Sweet HOME Santa Barbara

We finally moved into our gorgeous new house this week! And when I say "we," I mean us and our amazing guy friends who helped with all of the heavy lifting (thanks guys!). The house is perfect for us. Here are some pictures of it fresh after we moved stuff in. As we start unpacking and making it more homey, I'll post updates. 

The front door

The hallway (with Carly!)

My room!

One of the bathrooms

Our living room (the couch and tv are already set up now!)

The kitchen

The DISHWASHER!! (And James!)

The backyard

Me and our amazing dog (Carly's dog) Scooby!!

Our amazing friends/moving crew celebrating the move with pizza and beer!

Another big thanks to everyone that helped us move. You guys are all such amazing friends, and we can't wait to have you over for so many more fun nights!

WE HAVE A HOUSE!

A pest-free house that is! A beautiful, 4 bedroom house with a yard AND a dishwasher! Yupp, that's right, a dishwasher! Everything really must happen for a reason because I could not be more excited to move into this house. After two months of having to deal with this annoying pest issue, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel. We are finally going to have a place to call home again. And my friends can come visit me without sleeping on people's couches (shout out to Katie Neal who roughed it with me, what a pal!). Sorry there are no pics, and that this is a super short post. But we move in on Tuesday, so there are plenty of pictures to come!! A special thank you to everyone who let us crash on their couches during this stressful time. You guys are the best! Happy Almost Friday everyone!
 

I Kind Of Suck At Blogging...

Sooo, I kind of suck at blogging. I'm pretty surprised at how bad I am! But I'm gonna get better, cause I know there are so many readers that get disappointed when I take a long time between posts. It was recently pointed out to me that I have barely any pictures of my guy friends on my blog (sorry guys!), which is ridiculous because they're pretty awesome. So here they are, some of my amazing guy friends:

Mark, Richard, Kenny, Boz and James

AKA some of the guys from the DESIGNATED DRIVERS! Remember them? My softball team? Well, we just had our last game on Monday, and we won! Not only did we win (15-8), but we played the team we had played our very first game. And let's just say I don't remember the exact score, but it was probably switched around with a little more for them and a little less for us. So you know what that means, guess what team is the Most Improved! Next season is right around the corner and I can't wait to get started again. 

The girls of the Designated Drivers!

Some other stuff (not-so exciting stuff) going on in my life is that I'm kind of temporarily homeless. You know that awesome apartment I've talked about? The one that's perfectly located close to everything down town? Well surprise! It's not so perfect. I know, just when I had everyone thinking life was perfect right now. Turns out we've got some great pest problems that our land lords are kind of incapable of fixing. So, for the time being we're couch hopping and breaking our lease. Pretty exciting stuff, right? The good news is we find out tomorrow at 9:30 in the morning if we are approved for this gorgeous 4 bedroom house that's also downtown. Keep your fingers crossed for me! Here are some pictures of our adventures we've had while sleeping on people's couches:

I swore I could take this picture and fit us all in.

That's kind of better?

 

Katie came to visit from San Diego to join in on the couch hopping.

Thanks to all of the amazing friends that have let us stay on your couches! Hopefully we can return the favor when we get a lovely new house to live in! That's all for now. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

What I Did This Summer

Happy September, everyone! This is the first September that I am not starting school. I was definitely one of those closet nerds (or maybe not so closet?) that secretly loved the first day of school. Getting new outfits, meeting new teachers and even that first night of homework was pretty exciting for me. I'm crazy, I know. One of the upsides about going to UCSB was that we got 3 first days of school instead of just 2 (one of the many reasons that the quarter system kind of rocks). Anyway, usually on the first day of school, you share with everyone how you spent your summer. Since I won't be doing that this year, I'll just share it with all of you! (Whoever "you" might be). 

1. I graduated!

 

I officially am a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara with a BA in Math/Economics. Feels pretty good to be able to say that!

2. I moved into my new apartment in downtown Santa Barbara.

 

I moved in with these two lovely ladies right after graduation (literally right after our families left, Kristi and I rented a Uhaul by ourselves. I was pretty impressed by our moving abilities). It's been a blast living in a new place, not to mention a place that's walking distance from the shopping mall, movie theater and tons of fun bars for us to go to.

3. I went to Las Vegas.

 

I went to Vegas the weekend before my birthday, and had a blast! Picture about 10+ people all sharing a suite where the bathroom is bigger than the bedroom. Not quite sure who thought that was a good floor plan, but it sure made for a fun weekend!

At the highest bar in Las Vegas.

 4. I turned 22!

 

I officially became old when I celebrated my 22nd birthday. Thanks to everyone who helped make it special and to everyone who celebrated with me!

5. I went to Florida. 

 

The family and I vacationed to Florida in the peak of summer heat. I had never been, so it was a fun week with lots of new experiences. In the picture above, you can see the first thing I crossed off my "Florida To-Do List," I saw an alligator (actually a lot of them!). I spent my first full day in Florida at Gator Land. I have never seen so many alligators and crocodiles in my life! (Not even on tv!). 

6. I saw a space shuttle launch.

 

 We got pretty lucky with our timing, and happened to be in Florida right when the last space shuttle was taking off. We were told there would be hours of traffic, and that there was only a 30% chance that the launch would actually happen, but we decided to test our luck and drive up the day of anyway. Well lucky we were. There was almost no traffic, and we were able to get a table at a restaurant with a great view of the launch (which DID happen, despite the odds). It was really surreal to hear the count down and watch the shuttle take off into outer space. Definitely an awesome experience that I will always remember. Another "must-do" while in Florida is go to Universal Studios:

 

But more specifically, go HERE:

7. I WENT TO HARRY POTTER WORLD!

 

Yupp, definitely the highlight of the trip, and possibly of the entire summer. Harry Potter is pretty much the book of the generation, so to see it all re-enacted in real life was awesome. Walking around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade made me feel like I had just landed myself in one of the books. 

And let me tell you, I LOVED it! It was definitely an amazing and memorable summer. Hope everyone else had a great summer too! And for those of you starting school (probably no one reading this blog), please live it up for me.