House Hunters: Cummings Edition

For about a year, Chuck and I have been talking about buying a house. When we moved back to Louisville 2 years ago, we weren't ready to think about buying a house yet. There was a lot of change happening all at once and we wanted to get established in a routine again before thinking about settling down in a house. Last summer, we decided to renew our lease for another year. We weren't prepared to make all the decisions that come with home buying and also well, we REALLY love our apartment. It was brand new when we moved into it 2 years ago and because the complex let us pick our layout and then personalize it with paint and light fixtures, it really feels like a home and not a standard, cookie cutter apartment. It has granite counter tops and (faux) wood floors and really soft carpet! We don't have to cut grass or pull weeds, and best of all when the fancy light bulbs in our track lighting go out, we call someone to come replace them! We are so spoiled here.

So once again we are faced with the "lease renewal" decision and we've decided that we're ready to leave apartment life behind and find a house. I'm extremely excited to start this process but also pretty stressed about it already. You see, while Chuck and I have very similar taste in most everything and agree on what we do and do not want in a house, we have very different approaches when making big purchases.

When it comes to buying a car or a couch or a headboard for our bed or a TV or anything that comes with a significant cost, on the first day we go shopping for the thing, this is me:

...except in a slightly less bratty, rude, selfish way. I'm a very impatient shopper. I look around and weigh the options some, but typically when I look at something I know right away if I want to own it or not.

When Chuck goes looking for the same item, this is him:

....except he's not an old grandma. But man does that dude love to do some research! He always has an idea of what he wants but he needs time to process, do some research, look at every possible alternative, and make sure he's getting the best deal.

I think we can all agree that while my way of shopping is way more fun, Chuck's way is way more sensible. The good thing is we know this about each other and are able to compromise. We don't make any impulse buys, but we also don't take 6 months to buy a couch. (Just about 2 months...)

But you can see where I'm going with this. The two of us house hunting together is probably going to look a lot like me wanting to buy every house right away and Chuck wanting to buy none. We look for the first time this weekend, so I'll report back soon... Wish us luck!

Life happened

Well. It's been 3 months since my last blog post and I have no other excuse besides I've been busy living life. Not that I wasn't living life the past two years, but I at least had 30 minutes every now and then to sit down and write a blog post. It may sound crazy and you may be thinking "yeah right" when I say this- but I honestly have not had a free 30 minutes to sit and blog since my last post. Our lives amped up that weekend and have only just begun to slow down a little.

Here is a recap of what we've been up to since May 17th.
- My cousin's wedding in Louisville
- Elizabeth and Shane's wedding shower and bachelor/bachelorette parties
- Final celebrations and end of school events at MIT
- We hosted our entire families in Boston
- Chuck graduated (I don't think he and I slept more than 4 hours a night the entire week of his graduation)
- Chuck was in a wedding for our friends Clayton and Christen on the Cape
- We road tripped to Louisville with our UHAUL, Chuck's parents and my sisters
- My BFF Elizabeth and Shane got hitched and we were both in the wedding
- I flew to Minnesota for my best friend Lauren's bachelorette weekend (and made $1800 in Delta travel vouchers from taking later flights both on the way there and the way home. Cha-ching!)
- We drove to West Virginia for Chuck's classmate's wedding and stayed at a resort all weekend
- We spent 4th of July with family and at the Lake
- We drove to Minnesota for Lauren's wedding, which I was in
- We took a vacation to Playa del Carmen for our delayed honeymoon/yay Chuck graduated/we better take a vacation before we start working again
- We finally moved into our new apartment and got settled
- Chuck started work at Amazon
- I interviewed for jobs and recently accepted an offer

Add on top of all those things: cookouts with family, dinner dates with friends, church, church meetings, shopping for things for our apartment, setting up insurance, cable and electric, Gamenight friends events, and probably a bunch of other stuff, and that's been our summer.

I begin work on Monday and hopefully we will FINALLY have our new routine in place. As a person who thrives off itineraries and lists, I am pretty excited to get into a routine again. Not to take away from our summer of craziness though- it was the best summer ever.

Hopefully over time I can share some pictures with you of all of our summer fun. For now, I will leave you with a few pictures from our resort in Mexico, where I daydream about at least once a day.

Family Graduations

Last weekend I took a quick 48 hour trip to Kentucky for my little sister's college graduation. Unfortunately, Chuck had a class presentation to attend from 9-4 on the same day of the graduation, so he couldn't make the trip with me. So Friday morning, I caught a flight to Louisville for a very short, very busy weekend.

Saturday we were up bright and early for a full day of graduation fun, but not just for my little sis! My cousin Ethan graduated from UofL that morning. My cousin Caitlin graduated from UK (in the same ceremony as Sami!), and Sami's boyfriend Austin graduated with his Master's from UK that morning. So many graduates! So many smart people to celebrate in one day!

