our babies sleeping away inside their apartment. 

Then the Millers kindly had us over again (along with Matt Holladay and the Beans) to watch the BYU game.  Of course this was before Taysom got hurt so the game was highly enjoyable as was the company. 

I sold our dining room table and chairs on craigslist (for just $50 less than what we bought it for the year before--yay!!) and had tried out Restor-a-Finish to freshen it up before selling it.  It worked so well that I went all Restor-a-Finish happy on all our wood pieces.  I had used Restore-a Finish on the left half of this small dresser below but not the right side. 

And here it is all done.  It's magic, I tell you!

We had the Beans over and then sent Aaron and Richard out to Kara's cupcakes for our sweet fix.  

Hope kindly watched Eleanor while I ran errands, which was SO great!

I started taking down our artwork only to discover that command strips take off the wall with them.  Whoever said that command strips save you from spackling holes was way off! 

And I took advantage of the thrift stores one last time before leaving.  I found this great two drawer chest at Salvation Army on a 50% off day (hello $20!), and when I saw the Henredon name stamped in the wood inside, I was sold.  It was in rough shape but nothing Restor-a-Finish can''t help!

Not pictured was the fun dessert night with the Case family (Jarelle was my college roommate who just happened to move to the Bay Area the week before we moved), the three Fridays in a row that my mom came down to help us pack up (she's the reason that we were all packed and ready to go!), the stacks of boxes that lined our apartment for that last week and the time Bryson Miller came on a Friday night to help us saran wrap our furniture.

We wish we could have done even more in those final weeks (I never made it to Half Moon Bay like I wanted to, bummer!) and of course we wish we could have hung out even more with everyone we love.  We absolutely loved living in the South Bay area but time ran out and we said goodbye on September 27th.  We so appreciate all the love we were shown those final days and are already missing everyone!