2012: The Best Year Ever

2012 was a huge year. My life in 2011 and my life in 2012? Completely different. In a good way. But seriously. Things could not be more different now than they were just a year ago.

January
- We got engaged. (Not technically January, but December 28, 2011 is pretty close.... So I'm going to count it.)
- We started planning our wedding and picked a date, location and I found a wedding dress.

February
- Chuck flew to Boston to interview for LGO.

Interview Day!

March
- We found out Chuck got into MIT which meant we found out we'd be moving in a matter of a few months.

Out celebrating LGO, two days after we found out.

April
- I went to LA with my best friend to visit our other best friend and we went SKYDIVING. The decision to do this went something like this (via texting):
Liz: "Hey we should go skydiving in LA!"
Me: "Ok!"
Liz: "Seriously?!!?!?!?"
Me: "YES!"
Group text:
Liz: "Hey Emily, we think we should go skydiving when we're in LA in a few weeks."
Emily: "HELL YES."

And so it was decided.

Right before we got on the plane to jump out. So jealous of Liz's purple suit.

I promise you, riding in that rickety old plane was way scarier than jumping out of it.

May
- Chuck left his job at GE and I left my job at the Kentucky Center.

The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts.

 - We packed up our entire lives, said goodbye to our family and friends, and moved to Boston.

We look thrilled. This is what 16 hours in a car will do to you.

 June
- Chuck started school at MIT.

- I started a new job at MIT.

July
- We spent the 4th of July in the birthplace of America! Probably my favorite thing we did all summer.

August
- Chuck finished his first semester of grad school.
- We moved into a new apartment in Cambridge.
- We got married and I became Rachel Cummings!

Gettin married.

Thank you to the cranky desk clerk who took this picture for us at almost 3 am when we arrived at the Seelbach.

 September
- We went to Maine! A state I was pretty sure I would never visit.

- Emily visited us in Boston.

October
- We camped in New Hampshire.

- Hurricane Sandy happened.

November
- My sisters visited us in Boston!

Sami, you're supposed to lay ON the air mattress, not UNDER it.

Laura, enjoying a tasty beverage at an Italian restaurant in the North End.

- My childhood best friend Lauren visited us in Boston!

- We found out Chuckie got an off-cycle internship with Amazon and started planning to move to Seattle.

December
- End of Chuck's 2nd semester of MIT.
- Traveled to Louisville to spend 2.5 weeks with friends and family for Christmas!

2013 is going to have a hard time living up to 2012.

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's to new beginnings, new friendships, new challenges and everything else new that comes with a new year!

Camping

This past weekend was a long weekend. I had off work Monday for Columbus Day and Chuckie had off both Monday and Tuesday. For part of the long weekend, we went camping!

Our campsite was somewhere in the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  We got to the campsite late Friday night when it was already dark.  I helped the guys set up our tent, and by helped I mean watched them set it up, and then we sat around the fire with all of the other people who were already there and settled in. The best part of Friday night was the s'mores.

Saturday morning, we woke up, had breakfast and hung around for a little bit while everyone slowly woke up. Seeing our campsite in the daylight for the first time was really exciting. I had no idea we were surrounded by such beautiful scenery!

After everyone was awake, we got ready to go on a hike. One group chose to go on an all day hike, and another group chose to do a less ambitious hike for just a few hours. As you might guess, we went with the less ambitious group, as we aren't expert hikers like some of Chuck's classmates!

Jose made sure to bring a whistle and a compass. Safety first!

Our hiking group.

 We stopped at a nice viewpoint and took pictures for a while.

MIT in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

LGO in the White Mountains of New Hampshire!

 

After taking all of the MIT and jumping pictures, our group split as some people wanted to continue hiking and others didn't. We went back to the campsite and right when we got back it started raining, so we had to hang out in our tents for a little while. I napped a little while Chuckie watched out the little window in our tent and said he watched chipmunks steal Reese's cups out of an open bag on the picnic table for 10 minutes straight.

Once everyone was back from hiking, we cooked dinner on the fire.

Testing out the fire to see if it was ready to cook hot dogs.

 As the sun went down, it got pretty cold, so the rest of the night consisted of us all huddled together as close to the fire as we could get. Also, there were s'mores again. As it got late, a fox started stalking our campsite and getting pretty close. That's when we decided to go to bed AKA hide from the fox in our tent because we're scared of wild animals.

We came back to Boston early Sunday morning and spent the rest of the day on the couch. Camping is exhausting! We showered, napped, watched 3 movies (Waterboy, Hercules and Man on a Ledge), watched the Broncos game, cooked a Stouffer's lasagna, and napped some more.

Monday, Columbus Day, Chuckie had to start studying for a test and I went shopping. We had surprise visitors call and invite us to lunch!

Chuck's brother-in-law's mom and step dad. Sounds random but it's not.

 And then that night we went to a friend's for dinner and some foosball.

Overall I'd say it was a pretty good long weekend. My favorite part was that we had no cell service or internet in the mountains, so Chuckie and his classmates couldn't check their emails or think about school work the entire time!

Chuckie had fun playing with the Panoramic feature on the new iPhone 5.