1st Anniversary

Today we celebrate 11 and 1. Eleven years of Chuckie and Rachel, 1 year of Mr. and Mrs. Cummings.

It's hard to believe that our wedding was already a year ago. I feel like it was just yesterday! I've always heard that the first year of marriage is the hardest. Well if that's true, (which I'm sure a lot of people could argue) then I'll take it, because this has honestly been one of our best years yet, if not THE best one.  We have had more adventures, more fun, more travels, more laughter, and more togetherness than ever.  We've learned even more about each other which I didn't think was possible at this point.  We are (almost) always on the same page and we love drinking margaritas together. We have fun going out and being active but we also have fun staying home and doing nothing. I swear we have more fun brushing our teeth together sometimes than some people probably have in a whole day.

Chuckie is my best friend and I'm so lucky to have him to share all these exciting experiences with.

This, ladies and gentleman, is my husband:

I wouldn't want to brush my teeth next to anyone else.

Goodbye, Seattle

It's hard to believe it, but our 6 months in Seattle are already over. We leave TOMORROW.

We definitely have mixed emotions about leaving. On the one hand, we're ready to be back in Boston with our apartment, furniture/stuff, and friends. On the other hand, the weather in Seattle has been perfect lately and we've recently discovered a couple places in town that we wish we would have found sooner/had more time to explore.

To sum up our time here, I've come up with a list of my 10 favorite and 10 least favorite things about Seattle.

Least Favorites:
1. Lack of air conditioning in most places, especially in our apartment.
2. Aggressive/mean homeless people.
3. The fact that people sometimes walk around naked in the streets and it's ok. Nothing will shock you more than walking to dinner and rounding the corner only to almost run smack into a topless woman.
4. Ants in our bathroom. Ants in our kitchen. Ants on my arm while I'm sitting on our couch.
5. Lack of parking. Of all the hours we've spent in Seattle, about 50% of them were spent searching for a parking spot. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but... only a little.
6.  Construction. It seems like all of Seattle is currently under construction. Which leads me to...
7. Traffic. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, there is ALWAYS traffic. 1 pm... 10 pm... 7 am... I've never seen anything like it.
8. Pacific Time Zone. I feel like everything revolves around the Eastern Time Zone and being out here makes us feel like we're always behind. And I hate adding 3 hours to the time when I look at the clock to see if it's an acceptable time to text or call someone on the East Coast. It also makes watching a TV show difficult if people on the East Coast watch it first and post about it on Twitter. (#firstworldproblems, I know)
9. Four way stops where no one has a stop sign. There are so many parts of Seattle where there will be an intersection where a logical 4 way or at least 2 way stop should be, and there's just no stop signs. It's like taking your life into your own hands every time you drive.
10. There's no ChickFilA here and the closest Dairy Queen is a 20 minute drive.

Favorites:
1. Mountains and water everywhere. The scenery here never gets old.
2. Walkability. I like that we've lived in a neighborhood where we can walk to work, the grocery, Starbucks, our friends' houses, dinner, frozen yogurt.
3. Speaking of Starbucks... they're everywhere! It's great! I was in a building downtown a few days ago and counted 4 Starbucks in just one building. It would be an understatement to say I've consumed a lot of coffee in the past 6 months.
4. Summer weather. My ideal weather is basically Seattle summer weather. Highs in the 70s-80s, sunny, no humidity, and a little cool at night. I have been in heaven this summer. I think it's Seattle's best kept secret that if you can put up with 9 months of clouds and misty rain, you're rewarded with 3 months of perfection.
5. Unlimited things to do. I feel like Chuck and I have done and seen a TON in these 6 months, but I feel like we barely dented the surface of the amount of places to go and things to do around here.
6. Free time. Without homework and extracurriculars, Chuck had a lot of free time during the week and weekends to hang out with me. This allowed us to do a lot of activities during the week. And by "activities during the week" I mean "sit on the couch and watch countless hours of Justified and Friday Night Lights while drinking chocolate milk." Yep. We're awesome.
7. City Target. A 3 story Target in the middle of downtown that has a special escalator for your shopping cart.
8. Unique bars. Seattle has some really unique bars here that I haven't seen anywhere else. My favorites are the Arcade Bar and the Pie Bar. The Arcade Bar has old school games and pinball machines you can play while you have a little drink. The Pie Bar sells two things- alcohol and pie. It's amazing.
9. Shopping. There are so many good places to shop, downtown, the U-district, the outlets, the malls...
10. I know I already said this one but it really is my favorite, favorite thing about Seattle- the mountains and water. It's just SO. PRETTY. here. Just look at it.

The view from the street corner of our apartment entrance. Not bad.

