We had an art date with our friend Nina in her garage studio. She is so very talented and we have a few of her paintings. She also teaches kids’ art classes in the summer at Country Village and Aiden was old enough to attend this past summer.

We did our usual roam around Redmond town center, riding escalators and buying snacks.

We were able to coordinate another Team Awesome gathering with almost everyone from our team but Laura who had move to California. This was a great group of people that I started my career with (and became parents together) and we couldn’t have had a better Team Awesome leader.

We never missed an opportunity for bubble tea and milk powder buns (for me it was usually a corn and ham bun or red bean mochi).

We hung out with our neighbor Arshan, and Ishrat made a beautiful and delicious going away dinner for us. She is a wonderful cook and we spent many mornings having tea together on the weekdays.

We spent a lot of free time with Connor and Genevieve who were a few houses up the street from us. Moving away from them was a little easier because they would be moving only a couple months after us to the Chicago area, and we were excited to be within driving distance of each other. Aiden and Connor both love chai tea and are always building train tracks together. Oliver and Genevieve are great little friends who love each other.

We played at the park and slumber partied with Tom and Emily. Several of our other friends came to hangout throughout the day. We had a lazy morning with bagel breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and The Lion King. We had one more dinner with them before the kids left. The picture was full of smiles and then afterwards it was nothing but tears, tears, tears. It hurt my heart to leave these two (three).

I squeezed in several working coffee dates with Hanako when we could find time. We almost never take picture of ourselves but manage to take many pictures of our coffee and snacks. We usually required a work break to run through Ben Franklin for some craft inspriation.

We had a lot of boxes piled up, Andrew and the boys hopped on a plane to leave them in Indiana with our parents where they had a fun-filled week of grandparent and cousin time, and I kept on packing.

We rented a storage unit to get the house emptied out, found a realtor we like, and other than that it’s business as usual.

We all test drove a Tesla…. for fun one weekend.

Waffle brunch with some of our favorites!

The kids love these candy making kits we find at Uwajimaya. I would secretly like to do them myself after they’re in bed.

We visited Andrew at work in Redmond Town Center for coffee and cake pops. Aiden dressed for the occasion. I don’t remember why we painted faces, but they loved it.

After the party we headed home and hung out with Tom and Emily for a bit, then opened presents. We also got to have Aunt Sarah in town for the weekend, so here and Aiden snuggled up to watch Harry Potter together and took Brody for lots of walks.

Andrew and I wrote Aiden a letter (to keep in his baby box) and tickets to a play with his friends, The 3 Little Pigs. We also made sprinkle and white chocolate marshmallows and strawberries for birthday evening dessert.

We happened to meet a family up the street from us over the summer who also have 2 kids the same age as ours, so we have friends to walk with to school.

Kelly was an amazing officiant and once the stress of the ceremony was passed, it was time to celebrate.