Everything All at Once

As of August 29, we had officially closed on our house in Austin! We had a lot of work to do to get it ready to move in. As of August  31, we got to celebrate JON's birthday! Then we got our apartment moved over, our stuff delivered from storage, new windows estimates... THEN, we got to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and THEN we got DEBBIE's birthday on September 6th.

We were pretty stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed for a while there, but we made it! We had some really amazing helpers in Alyssa, Craig, and Becca (yay new Austin friend!) as we couldn't do everything ourselves.  We continue to be extremely grateful for the amazing baby that Gabi is! Even though having an infant for the move adds its challenges (less hands for sure!), Gabi is so easy-going and flexible, thank goodness!

With all hands in, we had great help with cleaning, cutting shelf liner, and most certainly taking turns with the Gabi. (I think Gabi was the preferred job...)

Alyssa takes one for the team as she cleans the cabinets above the fridge. How else do you reach them?

Gabi FINALLY gets to eat like a big girl in her new house in her brand new high chair!

CAUSE...?

...and EFFECT?

Like stated earlier, all hands were helping, even the little ones:

But of course we could not ignore Jon's birthday in all the chaos. Alyssa and Debbie plotted a birthday surprise for both husbands (as Craig's birthday is less than a short month away), and we arranged for Team Cohen and Team Gilden to conveniently show up at the same time at a park where the birthday boys were presented with their very own tennis rackets. A fun birthday experience was had by all. Happy Birthday to JON and CRAIG! (And thank you to Craig's parents, Jay and Jan, for watching Gabi during the tennis "match"...meaning Jon and Craig hit the ball back and forth with relatively good aim while Alyssa and Debbie felt successful when they actually hit the ball...)

And a HUGE thank you to Aunt Syssa and Uncle Craig for watching Gabi that night so we could enjoy a stress-free, baby-free birthday dinner out! :)

Celebrating the Jewish New Year didn't stop us from celebrating my last birthday in my 20s! Thank you to Jon for arranging some fun at "Main Event," a great entertainment destination where we all enjoyed some glow golf (!), cosmic bowling, and a Happy Hour drink to kick the night off!

The interesting thing to me is that even with a drink in our system, the whole group still managed to arrange ourselves in the exact same formation for both pictures (baby and all). I didn't notice it at the time.

girl's gotta play

"the Aunt Syssa shot"

We then went out to a lovely dinner where we enjoyed yummy food and Gabi got to try her very first pickle. She didn't seem to mind it as much as we anticipated.

...thinking about it...

...not too bad!

Back at the ranch, Becca (and Seth and Nora) came over to the house and brought some yummy cupcakes for us all to enjoy for dessert. Thanks to all for helping me celebrate a great birthday.