So we officially know what dog we are going to get. Phoebe will be a black and white miniature schnauzer and will turn 8 weeks old sometime this week! Hopefully we will be able to see pictures of her on Wednesday. Will and I went out this weekend and picked up a few things for when my dad is able to pick her up and take her back to their home (sometime the week after I graduate). They will bring her up for Will's graduation and we will finally get to meet her! 

On a side note: Pinning ceremony is tomorrow, I have an exam on Monday and Tuesday, nothing on Wednesday and graduation on Thursday! 

So I think that one of my most annoying qualities (to my mom) is that I like to know what is for dinner... sometimes days in advance. My family has traditionally not planned out meals until about 30 minutes before supper time. Imagine my joyous surprise when my mother-in-law introduced me to planning meals out for the week. I was in love. So that is how I do things now that I am on my own and responsible for feeding Hubby. Typically I will sit down and plan out a weeks worth of meals for us and then go to the grocery store and stock up for that week. I love doing things this way because I always know what we have and what we will be eating for the next few days. It also helps us save money by not buying extra food and it eliminates the purchasing of snack food (Cheez-its are my weakness but I have never purchased them since being married).

Now, 9 months into doing things this way I am bored. I hate planning meals every week and I put it off until the last possible moment. Currently Will and I eat a lot of the same meals every couple of weeks but I feel this pressure to have new and healthy meals for us. So I feel like changing things up and hopefully make things a little bit easier... especially for when we are both working.

Here is my plan: I want to plan out a month of meals... without repeating a meal. My goal is to have various meats each day like beef, pork, chicken, fish, and possibly a vegetarian meal here and there. I could then use this month plan over and over again since each entree would be spread out over 4 weeks. Of course I will need to plan for favorite meals (aka pizza) a little more frequently and account for family dinners and nights eating out. So I think having 5 varied meals planned for each week for one month would be awesome.

I need your help. I am stuck in a rut with the current meals I am use to fixing and I need some ideas from you. Please comment below with some recipes that you love! Hopefully in a couple of weeks when I have this compiled I will be able to figure out how to post it on here and share with you!

Apparently some people are having problems commenting on this post... the one time commenting needs to work! So please send recipes in a facebook message or email me. Thanks!

... I will be completely done with work for my degree. I will have taken one last "leap" with my fellow nursing students (into a pool) to celebrate. My family will be heading up and I will be packing because in one week and one day... I will graduate!

Also, our puppy will be 8 weeks old next week and we will finally get to see a picture of her! My awesome parents will pick her up the week after I graduate and watch over her until Will and I come home (thanks Mom and Dad)! We are super pumped and cannot wait to meet her! I am sure that Kitty is super excited to have a playmate for a few weeks... we'll see about that.

Here is me and Will on Easter morning... Aren't we just the cutest almost-married-for-one-year couple? I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband.

So for Easter this year our family went to the Cardinals game. We all had a wonderful time and the Cardinals won! The actual game was pretty boring and it ended up raining but we still had a good time.  Once you go to a game in a suite you get a little spoiled. Having the climate controlled area, food, big screen tv, and a clean bathroom is wonderful - especially when the weather isn't all that great. 

The fam.

Me, my Momma, and Amanda

Husband and Wife

Unfortunately Will was stuck finishing up a final project while at the game. The one time he went outside to watch the game was when Molina hit a homerun! What good timing because seriously, that was the only exciting thing that happened. Anyway, a good time was had by all and I love my family :)

Will and I are so excited to move into our nicer and newer apartment in Austin. We will always have a special place in our hearts for our current apartment since it was our first place together. Here is our old apartment:

Our bathroom with one sink.

Our kitchen with plenty of counter space and storage .

What use to be our dining room. My sister took our old table for her new apartment. Let's just ignore the fact that we have two folding chairs sitting there and instead look at my new purse!

Will's domain.

Our bedroom. We neglected to get a bed frame for this apartment and are really looking forward to having that luxury in Austin.

Current closet jam packed. 

Our living room with the horrible vertical blinds and ugly slip covers.

And here is our new apartment in Austin that we will officially be moved into on June 2. If anyone would like to come down and help us assemble some furniture and unpack our things just let me know!

Our beautiful bathroom with tons of counter space.

Our wonderful living room and dining room with lots of space and natural light (and no vertical blinds.)

Half of our master closet.

The other half of our master closet. Do you know how many shoes I could fit in this thing?!

Our slightly smaller but updated kitchen.

So that is what we have in store. I will have to post more pictures when we get down there and have it all furnished and decorated.

7 weeks from today Hubby and I will pack up our car and head to our new place in Austin, TX. We are going to drive down there in two days instead of the usual 1 day trip. Since we will hopefully have our puppy, Phoebe, by then we are planning on having to make a lot of potty breaks for her while driving. This will also give us an opportunity to do a little shopping and most importantly, eat at the new In-N-Out burger in Allen, TX. The store will be about a week old by the time we get down there so hopefully we won't have a 3 hour line to wait in.  Even if there was a huge line we would still wait. Did I mention that we had In-N-Out burger every single day of our honeymoon? Romantic, I know.

Before we get the keys to our new place, eat at In-N-Out, or get Phoebe we have one last hurdle:  graduation!  The semester is really winding down for me. I only have 3 weeks until graduation and I am mostly done with my classwork. Unfortunately for Will, he has a huge final lab project that will keep him super busy for the next two weeks. I will be graduating in Chicago on May 5th and Will will be graduating in Champaign on May 15th.

In a week and a half we are heading down to Bethalto to celebrate Easter with my family. I am so excited for that weekend but it is going to be bittersweet. This may be the last holiday that I get to spend with the whole family for the rest of the year. Unfortunately new nurses are not always offered time off on the holidays and we don't know when we will be able to come back to Illinois. So we will have to enjoy what little time we have left and stuff ourselves with broccoli-cheese casserole and dumplings. We will be celebrating Easter on Saturday this year and then on Sunday we are going to church at the local high school and going to the Cardinals game that afternoon. The last time we went to a Cards game as a group we had a really good time, so Easter Sunday should be extra awesome.

We are anxiously looking forward to all of these exciting events. I think I will use this blog as a way to document what is going on in this stage of our life and to post lots of pictures.