I love Fall more than any other season. I always have. I associate Fall with sweatshirts and boots, colorful leaves, chili and cider, football and marching band, fire pits and hayrides, season premieres of all my favorite shows, and best of all- the anticipation of the holiday season that is quickly approaching.
This year, we get to experience our first New England Fall. From what we hear, it's a great time to live in Boston. We got a taste of it when we came to visit for Ambassador Day last year and the year before. But now we are getting to experience it.
Because I love Fall so much and because we are in the perfect place to enjoy it, we are trying to live it up best we can. I think we've done a good job so far! Check it out.
We went to a Harvard football game. The stadium was less than half full and it felt more like a high school football atmosphere to us than college, but it was a pretty day and it was entertaining to say the least.
No idea who won. We left before it was over to go order our iPhone 5s.
If on a Sunday afternoon, Chuck suddenly stands up and says "I need a break from homework. Let's walk to Starbucks and get a Pumpkin Spice Latte," who am I to tell him no? (Please note: football on the TV in the background.)
We've had perfect boot weather lately.
Chuck has joined the LGO flag football team. They had their first game last week and it ended in a tie. I thought only soccer could end in a tie (one of the many reasons I hate soccer) but apparently not. Oh well. The LGO team had better cheerleaders at least.
We went apple picking. We went with some other LGOs and SOs on a Sunday morning up to a place called Russell Orchards. We ate cider donuts, picked apples, and broke almost all of the orchard rules (including "no throwing apples" and "no shaking trees.")
The rules didn't say anything about not sampling the apples...
Our goodies from the Orchard:
Pumpkin butter, Red Raspberry Jam, Apple butter, and 10 lbs of apples. Because, you know, two people really need 10 lbs of apples.
I don't know if you can get more Fall than football games and apple picking but we plan to try. On the horizon we have a camping trip, a pig roast, and someone brought up a possible pumpkin carving block party sometime in the near future. You know I'm all over that.
I don't mean to brag but one time I carved a Goldendoodle howling at the moon into a pumpkin. Not sure how I will top that this year but, I'll try my best.
A few years ago when I was doing some research for a project at work, I came across a website called moocards.com. I spent probably an hour looking through their "inspiration gallery" to see what uses people had for these tiny things they sell called minicards. In the gallery, I came across some pictures of how people had used minicards for their weddings, and one idea in particular caught my eye. One couple had different pictures of themselves printed on one side of the minicard (you can have up to 100 different images on the cards, at no extra charge!) and on the other side a line that said "Share your advice with the bride and groom!" The mini advice cards wanted guests to complete the sentence "No matter what, always...." and then just for fun, asked guests to "Name our first child!" I thought these were so cute and thought about how much fun it must have been for the bride and groom to read those after the wedding. Before Chuck and I got engaged, I did not know one single thing about what I wanted our future wedding to look like (besides purple bridesmaids dresses of course, but that was a given) but I knew I wanted us to have these minicards.
A couple months before the wedding, I placed the order for the cards. It only took me a few minutes to upload the different photos I wanted, write the text on the back, have Chuck do a quick probability problem on how many cards I should order based on how many cards we thought each guest would fill out:
Applying what he was learning in class to our real life situation. Thanks, MIT!
and then place the order. So easy! And they turned out SO cute. I used 12-15 different pictures on the front but the same text on the back of all of them.
Here is what they looked like.
This picture makes them look bigger than they are. They are really only half the size of a business card.
Our plan was to wait to read the advice cards until we were on our honeymoon. But, we got bored on our flight back to Boston and I had them in my purse so, we read them on the plane. The responses were all great, and it was fun to try to figure out who wrote certain responses, because nowhere on the card does it ask for the guest's name. Although on some of them, it was kind of easy to tell who wrote it:
We got some very good advice, funny advice, sweet advice, and advice from couples who obviously have been through certain situations and wanted to keep us from making the same mistakes they have made. Like this: Obviously picture hanging is not one couple's favorite thing to do together, as I'm pretty sure a husband and wife had to have written these. So funny.
Some of my favorite cards were these:
All good advice. :)
I like this advice. I don't think Chuck and I would ever forget one anothers birthday, but I feel like a lot of people fail to make each other's birthdays special as you get older. Most people go all out for the big milestones, like 30, 40, etc. which is fun and makes sense, but why not go all out for the random ones too like 33 and 47? Or maybe not ALL out, but at least still make them special too. Every year of life should be celebrated, not just the milestone years.
I just like this one because someone suggested Rachel Jr. as our first child's name.
A lot of other cards told us to always kiss goodnight, never go to bed angry, support each other, and laugh together. Most people want us to name our first child Charles Cummings IV, "Charlie" for short. Chuck was very happy about that.
