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.

Home

The holidays came and went, our trip to Louisville flew by, and now we're back in Boston, for what I will sadly refer to as "The Beginning of the End." It's hard to believe (I know I always say that, but it is) that we are ONE school semester away from the end of the LGO program. 5 months. Less than half a year. WHAT?! Excuse me while I shed a few tears.

Ok I'm back.

Anyway, as I told about in my New Year's post, 2014 is going to be an exciting, busy, and crazy year once again. It is definitely going to give 2012 a run for it's money, in terms of busy-ness, change, moving, traveling, and just plain old fun.  But before we get into all that, I will catch you up on our time in Louisville.

This year we were fortunate again to spend 2 full weeks at home for the holidays. Chuck flew in a few days before me, and once I got in town we were going non-stop, just like we always do.

I won't bore you with a play-by-play of our every day in the 'Ville. Instead I've made a nice list of some things we got to enjoy while home.

- Parties. I think all the parties deserve their own post because there were just so many of them and so many pictures.... We attended an ABUNDANCE of parties. My Hagan Family Christmas, a Tacky Christmas Sweater party with friends, Christmas Eve Eve with my girlfriends, Gamenight Friends Wine, Cheese and Pajama Christmas Party, Gamenight Friends New Year's party, UofL/UK basketball & UofL football bowl game watch party... We partied our booties off.

- Games. We played a lot of games with a lot of different groups of people while home. Scattergories, Pandemic, Cards Against Humanity, Charades, Card Tricks, What's Yours Like?, LRC, Lego Creationary.... Some were played more than once and with several different groups of people. We love us some games.

A group of friends and family playing a game at my parents' house one night:

 One morning, Liz and Shane invited us over to play Pandemic, our new favorite game, and they cooked breakfast for us. We have good friends.

- FOOD. We ate. A lot. Like everyone else does around the holidays, we gorged ourselves on appetizers at parties, cookies and chocolate, eating out at least twice a day.... It was intense. But so good because who doesn't love good food ALL THE TIME?

-Little Friends. We hung out with a lot of little friends while home. Obviously we spent a lot of time with 3 of our nieces who live in Louisville. We even babysat them one night which was a lot of fun and also a little crazy- but everyone ate dinner, went to sleep before their parents came home, no one got injured, and only one thing got broken. Not half bad! We also saw our mini gamenight friends Grayson and Brendan, my friend Shannon's 6 month old Jayson, my cousin's daughter Addison, and our friend's hilarious kids Trace and Cary.

Chuckie and Grayson

Me and Jayson

 Proof that we fed the girls while we babysat and proof that Sloane is a gangsta:

We taught them how to play "Sardines" while we babysat. You know, the game that's basically hide and seek except when you find the person you hide with them until everyone is hiding except one person? They got the idea.... kinda...

 Chuckie and Amelia watching the older two sing karaoke on their new karaoke machine:

- Apartment shopping. Now that we know we are moving back to Louisville for sure, we decided we better look for a place to live. We won't be back to Louisville again until we move back for good (we may be back once or twice in May but just for 2-3 days to go to graduations and a wedding, so I'm not counting those) so we had to go to some places while we could to see them in person. It was really exciting to go shopping because apartments are WAY cheaper in Louisville than in Boston and Seattle and also because Chuck and I have never had our own place in Louisville before! So even though we're going home, it will feel totally different having our own place there for the first time!

So those are some of the highlights of the trip. In between all those things there were chill time with family, shopping, the movie theater, and more eating. I swear we ate more than we did anything else.

The sunset on January 1, 2014. A beautiful start to the New Year!

I Miss Boston

A little while ago when we were still in Boston, I wrote a post about all the things I missed about Louisville.  Chuck is going to Boston tomorrow for his "midstream review" and will be reunited with all of the LGOs and SOs and I'm extremely jealous, so it got me thinking, I should write a post of all the things I miss about Boston!

