Wedding Diaries: Cake Tasting

You guys. I think I found what I want my new profession to be. "Official cake taste tester." I don't know where or how or why this job would exist but I think it should and I think I'd be really good at it. Earlier this week, me, Chuck, my parents and his mom went to taste cake flavors and fillings for our wedding. And it was, besides picking out my dress, the most exciting part of wedding planning yet.

We walked in to this place where we were meeting the cake lady and she had plates already set up. Four different flavored cupcakes on each plate, the three fillings we asked to try and a spoon. Seriously??? THIS. IS. MY. HEAVEN. We proceeded to sit there and taste each cake flavor with the different fillings and discuss our thoughts.  The conversation sounded a little like this: "Mmmmmm I like the chocolate with this. Mmmm me too. Mmmmm try the white with the other two! Mmmm yeah those are good. Mmmmm this one is perfect just by itself."  And the "mmmmm-ing" went on and on for the next hour and a half. It was both the best and weirdest experience of my life. I mean, when else in your life can you just show up somewhere and have a plate full of cupcakes and fillings waiting for you to try and then get to tell a lady to make an entire cake out of your favorite combinations!?

The tasting part was easy, but the designing part was not. Do we want flowers on the cake? Colors? Ribbon? Swirly design? Straight lines? Fleur de lis? What do we want on top of the cake? There were so many questions, so many decisions to make. I consider myself to have somewhat of an artistic brain, but I'm no cake designer that's for sure.

If Chuck had complete control over the decision, our cake would probably end up looking like this:

If I had my way, our cake would look something like this:

Lucky for us, our cake lady wants our cake to look more like this:

Yes, that was William and Kate's wedding cake.

After a lot of deliberation, we ended up designing something really beautiful, and I promise there are no sports or Wizard of Oz related designs involved in any way. I won't tell you what it will look like or what flavors we chose. You will just have to wait until August 24th to find out.

I will tell you, we chose three different flavors for the three tiers which means I will be eating three pieces of cake at our wedding. In the words of the great Lorelai Gilmore, "If eating cake is wrong, I don't wanna be right."

Scary Closet: Part 1

Yesterday I started the packing process. I started cleaning out Closet #2, the scary closet. It was, like I thought, a little scary but not quite the black hole I was expecting. I only got about 1/3 of the way through it before I got tired and had to stop. At times it was really tough to decide if I should save or trash some things. I filled one and a half trash bags and one small storage bin. And just like I thought, I found some real treats in there.

My first big find? My "homies"!!!! I'm not sure if "homies" are still a thing or not, but when I was in high school, you could find these little guys in the machines next to all the gumball and ancient candy machines. Liz and I used to collect them and keep them randomly in our cars and purses.
Kept or trashed: Kept!

This picture is of a note I found folded up in a little glass bowl with some old barrettes from when I was little. It's from Laura and I'm not sure how old we were when this was written but judging by the handwriting, she was pretty young. On the back of the note it said "Love, Laura."

Kept or trashed: Kept, of course! Who would throw that away?

I chose to share this find for several reasons. First, I thought it was only appropriate, with Titanic being re-released in theatres this month. Second, I remember when my grandma gave me this I thought it was the coolest jewelry box ever. And third, I think it's hilarious that the Heart of the Ocean is missing from the top. Where is it?? That thing is worth millions! Maybe I pulled it off and dropped it off the side of a boat in the middle of the ocean so no one else could ever own it? (If you don't get this Titanic reference, you must not have seen the movie 4 times in the theatre and 400 times on VHS like me.)

Kept or trashed: Kept. (Can't throw away something you remember your grandma giving you.)

I'm not really going to take the time to explain this one. You'll just have to wonder about it. Yes. It's a collage of cow pictures. Yes it's titled "Rachel's Moolage."  Yes this was a high school graduation gift.

Kept or trashed: Kept. But I have no idea what to do with it.

At the end of the Governor's Scholars Program I attended summer before my senior year of high school, our hall voted on awards for every girl in the hall. On our last night together, we presented each other with these awards. This is what I won. So proud. This was when my Spiderman obsession was apparently way out of hand.

Kept or trashed: It's in the "undecided pile" for now. Will probably throw away though.

And last, but CERTAINLY not least... I found these three gems all together in the bottom of the closet. Thank God I started my hoarding at such a young age so I now have these things to show my future children so they can think I grew up in the stone age. Seriously. A Gameboy, a walkman and a discman. Jackpot!!!!!

Kept or trashed: Kept, duh!

I found many more exciting items like the stuffed fish my dad used to hit me with in the mornings to wake me up in middle school, a plethora of stuffed animals, Pez dispensers, bouncy balls, journals and much more. I realize it seems I kept a lot more than I threw away, but can you blame me? Those homies will be worth something some day... Right?

I hope to get through the rest of the closet some time this week or next weekend.  No telling what I'll find next but I'll give you a sneak preview- I saw a tutu and a ridiculous amount of softball trophies in the back left corner... 

