Life Lately {vol. 23}

I've been reading like a maniac lately, and I just finished this a few days ago! It was a really great, easy, thoughtful read and I'd definitely recommend it!

I got my hair cut and re-colored by Chelsea at Art of Life Aveda Salon! Not only is Chelsea adorable and perfect in every way, but the girl knows how to refresh some color and turn my dirty, low-maintenance hair into something beautiful!

I also checked out Power Life Yoga for the first time and got my butt kicked during my very first workout there! Wowza!

On Friday, J drove down from Iowa City and we went to Mixology at the Science Center! It's basically an event where they open the Science Center up to 21+ only and serve alcoholic drinks while all the "adults" have the run of the entire building. This mostly entailed playing with lots of kids toys. It was an EXCELLENT decision.

We are very, very cool. As you can see.

While shopping for wine, I felt compelled to take a picture of the Hawkeye Vodka. No one from law school understands what Hawkeye is except my good friend Erin, who's from South Dakota. She understands. You might as well buy rubbing alcohol, but this made up more of my college years than it probably should have, haha.

Centro is one of my favorite restaurants in Des Moines, and it never disappoints!

J ordered this vegetarian gnocchi, and boy did I wish I could have eaten his entire plate of it. WOW. Quickly becoming obsessed with gnocchi.

I got a really sweet card and box of cards from Pilot Pens!

What was intended to be a simple Snapchat turned into one of my favorite pictures of the two of us. I'm pretty sure this exemplifies us as people.

We went out to Oyama to celebrate my acceptance into the Daniel Webster Scholar program (and because Oyama is the best sushi ever), and the sushi chefs gave us another free appetizer! They're seriously the nicest people there!

Sometimes I think my boyfriend can't get any cuter, AND THEN HE DOES.

After dinner, we headed over to Petland to play with puppies. I hate Petland, but I love puppies, so I figure it's morally okay to play with them as long as I don't buy things there and contribute to puppy mill culture. Anyway, we found these two boxer puppies which I insisted we play with together. It was a really, really good choice.

They were seriously the most adorable puppies. They were brother and sister, very rambunctious, and to-die-for cute!

Also, this puppy exists. Like, it's a real, living being while being impossibly cuter than anything else on earth. It seriously looked like a stuffed animal.

It was really hard to leave J and the kitties and drive back to Des Moines on Sunday. I basically won't see J until we're about to fly to Hilton Head on the 4th! :(

Monday night, Des Moines experienced some pretty crummy weather. Enough that the tornado sirens went off - apparently they also go off when the wind is strong enough, which I guess is understandable but MAYBE get a different siren for that compared to a tornado, because I was so scared I was shaking. I haaaate tornadoes. :(((

Because I was so scared and wired from the adrenaline, I couldn't sleep... So I ended up reading a ton! I'm reading this AMAZING book on Catherine the Great right now, and I couldn't put it down!

Between the stress of storms and reading well into the night, I only got 4.5 hours of sleep Monday night. Starbucks wasn't just a luxury Tuesday morning - it was 100% necessary to keep me awake and productive!

 My mom got be this beautiful green dress the other day, and I finally had an excuse to wear my sweet "cat lady" pins! I love how the green of my dress and the red of my hair look together! :)

It's been a really long, interesting few weeks! Work's been going really well and I've been learning a lot. But to be honest, I did not miss the storms back in New Hampshire. It was nice to just be able to enjoy the thunderstorm without worrying that a tornado was going to form. 

I was sooo exhausted when I got home from work last night (again, that whole, 4.5 hours of sleep thing). I managed to read my book on Catherine the Great while I made dinner, but at 7:00 last night, I gave up and went to bed... and slept until 6:30 this morning. 11.5 hours of sleep, and I'm feeling pretty great today. I still need coffee, but it felt so good!

How has your week been? Do you hate tornadoes as much as I do?