Two weeks ago, I started this post with a list of things and pictures that I love and miss about the city. Between the time I started this post and today, the bombing of the Boston Marathon occured. The shooting of an MIT police officer occured. A car chase leading to Watertown happened, ending in a shootout and a 20 hour manhunt that shut down the ENTIRE city for a whole day. Boston was not the ideal place to be for those 5 days, and Chuck and I were glued to the news on TV, twitter, emails, and the Boston police scanner all week.

Imagine watching CNN and seeing bombs go off on a street you've walked down several times with friends and family, and knowing that several of your friends still in Boston were probably somewhere along the marathon route watching. Imagine 4 days later, your husband gets a phone call and text alert from his school, letting him know the school is currently on lockdown due to a shooting on campus. Imagine turning on CNN again and seeing BLOOD on the ground on the campus you lived on, worked on, where your husband goes to school, and where many of your friends are AT THAT MOMENT. Oh and did I mention that all of these events, including the marathon bombings, took place less than 1 or 2 miles from our apartment in Cambridge? These are our streets and our hangouts and we've now learned nothing will make you feel as angry and protective as seeing someone reek terror on them. It was so hard to watch this from across the country, but I can't even imagine the fear and anger that our friends and all Bostonians felt.

So you may think it's weird to see a post titled "I Miss Boston" after all of this has taken place, but I truly miss it and oddly enough, even more after what's occured. I know we weren't in Boston for very long, and we won't be for very long when we get back there in September, but Boston is our home away from (Kentucky) home.

Seattle is temporary and feels temporary. We live in short term housing and have none of our own furniture, kitchen utensils, decorations, etc. All of that is in our apartment in Boston, waiting for us to come back. So while I am selfishly thankful and glad Chuck and I were not in Boston last week, because I know we would have been SOMEWHERE along the marathon route watching and cheering, and somewhere on MITs campus on that Thursday night an officer was shot and killed,  I miss it more than I ever thought I would and can't wait to get back there.

No offense to Seattle or anything, but in our short time here, I've definitely discovered, or more, CONFIRMED, that I am and always will be an East Coast kinda gal. I love the scenery here and the nice weather and my jobs and the 3 story Target stores, but that's pretty much it. I'm kind of a planner and a person that likes order and stability and I can't really say the same for Seattle. Nothing illustrates this statement more than the Seattle bus system. Will the bus be on time? 15 minutes late? 6 minutes early? Who knows? Who cares? That's pretty much the attitude about everything here. No one is in a hurry to do anything and everyone here tells me, that's just the "West Coast lifestyle." The East Coast moves a lot faster. Well, I'm from the East coast. I make an itinerary for everything. I like plans. I like calendars. I walk fast and if the bus says it's going to arrive at 4:33, I want it to be there at 4:33.

I digress.

Onto my list, created two weeks ago before all the madness. Besides the amazing police department and the people of Boston with their northern accents and constant use of the word "wicked," here are the things I love and miss about Boston, in no particular order.

Mike's Pastry. Oh how I miss standing in the long line to get a sweet and tasty Cookies and Cream cannoli wrapped up in the little white box with blue writing and a string tied around it after eating too much Italian food in the North End.

Riding the T. I know I've complained about the dirtiness and often crowdedness of the train before and I DO love having our car out here in Seattle with us, but sometimes I miss the ease of just walking out the door and onto the train to get somewhere quick, without the worry of "where will we park?"

Our things.  We are living in a short term, furnished apartment right now. As I said, we have none of our own things here. Sitting on a couch that isn't ours, cooking with pots and pans that aren't ours, etc. We literally have our clothes, a few electronics, and a couple blankets with us. I miss our TV and our couch and our blender and picture frames and DVDs. I know that may sound petty but your things are what make your home feel like YOUR home, so without them it just feels like a hotel. (Some people might say your family is what makes your home feel like home and while that is true, your stuff is also important. Just sayin'.)

