We're Moving!

As I mentioned in the last post, we are in the process of moving. Our apartment here has been fine, and looking back on it, we both agree that this was the perfect place for us to live this year. It is extremely close to the city, with plenty of shops around us to make life easy. It is literally 100 feet from the metro in a well-lit and highly trafficked area, so it is safe. While these things have been great this year, unfortunately they have not come cheap. We decided that as great and easy as it is here, it is just too expensive. So, several months ago we started the process of looking for place to move.

Finding apartments here is very tricky. You can't really live in DC itself unless you have ALOT of money or are willing to live in the slums. So, the city was out. There are lots of nice places out down 66, but none of them are very metro accessible, which is still important to us. But, eventually, we found a place that met about 95% of our needs.

We are moving about 10 miles further out of the city. Technically we are going to be in Alexandria, just outside of the Beltway, but we'll also be REALLY close to Springfield and Kingstowne area. We like the area because it feels a little bit more like home - they have a walmart, a kohls, a movie theater, grocery store, puttputt golf, and other places we are used to right around the neighborhood. The community itself that we are living in used to be condos that they have converted into apartments. Each building is only 4 floors (WAY smaller than the 17 in our current building) and we are living on the 1st. This should make Scarlett's life a lot better. She can actually remember what real grass is like again : ) For significantly less than our current apartment, we have a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment with full size washer/dryer in the unit (not the one for midgets that we currently have), our own single car garage, a large patio, and about 400 sqft. more space than here in Arlington. Technically, we are about 1/4 mile from the metro. You could walk it, but its not a real walker friendly route. BUT, our complex has a free shuttle in the morning and the evening to take you to the metro, and if you don't want to take their shuttle, the city bus stops right outside too. It's about a 5 minute ride to the metro station. We are going to be 5 metro stops further out than we currently are here, so I guess we will truly be commuters now.

This past weekend, we took possession of the apartment and decided to paint a few accent walls to make it homier. Moment of honesty - sometimes I struggle with being jealous of our friends and Caleb's siblings - we aren't ready to start a family yet, we don't have the job security to buy a house, we don't have the money to take vacations to fun places like hawaii or Europe. It's really hard for us to feel like we are really young married adults with our current situation and not just college kids. I know that is the way it has to be for now, and I'm sure someday we will look back at this time with fond memories, but right now, I'm just jealous of our friends and ready to move on to the REAL young married adult stage of life. Anyways, enough of that. This weekend we were able to go to Sherwin Williams and buy paint together... which I know doesn't sound like much. BUT, it was a HUGE deal to us. We spent WAY more time in there than we needed making plans for "when we grow up and have a real house." I told Caleb, we may not be in the same place as most of our friends our age, but by golly we can buy paint too! It's like we are slowly making our way into the world of being married adults haha. It may sound dumb, but here is a picture of the first bucket of paint we bought together as a married couple!

In case you were wondering, the color is foxy... it's in my kitchen : )


I wish I could say that we are expert painters.... We spent HOURS meticulously putting up tape and drop clothes, but we still had a few spills on the guard rail and ceiling. Oh well, nothing got on the carpet, it was fun and I actually love the colors. This weekend the real moving begins. Caleb's friend Jim is going to help us get all of our furniture from the 9th floor down to the loading dock, onto the truck, to the new apartment and unloaded..... all in 105 degree weather! My parents helped us move in up here last summer and as soon as we got the stuff up to the apartment they let us know that they would be conveniently unavailable whenever we decided to move it out haha. I don't blame them....Definitely be sure to check back in a few days for the before/after pictures of our apartment as well as the stories I am sure to come out of our moving adventure.

Happy Harry Potter 7 release day to all!!! And yes, I did go see the 1am showing last night AND still make it into work ON TIME and stay concious. We'll see how helpful I am when it comes to moving tomorrow... haha