Monday, December 31, 2012

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!



Friday, December 28, 2012

1 Year Engagement Anniversary

One year ago today, Chuckie asked me to marry him.

I had the day off from work and had lunch with a co-worker. After lunch, I was reading Hunger Games on the couch, waiting for Chuckie to pick me up to go see a movie. Chuck left work early so we could make the last matinee showing of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  We went to dinner at The Melting Pot, because I had won a $100 gift card there at a work function earlier in the month. We went to Chuck's house to watch a UofL Basketball game, which almost didn't happen because I was convinced we needed to get to his sister's house earlier than 9 o'clock. Finally I gave in and we went to his house.


At Chuck's house, I saw a wrapped present labeled To Rachel From Chuckie under the tree and asked why he had a leftover present.  He told me it was part of my Christmas present- something he had ordered but came late in the mail, so he thought about saving it for my birthday but then decided to just go ahead and give it to me.  I opened it and it was a photobook, the kind you can make on Shutterfly or Walgreens and have printed. Chuck told me he wanted to give me something tangible on Christmas, since his other Christmas gift was tickets to a show happening in March.  I flipped through the entire book, clueless, and distracted by how sweet I thought it was that he put this book together. I lingered on each page, pointing out pictures that were my favorite and asking him where he found certain pictures. "The times in high school," "The time at the Derby," "The times in college," "The times on vacation..." etc etc and finally... a page with no picture but with the caption "The Time We Got Engaged. December 28, 2011."

After that I blacked out. Everyone always says they basically black out when they get engaged and can't remember what was said or what happened in the few minutes after. And it's true. I thought I would remember every detail of the moment, but really I just remember crying a lot and being so shocked and asking myself over and over again in my mind "Did this really just happen?" Especially because UofL was playing! Chuckie was missing the game to propose to me. This was huge! He really DOES like me more than UofL basketball! (All things I remember thinking that night.)
The first picture we took of ourselves after getting engaged.
We called some family and friends to tell them the news. Some people who didn't answer simply got this picture with the message "Call me." It was so exciting to tell people over and over again! After we called some family and friends, we finished watching the UofL game and then went to his sister's house and had champagne with his family and saw his nieces before they had to go to bed. Then we went to my parent's house and celebrated with my family. It was the best date night EVER. I'm still trying to figure out how Chuck was able to act so normal all the way through the movie and dinner, knowing what was going to happen later that night.

Adorable pictures his nieces drew for us that night that I will keep forever and ever.
And now here we are a year later- married, going through grad school in Boston, and loving life.

So much can happen in just one year!

Monday, December 17, 2012

Choosing Joy

Last week was a really fun and busy week. Thursday on the blog, I wrote "Who knows what the weekend has in store for us!"  Well, while Thursday evening (a baby shower and a fort awesome party) was a lot of fun, Friday was not. 

I check the news several times a day while at my computer at work, and unfortunately as you know, the news all day on Friday was about the mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. I cried a lot at my desk on Friday, and then when I got home and watched CNN, I sobbed. And all weekend, it was all I thought about. The innocent kids who died, the teachers, the principal, the families of the victims who now have to "get through" what is supposed to be the most joyful time of the year, the police officers who were on the scene first and will forever live with the terrible things they saw when they arrived.... and the list goes on. 

We all know teachers. We all know 6 and 7 year old kids. Personally, I have several teacher friends, Chuck and I have nieces in elementary school, and my dad is an elementary school principal. Trying to imagine what the people in Connecticut are going through literally makes me sick to my stomach. 

Chuck has finals this week and we fly home on Thursday afternoon to be with family and friends for Christmas. I have to admit, I don't think we've ever wanted to be with our family more than we do right now.  We can't wait to be home and spend time with the people we love the most. 

Today I am still thinking about the tragedy but trying to not let it consume me the way it did this weekend. I read an article yesterday from Huffington Post shared by the minister of Middletown Christian Church on Twitter titled "How can you feel joy after Newtown shooting?" It's about choosing joy even during terribly sad and unfortunate times and it's helped me a little since reading it. Click here to read the article.

I hate to have such a sad and serious blog post but blogging about anything else right now seems trivial to me.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone, and please enjoy your time with family and friends.



Thursday, December 13, 2012

December is Fun

Every year, December is extremely busy. Holiday parties, dinners with friends, events, etc. This year has been no exception.

Classes are pretty much over for Chuck and his classmates and now all they have left to take care of are a few finals. It's hard to believe the semester is already coming to an end. And because Chuck is going on internship in the Spring, he won't have any classes again until September!

