We moved!

Last week we moved to a new house!  The new house is in Santa Clara, has four bedrooms, a laundry room, a dining room, an extra dining area (aka the playroom), a great back yard, a garage, and is just absolutely perfect for us!  Brett and I are so happy to have room to spread out and are thrilled to no longer be cramped in our tiny house in Palo Alto.  Moving and leaving our home and neighborhood in Palo Alto has been very bittersweet.  Although it was a real pain in the you-know-what to have all of us living on top of each other, that teeny two bedroom house was our HOME.  We lived there five years!  It is where we made so many memories.  Our three babies came home from the hospital to that house.  Our babies have grown up in that house.  Brett and I both felt like our hearts were broken in the days leading up to our move.  But I am happy to report that it took about one hour of being in our new house for the sadness to be over.  We have so much space here and it really makes a difference in our home life.  Brett and I tell each other every day that we love this house and are so happy here.

It has been fun exploring our new neighborhood.  On Monday I took the kids to the library which is less than a mile away.  It has a great kids area and Hank enjoyed reading books while we were there and he even checked a few out all on his own.  Today we are going over to the swim club a couple of blocks away from our house to meet a friend and her kids who are members there.  A very exciting thing for Brett about our new neighborhood is that we are really close to his favorite coffee shop - Barefoot Coffee  We used to drive down here from Palo Alto just to get it - it's that good!

These photos are from the first time we brought the kids to the house before we moved in.  I forced us to take a family photo on the front porch.  Hank was not happy and was trying to wiggle away.  (Hank has lately taken to refusing to participate in photos that really matter to me.  We had a family photo shoot with a real photographer two weeks ago and most photos are of Brett, me and the girls because Hank wanted to run around the entire time.  I think we did get one or two nice ones with all five of us.  More on that later.)

We had been talking up the "new house" to Hank a lot in the days leading up to him actually getting to see it.  We were worried about what a move would do to him and how he'd respond to new living arrangements so we wanted to try to get him used to the idea.  For days Hank was asking "when are we going to the new house?".  It was pretty cute and also hard to explain to him how we had to wait.  

To help ease him into the new house we brought a big bag of toys and let him play in the yard.  We also told him he could pick out his new bedroom.  Brett strongly steered Hank to choose the room we wanted for him.  :)

Hank was so excited about all the closets.  He kept going in them and closing the doors on himself so he could hide.  He would then laugh and pop back out.  He did this over and over.  Since we have moved in, he has made me get in the closets with him several times with the doors shut just so he could open them and peek out.

 

 

The girls liked the house too!  Ruby was chill and Charlotte was having a great time.   Since we have moved in, the girls have taken their crawling to the next level!  They are all over the house and really enjoying all the space too.

  

 

It was hard work doing all that exploring so he needed a refreshment when we got back to the van.  Oh, and he needed to "drive" too before he would get in his car seat.

Hank has really loved the new house.  When we get in the car and go somewhere he asks "can we go back to the new house?".  

We feel so blessed to have this house to call home!  It is going to be a great place for more memories to be made!

-a