I have to say though, of all the filled out cards we received, these 3 were my favorites.
Always love each other- it's not easy but it is always worth it.
Do your own laundry. (Can I get an Amen?)
And simply, just LOVE HARD. I think that's not only important advice for marriage, but for every relationship you have with family and with friends. No matter what, always love hard. I like it.
I keep talking about our new apartment in my blogs but I have yet to share much about it. So now I present to you: Married Apartment!
I. love. this. place.
Our new apartment, while not in my favorite part of Cambridge, definitely has it's perks.
Here is a map of our new place in relation to important places.
As I've pointed out, my two favorite things about this place are it's proximity to the grocery and to the T stop. Living in a city without a car, your relation to the T stop is very important, especially when it's cold and/or rainy. We could live an hour from MIT and I wouldn't care as long as we lived within 5 minutes of the T. From our new apartment, it is 3 blocks to the T and 1.5 blocks to the grocery store. This makes me very happy.
And even better, MIT is only one train stop away. On my first day of work after moving, I timed my commute from our front door to my desk. I got lucky that day and got into the station right as a train was pulling in, so it literally took exactly 10 minutes from door to desk. Not bad!
Other perks of Married apartment: 3 blocks from CVS and Walgreens, 4 blocks from the most delicious ice cream place ever- Toscaninis (they give FREE sprinkles!), several restaurants and bars within 5-10 minutes walking distance, our karaoke spot The Thirsty Ear is only an 8-10 minute walk, several LGOs live in the buildings surrounding ours, including one LGO and her boyfriend in our building, and last but not least, the LGO party spot AKA Fort Awesome is literally in our backyard. We can actually see into the apartment from our living room. We don't spy on them or anything though- that would be creepy.
Did I mention I love this place?
And that's just the exterior perks. I haven't even shown you the inside yet.
Hardwood floors. (Fake hardwood of course but whatever.)
Stainless steel GE appliances, including a dishwasher! (The GE part is important.)
It's spacious.
The bathroom doesn't feel like a college dorm bathroom.
We have this thing, and it actually works- just like Seinfeld.
Chuck and I tested it out the first day. You can talk, listen, and hit the door button to unlock the main entrance to allow guests (or the pizza man or UPS) to come in without having to go downstairs and let them in yourself! Laziness at it's finest!
Our bedroom is about the same size as the whole living room. It's nice too have a big room but we kind of don't have enough furniture to fill it up. While we were in Maine, we bought a dresser at Target and put it together the night we got back from our trip. It took about 3 hours to put it together and was extremely stressful. Especially when we had to keep undoing things we already did because we missed a step. Here is a picture of Chuckie with our dresser right after we put it together.
If you want to know what he's doing with his arms, watch this video. (Please note: he was directing this gesture to the dresser, not to me. He would NEVER!)
So that's it! I love our new place, especially our kitchen and full sized oven. Soon I will attempt my first real, homemade lasagna!
As soon as we got back to Boston from Louisville, we fell straight into the chaos that is grad school orientation. Since Chuck and the other LGOs have been in school since June, it seemed weird that they were going through orientation a second time. But this time instead of 48 of them, there are hundreds of them. All of the grad students are on campus now as well as the undergrads and the atmosphere is much different than the summer. Immediately when we came back, Chuck was busy all day long with activities and classes, I was busy with work, and then almost every night there was some sort of gathering, outing, dinner, etc etc etc. I can't tell you how many events we've gone to in the last two weeks that had free food and free alcohol for the grad students and their SOs, and I know Chuck has been to even more events without me where there was more of the same.
Here are some of the things we've done since we got back to Boston.
- Slowly but surely we've settled in to our Married apartment. (Blog on that coming soon.)
- Tuesday after Labor Day we went on a boat cruise in the harbor with all of the "Sloanies" (nickname here for the MIT MBA students because they go to the Sloan Business School.) There were so many of us we had to take two boats, the Spirit of Boston and the Odyssey. Our boat was the Odyssey. Typically on a Tuesday night, a dinner cruise on this boat is around $91.90 per person. We paid $15! The food was amazing, and though I got a little seasick at one point, we had a blast cutting a rug on the dance floor with all the LGOs.
I called my mom while on the boat to wish her a happy birthday. I told her I was on a boat and her response was "Are you wearing a life jacket?" That question was really funny to me considering I was on a huge dinner cruise wearing a dress and heels and my mom was probably picturing me on some sort of tiny sailboat in a t-shirt.