Friends. I miss the big LGO and SO community. The craziest (and coolest) thing about LGO is that you gain an instant group of friends. When we all moved to Boston last May, most of us knew no one else in the city, so we bonded together to take on the city and the program.  How close did we get during that short time? Well, I will admit, I shed a tear or two after we said goodbye to our friends before we left for Seattle. And I think they are the main reason I keep saying I "don't like" Seattle. I miss karaoke Thursdays and game nights and nights at the Asgard and Toscanini dates and C-Functions and birthday parties and parties in the dark during a city-wide blackout and everything else we were doing in Boston.

Do your friends go straight from a Pajama Party to a karaoke bar, still in pajamas? Ours do.

 

 

The city. I love downtown Boston. The mix of old and new buildings, the brick and cobblestone, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, the North End, the Boston Common, the movie theater on the Common, Newbury Street, the Prudential Center, the Charles River, Beacon Hill... I love that on any given night, Chuckie and I can just go to dinner at a restaurant where Paul Revere used to hang out.  I love that when my girlfriends and I are bored, we waste time eating near and walking around HARVARD or having drinks on a friend's rooftop in one of the most famous and oldest neighborhoods in the country, Beacon Hill.  I just love it all.

Seattle doesn't have buildings like these....

 

 

 

Ok, I know I've been kind of harsh on Seattle in this post so here are a couple of pretty pictures so you know it's not all bad here and we actually are getting out and enjoying ourselves and our surroundings. 

I wish more than anything that I could go to Boston with Chuck tomorrow, so I could hug our friends, eat at a Dunkin Donuts and shake a Boston police officer's hand. But, I will just have to wait for September. We are trying to enjoy our time in Seattle and take advantage of this amazing and crazy opportunity to live on the West Coast and have this experience, but I'd be lying if I said we weren't already counting down the weeks and days until we are back "home" in Boston.

Until then, we're going to keep thinking about the people and families affected by last week's tragedy (like we have been non-stop since last Monday) and pray that Boston can heal and come back even stronger of a city than it was before. Boston Strong!

A Seattle update and a New Friend

A lot has happened in regards to our upcoming move to Seattle. Here's a quick rundown.

- I left my job at MIT and am now looking for a job in Seattle.
- We found an apartment. It's a studio apartment, but it's fully furnished, it's clean, it has a parking spot, and we only have to give 2 weeks notice to move out, so if we find a better place when we get there, we'll just move!
- Once we had an apartment locked down, we bought one way plane tickets to Seattle! We move there on February 8th. Next Friday!
- Before next Friday we have to pack up our apartment, pack up our clothes and anything else we want to take with us, ship our clothes, ship Chuckie's car from Louisville to Seattle, and about a million other things you have to do before moving across the country.

So that's where we are with that.

Now I have to tell you about our new friend!

Please meet Grayson, the newest member of our game night group (Everyone Here Hates Twilight) at home!

Grayson was born on Thursday, January 24th, just like Chuck and I knew he would be. You see, our friends can make a game out of anything, including the birth of our friends' baby. One night while Chuck and I were in Louisville over Christmas break, a big group of our friends and family went out to eat. After dinner, the subject of Jennifer's due date came up, and 5 minutes later, we had a napkin with everyone's guesses for when the baby would be born, what time, and what the sex of the baby would be. Chuck and I were at opposite ends of the table and somehow managed to choose the exact same date and almost the exact same time. (I chose 3:20 pm, he chose 3:40.) The only difference was he said boy and I said girl.

And wouldn't you know, Grayson came on January 24th! At 6:15 a.m. though, so we were a little off on the time. I think he's already chosen me and Chuck as his favorites. Because of course, you had to assume that we put money on this bet! Grayson made Chuck $20 richer!

The proud dad, with the napkin and winnings!

 

I don't really know if we're Grayson's favorite's or not since we haven't actually met him yet, but it makes me feel better to say that since we couldn't be there to welcome him in person! I hope he knows we can't wait to actually meet him and until then, we will have to settle for occasional skype dates.

 

Congratulations, Matt and Jennifer! You did good!

