Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

 One of these days I promise to try and start posting regularly again.  It's been a busy spring and beginning of summer for me and L.  Lots of stuff happening in these parts.  Since I was last posting on a frequent basis, I went to Miami for Nolly's bachelorette party (POST RING PASS!!!  Yes, we are awesome and we did a ring pass for her since all the attendees were Pi Phis),

L and I spent his birthday weekend in NYC (I'm horrible and didn't take any pics), Nolly and Flad got married in Houston,

my sister and brother-in-law came and visited us for a long weekend (there are no post-worthy pics), L and I went to Austin for the 4th of July (if I can muster it, I'll recap the travel misadventures in a post... it was unbelievably ridiculous... but of course I have zero pics from any of it - do we see a recurring theme here?), and we just got back from HSG's wedding in Mexico.

We're quite the globetrotters this year!

With the decision to stay here and take the new job in place, L and I both agreed in the end that a move is in order.  We've spent a lot of time trying to decide whether or not it would be better to continue renting or to buy... the idea of owning is both appealing and daunting.  Part of the agreement to stay included negotiating a dog clause.  We are now in agreement that we WILL be getting a dog soon, although probably not until after we move. Once that decision was made, we started pondering where exactly we might want to live.  The same weekend we had to decide whether to stay in VA or go back to Texas, we had breakfast on Sunday morning and run some errands.  On the way home, we randomly popped into a condo building we've seen many times while eating at a place that occupies space in the first floor of one of the buildings.  The building is new construction and we knew they were selling different floor plans, so we went in to get more information.  As it turned out, they had an open house going on that day so we were able to walk through the building and see all the different floor plans that were still available.  We immediately were drawn to three of them, but at the time, we still didn't know if we were going to stay in Virginia or move back to Texas.  Long story short, we did research on previous units sold in the building, went to some open houses for other properties, checked into some apartment buildings, and ultimately we decided we think we're ready to buy.  Then we had to figure out what we could afford to buy, so once we knew that, we decided which place we wanted and got the ball rolling.  We submitted our offer about two weeks ago and it was accepted (woo hoo!!!).  We close on September 14 and move the following day.

After living in our current house with its very small one bathroom and very small galley kitchen, I cannot say it enough how excited I am about our new place!  You better believe it has an open floor plan with a kitchen that's about twice the size of our current one and TWO full bathrooms (the master bathroom is big enough to have a small party in and we'll have our own sinks.  You have no idea how amazing this is since we can't both look in the mirror at the same time in our current place).  I'll post pictures at some point, but for the moment, I don't want to jinx anything.