- One night Chuck and the Sloanies had some sort of candle walk down the Charles River, followed by, of course, free food and drinks at the Sloan building to welcome them officially as Sloanies, while at the same time I hit up a Sloan SOs event at a local restaurant called Mead Hall where there was, yep you guessed it, free food.
- It wouldn't be a complete week at MIT without some Thursday evening karaoke at The Thirsty Ear. The girl that runs karaoke now knows Chuck by name. Though he doesn't want to admit it, he's building quite a fanbase at The Thirsty Ear.
- We went to our first Red Sox game, for free! We keep hearing that the Sox are really bad this year and we got to see why. At some points I felt like we were watching a Little League game. Or the Cubs. Same thing. (I'm a Cubs fan so I can make that joke.)
A lot about Boston and Cambridge is different now that school is back in session for colleges all over the city. Campus is packed, there are young people all over the place in Boston, the train is packed, everyone is back in their routines, and according to the weather lately, we may have seen the last of our hot summer days. I'm excited though for the newness of it all. Except for the packed train thing. I could do without that.
Labor Day weekend we took our mini-honeymoon to Maine. I call it mini because it was only for 3-4ish days and 3 nights and because we plan to take a bigger honeymoon somewhere more tropical and honeymoon-like in the future whenever we have time. We had so much fun on this trip I would be fine with calling this our actual honeymoon, but if Chuck wants to take me somewhere tropical for at least a week later down the road, I'm not going to argue!
We stayed at the Maine Stay Inn & Cottages in Kennebunkport, Maine. Getting there on Friday proved to be pretty difficult, as it seems everyone else in Boston headed North for the long weekend as well. But we had snacks and the radio and a weekend of relaxation ahead of us so we were just fine with the 3+ hours it took us to get to what should have only taken an hour and 45 minutes. Instead of boring you with tons of details I'll just let our pictures do most the talking. I'm only uploading my favorites here and will load all of the pictures to a Facebook album if you want to see more.
Our cottage! And our rental car- Louisville Cardinal Red. :)
Portland Head Light on Cape Elizabeth near Portland, Maine.
Gorgeous coast
Not just any pedestrians, but elderly ones.
While trying to find a Target, the directions took us down "Cummings Rd." So obviously we drove up and down it until we could get a good shot of the street sign. We were actually semi-stopped at a green light to get this shot... Worth it.
Delicious dinner, drinks and dessert at Tia's Topside in Kennebunkport.
The Bush Family compound in Kennebunkport. Hey, George!
Waited in a long line at the Clam Shack to try their award winning lobster roll. It was... lobstery.
The B&B. Loved it.
About to head back to Boston.
We love Maine!
Here are my observations of Maine.
- The people are very nice.
- The beaches are very different from most beaches. The biggest difference? No palm trees. I liked it.
- You can get lobster at pretty much any restaurant you go to.
- The state is probably so gorgeous in the Fall with all of the colorful leaves and also gorgeous in the winter with snow.
- They do not see a lot of Kentuckians.
- They have moose crossing signs like Kentucky has deer crossing signs. We really wanted to see a moose. Instead all we saw was a wild turkey. Lame.
Since Chuck and I were not going on an immediate honeymoon after the wedding, we decided to hang out in Louisville until the last possible second before we had to head back to Boston. Since we got married on a Friday, this left us with all day Saturday and most of Sunday to hang out, see our family and relax before we had to get on a plane again. Friday night after the wedding we stayed at the Seelbach Hotel, an historic hotel in Louisville where F. Scott Fitzgerald used to stay frequently and got inspiration for his book (my favorite) The Great Gatsby! Saturday morning we woke up and got ready to head to my parents' house for a brunch at noon.
Friends- if you are not leaving immediately the next day for a honeymoon, I highly recommend having a brunch the day after your wedding. Our friends Justin and Jenny did this after their wedding last year and it was so fun we asked my parents to do it for us. My parents invited our entire family, Chuck's entire family and our bridal party. Since we have such a ginormous family who never turns down an opportunity to party, there were a million people there. It was like the wedding all over again! But it was great. There was tons of food, corn hole, lawn chairs out in the yard, people on the deck, babies in the grass, people standing around the kitchen- it was amazing. There were people in every corner of the house. It was so great to see everyone again and talk about the night before, but also just nice to catch up with our out of town family who we don't see often and actually get to say more to them than "Hi! Thanks for coming!" which is what I felt like I said to everyone at the wedding before getting pulled away from them.
After brunch and after some people had left, we opened gifts, opened cards, relaxed, and later that night went to Chuck's sister's house to grill out burgers and relax some more. That night we went back to stay at the Seelbach again and made our marriage "facebook official," had a ceremonious name-changing on Facebook, and created a new gmail address for me with my new name.