We started the day in downtown Louisville at Ethan's graduation. I was so happy it worked out that I could be home for Ethan's graduation too.  I'm so proud of you, Eth! You're da bomb!

There he goes!

Oh and there goes Russdiculous!

Chuckie made it to Kentucky with me, kind of!

 Our bros

Proud parents

Proud girlfriend

Afterwards, we got on the road and headed for Lexington. Once there, we met up with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and their grandma and grandpa for a late lunch/early dinner at a popular steakhouse in Lexington.

The graduation started at 6pm, and ended 1 box of popcorn, a bag of M&M's, 6 dead iPhones and 2.5 hours later.

Sami and Caitlin got to sit together and walk across the stage back to back since they were both graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences.

There they go!

Sami and Cailtin- UK is probably really sad to see you go and the real world is really happy to see you join it. :) I love you both and am so proud of you!

Proud family

Proud parents

Proud sisters

Proud boyfriend

 Oh and we later made Austin put his cap, gown and hood on so we could get some pictures of him and Sami in their gowns together. :)

No big event in the family is complete without the 5 Hagan Girls and Chuckie picture. Not quite the same as having the real Chuckie in the picture but the sentiment is still there. :)

Of course, the celebration didn't end once the graduation ceremony was over. We made a stop at Graeter's for some ice cream, a liquor store for some celebratory drinks and then our parents' hotel room for an after party, before going back to Sami's and crashing from a long and exhausting day.

Uncle Tony carried Chuckie around for a little bit.

Sunday morning we had a Mother's Day breakfast, I helped Sami pack up her car since she was moving out later that day, and then mom drove me straight back to the Louisville airport to head back to Boston. The weekend was short and sweet and tiring as I knew it would be, but I couldn't miss my little sister's college graduation.  I only wish my other half could have made the trip with me. He hated missing all of the graduations but I hope the graduates know he was there in spirit and was thinking about all of you all day! He probably felt like he was there all day too considering all the pictures I was sending him. :)

Chuckie and I head to Louisville again next weekend, Memorial Day, for my other bro, Aaron's, wedding (yay!!!) and some Liz and Shane wedding shower and bachelor/bachelorette party fun! Wedding season is upon us!

"I'm gonna go graduate now. But first? Lemme take a selfie"

Murder Mystery New Year's Eve

This New Year's Eve we decided to spice up our traditional game night with a different type of game.  Several months ago, my sister Laura bought a Groupon for a Murder Mystery Party package. It comes with everything you need to have a full blown Murder Mystery party right in your own house. Everyone gets a character, envelopes with information about your character's personality and history, goals to accomplish at the party, etc. We had several themes to choose from but ultimately voted to do the "30 Year High School Reunion" theme. We decided the only way we could make it successful was if everyone really committed. And commit, we did.

I had planned to write out a whole summary of the night and events, but Laura, who is a long time blogger and hilarious writer, summed up the night better than I ever could have over on her blog. Seriously. It's so good. Especially the Cast of Characters post. You can click the links below to go straight there.

Part 1: Cast of Characters
Part 2: The Case

The night was a huge success and we're already talking about when we can do another Murder Mystery party.

After the murder was solved, a photo booth session took place, drinks were had, games were played, and of course, we watched the ball drop at midnight. The Murder Mystery was most definitely the best part of the night, but another favorite part of the evening for me was right before the ball dropped. We were all sitting/standing around the living room and we decided to go around and share our favorite part of 2013 (besides Grayson's birth, of course). This group of friends is goofy/ridiculous 99% of the time, but that 1% serious time is what always reminds me why I love these people so much. As everyone shared their favorite moments, I teared up (naturally....I cry daily) and Chuck and I both shared that our favorite part of 2013 was finding out we get to move back and spend more time with these crazy people we call family.

And now... a few pictures of the night post-Murder Mystery.

Party Animals

While we were home for the holidays, we partied quite a bit! 

Hagan Family Christmas Party
My extended family has decided that Christmas is not enough of a theme for our annual Saturday before Christmas party together. So a few years ago they started adding a theme on top of Christmas. So far we've had Mexican Christmas, Chinese Christmas, and this year, Cowboy/Country Christmas. We all dress the part, bring food and games/things to do that relate to the theme. My sisters and I use the party as an excuse to wear appropriately themed mustaches. Three years of themed parties, three sets of mustaches.

We made sure Lucy was dressed in the theme too, even though she wasn't invited to the party.

Fake guns on the table, gentlemen.

