ch-ch-changes

N. and i are officially settled in. officially. it's only taken us a while because we had to stain our ikea kitchen table and chairs (which now does not look so ikea-ish, yay!), and get a dog. so we now live together, on our own, in a very, very cute place.

i like to call it "casa de awesome."

and i thought i'd share some pictures of the whole process.

this is obviously the before pictures. our stuff overflowed into the living room of the house we'd been living in. this isn't even half of our stuff and, funnily enough, most of this stuff is from my bedroom. we were so lucky to have a bunch of our friends come over on what was possibly the first hottest day of the year to help us move.

i'm proud and glad to say that the apartment looked like this for only a few hours. as soon as we got the stuff moved in, my old roommate, M., helped me unpack the entire kitchen while N. and her husband J. went to go and pick up the new grill his mom bought him for his grad school graduation gift.

happily enough, we now live in a very comfy 2 bedroom apartment. we use one of the bedrooms as an office space, we have a nice fenced in backyard, and we are so excited to finally be on our own. i think we've both had reservations in the last three years about taking this next step in our relationship (which is why we kept deciding that we weren't ready to), but now that we've done it, we're both realize that it was just the natural progression of things.

and finally, meet finnegan! this is finn, our newly adopted 6 year old border collie/australian shepherd mix. he is possibly the smartest dog in the world, but i may be a bit biased since i've noticed that i've been acting like a new mother ever since we brought him home.

dogs are so interesting and entertaining. he never tires. he always wants to play. he's extremely well-trained and is apparently an escape artist (he got out of our 7 foot fenced in back yard the first day we left him alone and leapt in to our neighbor's - whose name is also finnegan! - back yard).

he's also terrified of loud noises so we're already a little apprehensive about the fireworks on the 4th of july.

my life has become consumed by caring for my dog.

this is another one of those reasons why, thank God, i no longer have room to stress out about the bar exam.