Packing: The first step

When I graduated from college, my parents were gracious enough to let me move back in with them until I was ready to move out and live on my own. I'm not sure when they told me that they thought I'd end up staying for 3 years. But I did. And (I think) they've been ok with it. I think I've been a pretty good roommate! I pay my own bills, I watch whatever they want to watch on TV without (too much) complaining and I'm not too messy... With one exception. MY ROOM. Now, let me just put out there that I am a pretty clean and organized person in general. Seriously. My desk at work is so clean all the time. But for some reason when it comes to my room, I just can't keep the thing clean. My parents like to comment on it often, to which I usually respond "Try cramming every single thing YOU own into one little bedroom and see what it looks like!"  And I think that's a pretty good argument! Because when you think about it, really, almost every single thing I own, from childhood until now, is in that room.

So when I found out Chuckie and I were moving, I came up with a plan.  I will pack two separate piles: "Things I am taking to Boston" and "Things I am leaving at Mom and Dad's for the next 2 years." The things that are going to Boston will be packed into boxes we can easily break down and store or recycle once we're in our new place, and the things staying at mom and dad's will be packed nicely into several nice $5 Target storage bins and fit into the two closets in my room.

I've been thinking about how to start the packing process and I came up with a plan of action. The first step is to clean out my two closets so I will have space to start storing things when I box them up. This may sound like an easy task to some, until you see my closets.

Closet #1: All clothes, shoes, purses and blankets/sheets/towels. Not too bad.

Closet #2: Anything and everything that I've saved from about age 5 that I don't use on a regular basis.

Closet #2 scares me.  I don't know what it is about this closet but it's where things just... accumulate.  I'm scared. When I clean it out, will it be like a black hole? Will I get into it and disappear forever? What kinds of things will I find? Will the contents I find in this closet make me a certified hoarder? Stay tuned....

Rajon Rondo 101

So now that I've mentioned Rajon Rondo in two out of three posts, I figure I should give a lesson on Rondo in case anyone is wondering who this guy is. Here is Rondo as most people know him:

#9 for the Boston Celtics. His jersey is the 3rd best seller in the NBA behind only Lebron James and Kobe Bryant. What you may not know, is that Chuckie, Rondo and I go waaaaay back.  All the way to Eastern High School. Yep, that's right.  We went to high school with Rajon Rondo.

See? There's proof! Except at Eastern he was #4- my favorite number. He left Eastern for his senior year to go play at Oak Hill Academy, a school in Virginia for amazing high school basketball players. He was one grade above us, so we only got to watch him play for two years. But they were two glorious years.  Chuckie really loved Rondo.  One time in high school, I asked him who he liked more. Me? Or Rondo? He actually had to think about it for a minute.

One time during our sophomore year of high school, I drew a picture for Chuckie of stick figure versions of us, standing under a rainbow holding hands. I used crayons and worked really hard on it.   I asked him to draw a picture for me in return. This is what he drew:

He drew it in pencil, so some of it is hard to make out. So in case you can't tell what the picture is, it's Rajon Rondo floating high up in the air about to dunk on.... Seneca apparently. And the scoreboard says "Rajon Rondo: 132, Seneca: 23."  (Because let's face it, Rondo was so good that he probably really could have beaten teams by himself.) He labeled all of our other players and Coach Bibby. And you can see us in the right hand corner, sitting with the pep band of course. Chuckie is saying "Look at that cute booty!" and I'm saying "Do what??"  It's a one of a kind masterpiece. No wonder I saved it, right?

Oh and guess what else? Look who went to the University of Kentucky!

You know who else went to the Universtiy of Kentucky? Chuckie and Rachel. One time we went to a game at UK and I made a poster that said "We went to high school with Rondo."  It got me on the jumbo tron in Rupp.

So basically what I'm saying here is... our lives have been intertwined with Rondo's since we were 14. I think we were destined to be best friends with him. Now we will once again be in the same city.  Being a famous NBA player must be hard on him. I bet he would like to have some friends from his hometown, don't you think?

If we end up with a restraining order against us don't be surprised.

Rondo's wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajon_Rondo 

Looking Forward to....

Things I look forward to in Boston:

• Finding new favorite restaurants
• Stalking Rajon Rondo
• Having friends and family come visit
• Spending 4th of July in BOSTON
• Being close to the beach
• Seeing people like this walking the streets regularly:

Things Chuck looks forward to in Boston:

• School. (Not even being sarcastic. He seriously loves school. What a weirdo.)
• Being close to Rajon Rondo

Things I do not look forward to:

• Community laundry rooms
• Snow
• Finding a hair dresser
• Snow
• Getting lost on the subway
• Grocery shopping in the snow

Things Chuck does not look forward to:

• No ESPN channels on the MIT cable we will be forced to use
• Being far away from Rick Pitino and Charlie Strong

