Wow, so much to say….first off, our last few days in California were really great. We had a nice birthday dinner for Maria with Eric’s family and an awesome last Gina’s night. The movers were the nicest guys ever, which made moving our stuff really easy. On Saturday, our plans to spend the whole day cleaning and painting were thwarted- Jami and Sarah came down from San Francisco and surprised us!! It was such a wonderful surprise, totally worth whatever we are going to have to pay because we blew off cleaning! :) We painted for a little while and then Eric and I frantically tried to spend as much time with as many people as possible. We had a nice, although unfortunately short, visit with the Valdespino’s and then went out to a yummy dinner at The Cheesecake Factory with Sarah and Jason. It was really hard saying goodbye, but I didn’t cry until I got back to our empty apartment. It was a short cry, then I was ready to go!

We left Cali on Sunday morning as our “Kitty Choir” meowed on. After a couple hours of adjustment (the cats were not so happy about being in the car) everyone settled down for the ride. Tiger spent about half of the trip on my lap, and the other half in a make-shift house we made for them on the road (thank you K-Mart in Blythe, CA) Bailey chilled out in her house or layed down on the console between us, and Mooch traveled around the car and was quiet most of the time (except for when she starting the whole gang meowoing conveniently when we were going through a drive through window to get lunch - we were soooo embarrassed!)

The drive went by pretty fast, nothing too exciting except for an Ostrich farm that we passed (I thought that was pretty unique.) It turns out Texas is a pretty big state :) , so almost all of Monday was spent driving through it. We got into Austin that night and picked up the keys to our apartment on Tuesday morning. It is soooo cute! We never saw this floor plan, so we were a little nervous about the size. Luckily it turned out to be just right, and all of our stuff was delivered that night so we got right to work unpacking. We ate lunch at Chuy’s, a tasty Tex-Mex restaurant (more about that in the upcoming Top 10 list, hint hint) and then went grocery shopping. Wow! Things are certainly cheaper here- we went through the store amazed that a pound of ground turkey was about $1, and canned food was 33 cents! We felt like we were ripping the grocery store off! After we got over the excitment of getting such great deals, we went and got gas- $2.17 a gallon! Later we had dinner at a “Whataburger,” Austin’s version of a Fat Burger, but better.

On Wednesday, we spent the morning unpacking and then went to buy new coats (no one told us it gets below freezing here!) For dinner, we had the best BBQ ever at The Salt Lick. This will also be in the Top 10, but for now, all I’ll say is that it was an adventure just getting there. It was “damn near the end of the road,” or so the gas station attendant that gave us directions said. The restaurant’s slogan is “Way the heck out yonder, but worth every mile,” and it truly was.

Today was Eric’s first day at his new job, and I ran errands. All in all we are really enjoying Austin so far. Hopefully this weekend we will catch some live music, and of course see Harry Potter (I’m a dork, I know :))