Holiday Highlights

Chuckie and I spent December 20-January 5 in Louisville for Christmas and New Years. It was so good to be home, especially since we didn't get to go home for Thanksgiving. Our days were super packed from the time we got home until we left. We tried to fit in as much quality time as we could and I think we accomplished that. One day we met someone for coffee at 10, I had a lunch date with someone else at 12:30, we went to someone's house in the afternoon, met family for dinner and then went to a bar with some friends. That's pretty much how every day went. Most nights we didn't get in bed until about 2 a.m. We both came back to Boston extremely exhausted but also extremely happy with how we spent our time at home.

I plan to do a separate Christmas post because I have too many good pictures from the day that I want to share and don't want to cram into this "highlights" post.

So for now, a glimpse into our busy visit home. (Please note, I didn't take any pictures but we did get to eat at Havana Rumba, Wild Eggs AND Chick-fil-A (twice) while home which are all places we miss a lot when we're in Boston. It was glorious.)

My cousin, Caitlin, turned 21 on 12/21/12- the day the world was supposed to end. We made sure we partied hard and I think Caitlin had a pretty good birthday.

Tequila shots all around!

The traditional "5 Hagan girls and Chuckie" picture we've taken at important events for 10 years now!

Us and the birthday girl!

My friends Elizabeth, Emily and I have had a "Girl's Christmas" on December 23 every year since our senior year of high school. Appropriately, we call it "Eve Eve." While no Eve Eve will ever be as good as the first one, we pretty much do the same thing every year- a gift exchange, cookie decorating with Emily's mom, followed by playing the Titanic song on the piano and singing along, and then there's ALWAYS a picture by the Kubitskey Christmas tree.

The same night as Eve Eve, our friends Justin and Jenny hosted a Tacky Christmas Sweater party at their house. It was so much fun and we got to see our Best Man, Branden, who we miss so much!

Of course Christmas was a huge highlight of our trip. This was the first year Chuckie and I have spent all of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together, so it was very special. Like I said, I will make a separate post just for Christmas.

For Christmas, my parents gave us tickets to the UofL vs UK basketball game which is pretty much the biggest day of the year in Kentucky besides Derby Day. Chuck and I have been to the game before but we've never had seats as good as the ones my parents gave us. It was incredible, and the Cards won!

Also, at halftime we went to walk around and Chuck spotted Larry O'Bannon, who you may remember from THIS previous post about basketball. I immediately went into attack mode, similar to the way I attacked another favorite, T-Will, at a football game, and practically ran up to Larry and in a squeaky voice, asked him to take a picture with me. He told me "One sec lemme finish this nacho" and then happily posed with me for this picture.

Wearing his hood indoors probably so no one would notice him and bug him to take pictures. Whoops.

IT WAS THE BEST DAY EVER!!!!!

New Year's Eve did not disappoint this year either. Our friends, Matt and Jennifer, hosted our game night group at their house for a party. We turned it into our annual Christmas party/New Year's party/kind of a baby shower party for Jennifer, who is due in January! We did a white elephant gift exchange, gave baby gifts to Jen and Matt, ate a ton of good food, and played several games. It was an amazing ending to 2012.

Trying to have the same haircut so we feel connected even when we're apart?

 

When we weren't at Christmas parties, lunches, dinners, coffee meetings, basketball games, etc. we were trying to soak up as much family time as we could. Sometimes I think there's really nothing better than just sitting around a living room with your family, doing absolutely nothing. Actually, while we were doing just that at Chuckie's sister's house, I think I snapped my favorite picture of the whole trip:

LOVE

Whirlwind Trip Home

This past weekend I made a (very) quick trip to Louisville to take care of wedding things. Among a lot of little tasks, my two biggest tasks while home were to have a dress fitting and get my hair trial done for the big day. I did a lot of things while home but here are some of the highlights.

I flew in to Cincinnati on Friday night where my parents picked me up. We stopped at a Tumbleweed somewhere on the way back to Louisville where, when the host seating us asked us "Smoking or non-smoking?" I had to ask my dad if we just went back in time. I seriously didn't realize there were still places in the country where restaurants have smoking sections.

