Yesterday was Thanksgiving, which was already one of my favorite holidays, but it’s so much more special now that we get to celebrate Ava’s birthday as well. This was an extra special birthday because it was her first one, and we had a house full of people to enjoy it with. There were ten adults (my Mom, Amy, Tom, Trevor, Emily, Derek, Laruen, John, Jessica, and myself) plus three babies (Malena, Cole, and Ava), and everyone had a great time.
We were waiting for this long weekend to break some very exciting news to our Mom’s in person, which is that Jessica is pregnant with our second child! We couldn’t help ourselves and ended up telling several other family members already, but were so excited to wait and see the expressions on our Mom’s faces when they got the news. Jessica is now six weeks along and has a due date of July 15. Obviously we’re thrilled about adding to our family and have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
My mom and I did the cooking for Thanksgiving and everything turned out delicious, then we got to enjoy Ava opening presents and getting messy with her first birthday cake. There is a 5 minute video of this below. Yesterday was definitely a day of enjoyment but today, and every other day leading up to the move back to Seattle next week, are days of work. We got a lot of work done today boxing things up but there is still so much to do. Luckily we will have the help of my Mom, Amy and Tom tomorrow, plus we have Amy staying to make the drive up to Seattle with us, which will be a huge help with Ava.
We’ll be arriving in Seattle a week from today and obviously there is so much to do between now and then but I have no doubt it will all go as planned. We also recently got the news that we were approved to rent the house that we were most interested in. It’s in northeast Bellevue right on the border between Bellevue and Redmond. Luckily for me the jiu–jitsu school I was most interested in is only 1.5 miles from our home and we have easy access to the freeway when commuting to the city for work. Having a house situated is a huge relief. Here’s the video of Ava with her first birthday cake.