Like I said before, I strongly recommend a brunch to anyone the day after the wedding. It was great to get to see everyone again so soon after and great to spend time sitting down and actually talking to all the people we love.
Photo credits go to my Aunt Kathy and my sister Laura. Stole these from their facebooks and blogs. Thanks for unknowingly letting me steal these pics from you all! :)
I wish this could be every Saturday afternoon. Blankets, nieces on my friends' laps, sunshine... Sigh.
A couple of days after the wedding, I wrote down a ton of things stream-of-consciousness style that I did not want to forget about our wedding. A lot of it was little details, things that were said or looks that were shared that won't be in pictures or on our wedding video. Years from now I'm sure most of our wedding day will be a blur and most of what I'll remember will be the things we have pictures of. So now I have this list of details I can always look back and read to remember the things that stuck out most to me 2-3 days after the wedding. I've decided to share some of that list with you rather than recap the whole wedding ceremony and reception. Because that would take forever. So here it goes. Also, sorry if I use a lot of people's names and don't explain who they are. Just know they are all special people to me.
Waiting to walk across the lobby as the bridesmaids entered and watching Audrey do hilarious dance moves to entertain us. Caroline turning to me right before she walked down the aisle and saying "Rachel you look so beautiful."
Dad and I talking about being nervous and wishing we could watch the flower girls walk down the aisle. Miguel snapping our picture in the hallway right before we walked down the aisle. Turning the corner and Dad said "Here we go. Time to make the donuts!"
Side note: "Time to make the donuts" is what my dad used to say to us growing up when he would come in to wake us up. Instead of, "wake up, it's time for school," we got "Time to make the donuts!" or sometimes if he was feeling tired or lazy, he would open the door and just say "Hey. Donuts." It was probably the best thing he could have said to me before walking down the aisle because a) it had significant meaning to me and b) it was funny so I was laughing and not thinking about being nervous and/or crying.
Seeing
Chuck at the end of the aisle and watching him the whole time I walked.
Chuck's face- a closed mouth smile, no tears. Chuck mouthing "you look beautiful" to me as the song finished. The service went by so fast. Glancing at my girls occasionally to see if
they were crying.
Chuck singing along to "Lifesong" when our musician was singing it because he couldn't help himself.
Everyone saying the Lord's Prayer differently and then laughing. Ava giving me thumbs up from the front row when we turned around to make our exit. Walking back down the aisle to go out and wanting to stop and hug my cousin Aaron and his girlfriend Elizabeth when I saw them. Hugging all my best friends when they were finished walking down the aisle.
The party bus entrance- Chuck and I came out of the church to our friends all lined up waiting to get on the party bus until we got on. They popped champagne, cheered- only to find out we weren't getting on the bus until after taking some pictures. Hahaha. Second actual party bus entrance when everyone cheered and handed us champagne glasses immediately.
Entering the party bus to this song- the song my cousin Caitlin wanted us to enter the reception to.
Singing and dancing all the way to reception.
Eating so many green chili won tons in the office at the reception while my dress was being bustled and my veil taken out. Watching our bridal party enter to Party Rock and cracking up at their moves. Entering with Chuck, high-fiving people as we went past and feeling like the happiest person alive.
Eating dinner and watching Allison and James do their interview with the videographer and wondering what they were saying. Watching Liz and Shane talk to the camera man and laughing
about what they were probably saying. Audrey telling Branden
"her is my very best friend cause her just got married" and saying I
was her best friend more than Chuck. I think she thought only I got married since I was the one with the big dress.
Awkward moment when we realized neither of us knew how to properly cut a cake and then actually doing it but with our opposite hands so it was even more awkward.
Sami's
amazing toast- saying Chuckie had been her brother forever and noting that we both were at her 5th, 8th and high school graduations.
Liz's face when she caught the bouquet. My cousin Aaron and Chuck's cousin Justin fighting for the garter. First
dance- singing to each other and talking about how we were having the
perfect night.
Dancing with my dad, talking about how perfect everything was and how happy
everyone was and laughing at all my friends for crying their eyes out. Standing with my mom and hugging Liz and Ava while watching Chuck dance with his mom. Dancing like crazy the rest of the night with everyone, going on and off the dance floor to hug people and talk to people.
Watching the Bourbon boys celebrate Uncle Tony's 50th birthday. Watching people
dance in the middle of a big circle- break dancing, doing flips, etc. Wondering where everyone was at one point and seeing a huge line at the photo booth. Leaving the reception and feeling so sad to leave all of our friends and family still in that room but so happy at the same time.
At the end of the day, my cheeks hurt from smiling, my entire body ached from dancing, and I felt happier than I ever have in my whole life.
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