Two weeks of traveling and then we'll be back in Boston! I'll update soon with pictures and stories from our drive.

Cross Country Road Trippin'

Our 6 months in Seattle are coming to a close and we are preparing for our first ever cross country road trip.

Beginning this Saturday, we are driving (literally) coast to coast- from Seattle to Boston- with several stops in between. The trip will take a total of 2 weeks. Four days to get to Louisville, 7 days there (as we probably won't be back until Christmas), a couple days in Virginia Beach to visit Chuck's sister and her family, and then on to Boston by Labor Day Weekend. We've decided to take our car with us to Boston this year since our apartment has a parking garage and our parking spot is included in the rent. We'll only use it though for weekend adventures and some trips to Target. :)

Here's a little picture of the route we plan to take to get back to Boston.

(Map created with roadtrippers.com. Seriously- one of the coolest websites ever.)

Our first night, we'll spend in Bozeman, MT with a friend from Louisville, Sara,  who lives there. Our second night we'll spend in a hotel near Mt. Rushmore. Our third night we'll spend in Rochester, MN with my best friend Lauren. Then we'll be in Louisville for several days before we head to VA Beach and Boston.  We plan to follow the route above, veering off the path to drive through the Badlands and maybe make some other stops along the way as we see signs that interest us.

We're going to be in the car  A LOT.  Good thing we like each other a lot.

We might be a little crazy to drive this much but we're excited to see parts of the country we've never seen before and see some friends and family along the way! I can't wait to share our stories and pictures on the blog.

Until then, I'll leave you with a video (and song) from my favorite movie about a cross country road trip.

The Adventure at Alki Beach

Last weekend, Tacy came to visit us in Seattle. We took her to all our favorite Seattle spots: Kerry Park, Ballard, Senor Moose (our favorite Seattle restaurant) and Pike Place Market.  On Saturday though, we took quite a little adventure for our first time, and Tacy's of course, to Alki Beach in West Seattle.

To get to Alki Beach, you can drive, take a bus, or take a ferry and walk. It was a nice day outside and we were close to the ferries, so we decided to take the 10 minute water taxi over there. Once the ferry/taxi drops you off, it's about a mile walk to the actual beach.

After the ferry ride, I decided to use the restroom before the long walk. The bathroom on the landing spot was so disgusting, but against my better judgement, I decided to use it. I also decided to take off my pullover and wear just my tank top for the walk, and in the process, dropped my BRAND NEW pullover on the bathroom floor. It was covered in... well, I don't know what and I don't really want to know.

The adventure was not off to a great start.  But the view of the city was nice!

So we started walking, my poor little pullover balled up and tucked in my purse, and when we finally reached the beach, I claimed I wanted to walk on the sand. Big. Mistake. The sand was so hot, people playing sand volleyball were wearing socks. So we headed for the water, but then found rocks and broken shells which hurt equally as bad, AND the water was freezing. So, it was an all around terrible idea.

Back to the road we went and naturally, we decided to get ice cream because what goes together better than ice cream and the beach? This is where we discovered that I have amazingly fast reflexes when it comes to food.

Scene: Ice cream scooper hands me cone with chocolate peanut butter ice cream on top. It looked kinda like this:

I took one lick and because the scoops were so big and the cone was so small, the scoops fell from the cone. I reacted faster than I ever have and managed to catch the entire scoop(s) with my bare hand before it/they hit the floor. Not a drop of ice cream was lost. I don't mess around when it comes to sweets, y'all.

After the long walk and the terrible sand experience, we decided to take the bus ride back to downtown Seattle. So we waited for the bus while we ate our ice cream and planned out the rest of our evening. The bus arrived pretty quickly and started through West Seattle, towards downtown.  Chuck asked the bus driver if the bus would take us to downtown Seattle, just to be 100% sure we were on the right bus, and the bus driver said "Yeah I'll get you there."

Thirty minutes later we were approaching downtown Seattle when the bus took a strange turn and headed South and East, completely the opposite direction of the Seattle skyline. Cue confusion/anger/laughter/more confusion. After another look at the map and bus route, we realized this bus was going NOWHERE NEAR DOWNTOWN. So as soon as we could, we got off the bus and stood at a bus stop literally in the middle of nowhere. Like, there was a field in front of and behind us.

To make a long story shorter, we caught a bus there that took us almost to our apartment's front door and all was well. But wow. What a disaster.

So basically our beach trip turned into a dirtied brand new shirt (which did come perfectly clean after one wash, just in case anyone was wondering), a painful experience for our feet, a test of my reflexes when ice cream is at stake, and an accidental bus tour of parts of Seattle I don't care to visit again.

Oh well. It makes for a good story, I guess. And we got to see this flower covered house, so it was all worth it.