Anyway. this week has been crazy busy, and it's only Thursday!

On Monday, I used my lunch break to go over to one of the engineering buildings to watch Chuck and his classmates race the cars they built for one of their engineering classes. The class was split up into teams at the beginning of the semester and they were each given the task of building 7 identical remote control cars, from the design all the way to actually cutting the materials and putting them together. For their final, they had to race their cars around a track made by the professor which included a few speed bumps here and there to see if the cars could handle bumps without falling apart. I went over to watch and take some pictures and video, and it was just so cool to see how different each teams' cars looked.

Here are the cars Chuck's team built.


And here they are racing it.

On Tuesday, Sloan held an "Ugly Sweater Soiree" complete with free (and delicious) food, free drinks, free pictures, ugly sweaters and free entertainment.
I borrowed my sweater from a friend at work (thanks Annie!) and people told me it was not a very ugly "ugly sweater" and Chuck just wore a regular red sweater. So I guess we kind of failed that part of the party but oh well.

Here are a bunch of the LGOs and the leader of LGO, Don.
Don is the guy who calls all the LGOs to tell them they've been accepted to the program. Therefore we love Don.

And here we are with a few of Chuck's Sloan Core Team, the Puffins. Missing a few people but it still turned out cute obviously because there's a baby in the picture.

The most exciting part of the party was when the Sloan a capella group that Chuck is in performed for us. They performed three songs and Chuck had a couple little solos. I posted one of the songs on Facebook. This is a different one though. The 12 Days of Christmas... kind of...  Watch and see!

Wednesday night, we went over to a restaurant near Fenway Park where the Atlantic Ocean (Chuck's group of about 60 who he's had classes with all semester) rented out a space to have a Charity Auction. The students were encouraged to auction things off to their classmates and all of the money raised goes to the charity of the Ocean's choice. People auctioned things as small as "I'll cook you a 5 course meal" to things as large as "I'll let you stay at my vacation home in Portugal for 1 week, any week of the year except during August." WHAT!!!??? They raised a ton of money for their charity- definitely several thousand dollars, which is awesome. I don't know the exact total yet, but it was really fun to be a part of and watch the bidding process.
Santa and his twin were our auctioneers.

Tonight I'm attending a baby shower for an LGO 13 lady, and who knows what the weekend has in store for us! December is fun!

Monday, December 10, 2012

A Little Bit of Everything

Besides the recent visit of my best friend, Lauren, here's what we've been up to lately.

- The night before Lauren came to town, Cambridge experienced a major blackout.  Almost all of Cambridge was completely dark. It happened right at the end of the work day, about 4:30, so everyone left work all at the exact same time and it was chaos. Cars were in gridlock everywhere, people were walking in every direction, the trains were all backed up, stores were closing down... It felt kind of like the end of the world.  Our friends Ana and Jose were planning to have people over that night to pre-party before a Sloan C-Function, and even though the electricity was out, that didn't stop the LGOs from having a good time by candlelight!
 The power all came back on at about 7 pm, so luckily we weren't in the dark for too long.

- Chuckie and I got our first Christmas tree. It's only 2 feet tall but it's the perfect size for our apartment and it came in a tiny box that will fit nicely into a larger box of stuff when we start packing up all of our things to move again.

- One night last week I hosted a Holiday Cookie Swap Party.  I've heard of these before but never hosted or participated in one. It seemed like a really good idea though- invite all of your friends to make cookies and bring them to your house for a party? What's not to like about that!?
 People went all out! A lot of the ladies made more than one kind of cookie, so we had tons of variety. And they were all SO GOOD. Before the party I asked myself, WWMSD (What Would Martha Stewart Do?) so I made little tags for people to label their cookies with and I bought cute Tupperware for everyone to pack their treats in to take home. (I don't have any pictures of the labels up close or the cute Tupperware but I promise they were cute.)
Those are ornaments in the middle, not cookies, just FYI.
 I think I might have to have this party every year.

- And finally: I have found my calling in life. At work we are having a holiday decorating contest and I really wanted our floor to make a million paper snowflakes and hang them from our ceiling. So at work this week I've been making snowflakes, and discovered I'm REALLY good at it. Like, scary good. I don't follow a pattern or anything. I just fold and start cutting and then I open them up and they look like this.



If anyone knows where I can get a job just making paper snowflakes for a living, please let me know.

