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!

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!

Finals week

If you want to know what finals week looks like for MIT LGOs in the summer, this picture says it all.

This was Monday night. Not pictured: the ibuprofen and water sitting next to him, a clock showing that it was only 8:45 pm when this picture was taken, and furniture- because we have none right now, remember?