Remembering our first trip to Boston

I'm not gonna lie.  The first time Chuck and I visited Boston, we were not huge fans. We have since visited and our views have been changed, but that first trip... it was rough. In October of 2010, we decided to go up to Boston for the LGO Ambassador Day, even though Chuckie knew he may not apply until the next Fall. Well, unfortunately the Ambassador Day fell on a Monday- October 25- and two of our best friends happened to be getting married on Saturday, October 23. So we made the perfect plan. We would participate in the wedding festivities (we were both in the bridal party) and fly up to Boston the morning after at 7 a.m. (Genius, right?) So after maybe 3 hours of sleep, we went to the airport that Sunday morning, only to find out our flight was delayed. I won't go through the whole long story of our flight troubles that day, but here's the Reader's Digest version:

Flight delayed until 11. Flight delayed again until 1. We look for other options. We see a direct flight to Boston from Cincy that will get us there before the 1 pm flight from Louisville.  A taxi takes us to Cincinnati. Meanwhile, our bags fly to Atlanta on our original flight. We take the flight from Cincy to Boston and miraculously our bags are already there waiting for us! But we arrive in Boston at 7 pm- originally supposed to arrive at 12:30 that day.

By the time we got in town, we were so exhausted from traveling all day (and on 3 hours of bad sleep) that we ate dinner at a restaurant in Harvard Square and then crashed in our hotel by 9:30. While walking to the T from the restaurant, a homeless man held a blade in the air and said "I have a message for all you rich people. I have an atomic bomb. You're all gonna die. And I'm gonna kills ya." ("I'm gonna kills ya" has now become one of our favorite things to quote often.)

John Harvard's- a place I'm sure we will frequent once we live there.

Monday we spent all day at MIT. It was great.

The Great Dome- the famous MIT building

Tuesday we took our bags to the airport and left them and then ventured into the city for a couple hours until we had to be back for our flight. We didn't know where to go or what to do, so we literally got on the T and chose a random stop. We walked around aimlessly for an hour, ate at a seafood restaurant where we had a mean waiter, saw Rondo's picture on a building and got excited, and then headed back to the airport. 

We may have chosen a random T stop, but we chose a good one!

Back at the airport, there was of course yet ANOTHER flight delay. This one was only 20-30 minutes though but it was just enough to make us miss our connecting flight from Cincy back to Louisville. Six other people had also missed that flight so they paid for us to ride in a big van back to Louisville with a driver who I'm pretty certain was drunk. He almost drove off the road several times, and when we stopped at Wendy's for some food, he gave Chuckie a couple quarters and asked him to bring him a large Diet Coke. We arrived in Louisville at 11:30- supposed to have arrived at 9:00.

So when I say our first trip to Boston was not great, you can see I am not exaggerating. Although I did call the airline company and complain quite a bit after we were back and they ended up giving us each $150 towards our next flight.

Boston Bound!

A long, long time ago, Chuckie told me about this program at MIT called Leaders for Global Operations.  At the time I think it was called something else and has since changed its name, but we'll just call it LGO anyway since that's its name now. But he went on and on about how amazing this program was- two degrees, a Masters in Engineering and an MBA, from the number one engineering school and number four business school in the country- all in two years.  The program accepts 50 students per year and because of the partner companies, is only a portion of the cost of other grad schools. Sounds almost too good to be true, right?  Ever since he first heard about it, Chuckie worked towards someday applying to this program and we always hoped he would get accepted after a couple years of working in the “real world.”  And well, it’s finally all paid off. (Moral of the story- work hard and you can achieve anything you set your mind to.) 

Last Wednesday night we were sitting around my house, watching a UofL basketball game and anticipating that he would hear from MIT the coming weekend. But around 8:45, a voicemail appeared on Chuckie’s phone and it was from the MIT LGO Program Director, congratulating him and welcoming him to the program! I’m not sure we believed it was real for the first couple of hours. Actually, I’m still not sure we believe it’s real. All of this time we’ve talked about the program, talked about moving, talked about this amazing opportunity, and now we’re actually going to live it out!

But now that we’ve had a week to process our new future, here is what I think:

•  I am about to marry the one of the smartest people on the planet.
• These next 5-6 months are about to be the busiest months of our lives.
• The next 2 years will be an adventure!
•  We are excited, sad, scared, happy, anxious, and thrilled- all at the same time.
•  I’m going to soon speak in all acronyms, all the time. For example- I am now an MIT LGO SO. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Leaders for Global Operations Significant Other) Oh and yesterday, Chuckie got a call from his LGO POC. (Point of Contact)

We are definitely venturing into unfamiliar territory- I have no doubt Boston will be completely different from Louisville and Lexington but I also have no doubt that we’re going to have a blast!  And lucky for you- I plan to record our little adventure through this blog: our preparation, our move, our wedding planning, our wedding, life in Boston and much more. And at the end, after 2 years at MIT, we will look back and say “wow! that was crazy fun” and also I’ll be saying “MY HUSBAND IS AN MIT GRAD Y’ALL!!!!!” (I plan to keep at least some of my Kentucky vernacular in check as well as gain some Boston sayings and accents along the way.)

Chuckie and Rachel are Boston bound!