- Other things going on around here: Christmas shopping, counting down the days until we get to go home for a break, coming up with a plan for our move to Seattle, and most importantly, trying to keep Chuckie from losing his mind as he finishes the fall semester.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Cannolis, Cupcakes and Christmas

My kindergarten best friend, Lauren, came to Boston this past weekend for a visit and our weekend together can be summed up in two words: Desserts and Christmas.
Kindergarten us: Bangs, Little Mermaid PJs and my #1 baby doll, Timothy.

Friday night we toured Harvard and marveled at the Christmas decorations, ate dinner at one of my favorite places here- Border Cafe- and then went to the Beantown Pub in Boston. We met up with some old friends and LGOs and had a blast!
25 years old us
Just noticed the guy behind Chuck.. hahaha


So good to see Clayton again in Boston!

 After the bar, we got greasy pizza at the pizza place one block from our apartment and then went home, where Lauren and I practiced our best impressions of Blaine Warbler (from Glee). Also I lost a stupid bet with Chuck over whether or not I said the word "skip" when I meant to say "skill" and now I owe him 1 million dollars. Whoops.

Saturday we got a late start because we stayed up late on Friday. We took our time getting ready and watched the first half of the Louisville basketball game. Then Lauren and I headed out to see MIT and walk the Freedom Trail. I should add here that it snowed almost all day on Saturday. Lauren and I feel we deserve some sort of award for walking the Freedom Trail in the snow. It was cold and wet, but I do have to say that as many times as I've walked the Trail, this was one of my favorites. Just look at it!
 
 We saw a lot of Christmas decorations along the way.

After the Freedom Trail, Lauren and I thawed out at the Bell in Hand and waited for Chuck to get out of a meeting before the 3 of us headed to the North End for some Italian food, more marveling at Christmas decorations, and of course... Mike's Pastry.
Happiness in a box.

We were exhausted from a day out in the cold so we called it an early night, went home, watched Elf, ate our cannolis, and then watched When Harry Met Sally. It was perfect.

Sunday, Lauren and I headed to a restaurant/sports bar in Boston for the Green Bay Packers/Vikings game. Lauren is a die hard Packers fan and was very happy when they won!
Sunday morning football calls for mimosas!
 After the game, we walked through the Prudential Center, then to Newbury Street, stopped to get cupcakes for later, walked through Beacon Hill and looked at all the pretty Christmas lights and trees in peoples' windows, and then went to dinner and had pizza before going home. Once home, we watched yet another Christmas movie- How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and then our favorite shows, Dexter and Homeland.
Georgetown cupcakes. The best cupcake I've ever had. And I've had a LOT of cupcakes.
 I feel like all we did the whole weekend was look at Christmas lights and trees, watch Christmas movies, and eat desserts. That's a pretty great weekend though in my opinion. Now we're completely in the Christmas spirit and Chuck and I are WAY beyond ready to go home for the holidays!

Friday, November 30, 2012

Seattle

I can finally share some big news on the blog....

We're moving to Seattle for 6 months!
 
Part of the LGO program is a 6 month internship at one of the LGO Partner Companies. There are several partner companies including some places you may have head of like Nike, Amazon, Caterpillar, Boeing, Zara, Novartis, and a bunch more. Students can choose if they want to interview for what is called "off-cycle" internships which go from February-August, or "on-cycle" which goes from June-December. Chuck chose to interview for a couple of "off-cycle" internships because he was very interested in the projects. He interviewed and then had to rank the projects in order of his favorite to least favorite. Then the companies rank the candidates and they generate a match.

Chuck will be working on a project for Amazon at their headquarters in Seattle!

We have known for a little while but I couldn't post anything until I broke the news to my boss at work. We will move to Seattle in early February and come back to Boston at the end of August for Chuck to finish up his final two semesters at MIT!

This is both extremely exciting and extremely stressful news. I am SO excited to experience West Coast living for the first time but also stressed about moving AGAIN- and this time even FARTHER across the country- leaving my job at MIT, finding a job in Seattle, finding a new job once we're back in Boston, and about a million other things.  And I have never been to Seattle before so the thought of moving to a city I've never even visited kind of scares me. But only a little.

On top of all the excitement and stress, Chuck and I are also sad to be leaving all of the LGOs. We will be away while most of them are still in Boston taking classes for the Spring Semester. Then when we get back to Boston in the Fall, they will be gone on internship. So we go almost a year without seeing most of the LGOs we've become good friends with! Sad!  The good news is two other LGOs are going to Seattle for their off-cycle internships, and a few more will be starting there in June, so we won't be completely alone out there.