We ate chili and other country food, took pictures of ourselves looking like tough cowboys, did a "piece of junk" gift exchange where everyone brought a piece of junk from home and traded it in a game of "Dirty Santa," (we each donated the $10 we usually spend on gifts for this exchange to Kosair instead), and played games, including the "make reindeer antlers out of panty hose and balloons" team game, which our team came in last but was decided had the best antlers. Well, we decided we had the best antlers. I don't know about everyone else.

We added an extra balloon after the fact to make them actually stand up instead of laying straight across like a giant caterpillar....

I love my crazy family! We can't wait to find out what the theme is for next year.

Christmas Eve Eve
Every year since my senior year of high school, I get together with my girlfriends Emily and Elizabeth on December 23 for what we've dubbed our Christmas Eve Eve celebration.  We eat a lot of food, decorate Christmas cookies, and exchange gifts. It's always a good time and fun to spend a few hours feeling like we're still kids. :)

Tacky Christmas Sweater Party
Our friends Justin and Jenny have started a tradition of hosting a Tacky Sweater party right before Christmas. The party is always full of people who now live out of town but come home for the holidays to see their families. It's so much fun to see our old friends who we haven't seen all year and catch up with them, play games, and this year, sing karaoke. Oh man did we sing some karaoke. Elizabeth and I gave an emotional, heart-wrenching performance of Wrecking Ball. It changed people's lives. Or maybe made them all hate us. We aren't sure. But it was pretty memorable to say the least.

Wine and Cheese Pajama Christmas Party
Our Gamenight friends decided this year to have the Christmas Party separate from the New Year's party since we were doing the Murder Mystery thing for New Year's this year. Since the two parties were only 2 days apart, we thought we should do something different and classy, hence the wine and cheese. Then someone suggested a pajama party, so then it turned into a Wine and Cheese pajama party. (Our friends are ridiculous, as you may remember from previous stories about them.) We ate a lot, drank some wine, and exchanged gifts "Secret Santa" style.

Chuckie and Shane both came in superhero onesies. Unplanned. Perfect.

Obviously Grayson participated in the pajama theme because he's a dedicated Gamenight member.

New Year's Murder Mystery Party
I just decided this party will get it's very own post. There are just way too many pictures and things to tell about. Here's one picture to hold you over. Stay tuned.

UofL Sports Day
This year, the UK vs UofL basketball game fell on the same day as the UofL football bowl game. So obviously this deserved a party. With my parents, sisters and Chuckie's dad, we headed down the street to our friends Andy and Clay's house (who were out of town, btw, and were ok with us going over there anyway!) and watched both games on their gigantic projector screen.  Oh and of course there was a lot of gameday food. Did you have any doubt?

We lost the basketball game to UK (womp womp) but won our bowl game against Miami. So it was a good day overall. 

And that concludes the recap of parties! Murder Mystery New Year's Eve post coming soon.

Christmas 2013

Christmas this year was as busy as ever. We had a lot of places to be, a lot of gifts to give, and a lot of food to eat. Just as Christmas should be.

Christmas Eve morning we spent baking and wrapping presents. Nothing like waiting 'til the last minute, right? That afternoon, we drove out to my Grandma's house to spend time with her and exchange gifts. That night we attended 3, yes 3, church services. Catholic Church with Chuckie's sister and her family, Presbyterian Church with my family, and Disciples of Christ Church with a mixture of both our families. And we had a quick dinner at O'Charley's somewhere in between all the church. Yes I know 3 services at 3 different churches is a bit much, but Christmas is about Jesus and family, so what better way to spend Christmas Eve than at church with family?

Dad, conducting the handbell choir at Springdale.

 

Christmas morning we woke up at my parent's house, had coffee and opened presents, and then cooked brunch.

All of us went in together on cooking classes for my parents, and also this amazing Breaking Bad themed cutting board featuring Heisenberg and the words "Let's Cook." Probably our best gift ever.

 Sami as a present.

Chuckie cookin' up some sausage.

The Grandmas- having Bourbon Balls before brunch.  Because they're awesome like that.

 Soon after brunch we headed off to our next stop, Shannon and Miguel's.

Christmas presents and wrapping paper everywhere: the sign of a great Christmas.

Someone got a makeup kit from Santa and decided to test it out on Amelia!

Audrey loved her little Beanie Boo from Grammy. 

This face... So proud of the ornament she made at school and gave to Shannon. :)

 A little blurry but still cute.

Brother and sister realizing they are both kinda blind in just their left eyes.

After we ate dinner, we headed over to Chuckie's dad's house where a few of Chuckie's aunts, uncles and cousins were hanging out. We ate a little and played Scattergories. Then after everyone left, we sat in the living room and just chatted until almost midnight. It was a fun night. I forgot to take any pictures because I was trying so hard to win at Scattergories. :( I guess there's always next year!