Here are the only things I knew about Seattle before doing any research:
- Birthplace of Starbucks
 
- "Home" of Meredith, McDreamy and the rest of the Grey's Anatomy characters.
 
- Close to Canada

- Hometown of T-Will (who you may remember from THIS previous blogpost)

- It's rainy. Although I read that Boston has a higher annual precipitation average than Seattle.

I knew my rain boots were going to get lots of good use when I bought them back in September!

That's about it.

I'm sure I'll know much more soon. One thing I do know for sure is we have a lot to do before February!

So, you know what's coming next... My attempt to make everyone come visit us all the time:
Start planning your Spring Break and Summer Break vacations for the West Coast, friends! I know all of you have just been waiting for a reason to visit Seattle, right!? We'll make sure we pack our air mattress just for all of you. :)

Monday, November 26, 2012

Full of Thanks

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Chuckie and I had a jam packed weekend of food, friends, food, family, and more food.

On Thanksgiving Eve, we went over to Faneuil Hall to check out the Christmas decorations and had dinner at the Bell in Hand. It was a fun way to kick off our long holiday weekend.

After dinner we made a stop at Toscanini's for some ice cream and then went home to skype our game night friends who were having a Thanksgiving Eve game night. Here is a picture of them skyping us. 
Hi, friends!
 Thursday morning we woke up early and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and started working on making the stuffing.  I made a HUGE mess of our kitchen but both of the stuffings turned out great- though one could have used a little more chicken broth. But I thought it was a good first attempt.

Thursday afternoon, we went to Kate and Ryan's where we were meeting friends for Thanksgiving dinner. When we got there, Kate told us Ryan had just left to go to the ER after cutting his finger while peeling potatoes. He was back after a couple of hours and didn't have to get any stitches, so it turned out ok and added some excitement to our day.

Ana was brave and volunteered to cook the turkey for everyone! She even made a turkey itinerary! Here she is checking the temperature to see if he was done.  

 The turkey was delicious!

 Only about half of the food we had out.

 Our hosts, Kate and Ryan!


Ryan gave a great toast at dinner and brought up how we've only known each other for a very short time but here we are, celebrating Thanksgiving together. This is one of the really special things about the LGO program. You make instant friends, and as my aunt said this weekend, when you're living in a city without family, your friends become your family. :)

After we all digested our food and watched some football, we played some games. 
Adam just casually whistling, trying to get his team to guess a song. I love that he's still holding his coffee mug.
On Friday we rented a car and left early in the morning to drive to Agawam, MA to see my aunt and uncle. Agawam is just outside of Springfield, MA. We spent the day lounging around, watching football and basketball, and eating. It was exactly what we wanted to do.

Midway through the day, I got a call from my cousin Aaron AKA Brother I Never Had telling me that he and his girlfriend were engaged! He was planning to announce it to our whole family that afternoon during Thanksgiving dinner and wanted to tell me since I wasn't going to be there. I was soooooo excited but also sad I couldn't be home to celebrate with them in person. Aaron and I are only a few months apart in age and grew up very close. I really felt like one of my siblings was telling me they were engaged!

Aaron and Elizabeth have been together pretty much forever, so she is already a part of our family but now will be OFFICIALLY! I'm so happy for them!
Aren't they cute!?!?!?

On Saturday, we woke up early and drove to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield. It was awesome. I now know a ton of history of basketball and got to see a lot of jerseys, shoes and other artifacts from Hall of Famers.

Chuckie got to meet the cardboard version of his childhood idol.
 At the end of the museum they have a court with a lot of baskets where you can shoot hoops for as long as you want. They also have a special area for dunking practice. They had a 6 foot, 7 foot, 8 foot and 9 foot goal. Here I am dunking on a 7 foot goal.
Obviously jumping is not one of my strengths. I'm about 3 inches off the ground.

Chuck on the other hand... he's got hops.
After that it was back to my aunt and uncle's to watch more football and basketball until we left to make it home in time for the UofL vs. Duke basketball game. We had such a relaxing time in Agawam and it was great to visit with my aunt, uncle and cousin! It was also nice to be in a HOME. Our apartment is nice but it just doesn't feel like a home. It feels like an apartment.

Sunday, Chuckie did homework. I had plans to go to the mall, grocery and Walgreens, but instead I watched the Broncos game, three Christmas movies and made dinner. I think that was a good decision.

We missed our families back in Kentucky this weekend a ton but still had a great time in Massachusetts and really have SO much to be thankful for.