Saturday morning I had my wedding hair trial. While there, a lady came in to get her hair done for her wedding because it was actually her wedding day! She was freaking out a little bit though because she was having an outdoor wedding (with no backup plan) and it was, at that moment, raining cats and dogs. I felt really bad for her but also felt really happy that we are not having an outdoor wedding and won't have to worry about weather on August 24th. The good news is, her wedding was at 6 and around 5:30, the clouds went away and the sun came out!

After my hair trial, on my way to my dress fitting, I stopped at the jewelry store to pick up our wedding bands (!!!!) and everyone in the store thought it was my wedding day because of my hair. God help me if I am running errands like that at 2 o'clock on my actual wedding day.

Dress fitting: the dress still fits.

After other errands I had a gourmet meal at the Hagan Bed & Breakfast cooked by Bobby Flay (AKA my dad) and his assistants (AKA my mom, me, Laura and Sami). I also fed some of my food to the dog under the table to remind her why she loves me the most and to make up for not seeing her for the last 6 weeks. Sorry, mom and dad!

I got to see most of my Everyone Here Hates Twilight group at Jen and Matt's house for Field Day 2012. We played games such as Battleshots, a larger version of Battleship that somehow incorporated jello shots, Pictionary, and we competed in an obstacle course in the back yard that ended with us all having to slide down a slip n slide. ***This is where I would like to remind everyone that my family and friends are all very intelligent and successful people and are fully aware that slip n slides are made for children but we just don't care.*** 

Sunday I did more wedding errands and then went back to Cincy to catch my flight back to Boston. The flight got delayed for 2 hours but I wasn't mad. It was delayed due to bad weather, so it's hard to be mad about something out of anyone's control. Plus, I pretty much expect flight delays going to and/or from Boston after the horrible time we had back in 2010.

I had a great weekend at home even though it was super fast. The only bad part about it was that Chuck wasn't there. He had to stay in Boston and do homework so it was hard to have TOO much fun without him there. But now there's only one month standing between our flight home together to begin all the wedding week festivities! I can't believe it's that close! We are soooooo excited.

Everyone Here Hates Twilight

So, I have this group of friends. And it's kind of a strange group to understand. It is made up of myself and Chuckie, my sisters, some of my cousins and their significant others, a couple of my best friends, and a couple of Laura's best friends. Like I said, kind of a strange mix of people. But for some reason, it works. We call this group our "game night group" (even though we occasionally hang out outside of game nights) because that's how this group started out. I can't remember when it first started, but awhile back we started having game nights. Everyone would meet at Laura and Anthony's house and we'd play Taboo, charades, and everything in between. A lot of our game nights were also always centered around an event- a birthday, a holiday or a celebration of something else. The game nights were usually always at Laura's, but sometimes at Elizabeth's, one time at my house (which was a major fail and will never happen again) and then once our group out-grew Laura and Anthony's apartment, we moved to Jennifer and Matt's house.

Games we've played together include Taboo, Twister, Things, Catch Phrase, Pictionary, Tele-pictionary (the best game ever!), Charades, Mafia (the worst game ever!), Ninja Tag, LRC, Boys vs Girls Battleship, and a variety of drinking games including Flip Cup and Moosehead. We've also even made up our own games, like Gourmet Races and Hold Your Phone Out While Someone Mass Texts Us All and See Whose Phone Gets the Text First.

Our all time favorite game to play together is charades. We always make up team names and draw for teams which I personally think is the most fun part of playing. The team names always end up being something ridiculous and are usually based on a joke on something that's been discussed earlier in the evening.  One night a discussion about Twilight vs. Harry Potter took place and it was discovered that everyone in the group dislikes Twilight. One thing led to another and eventually the team names for charades that night were Team Edward and Team Cedric. (Same actor, stars in both Twilight and Harry Potter.) On our most recent game night, the theme of the party was a going away party for myself, Chuckie and our cousin Cailtin who is moving to South Africa for the summer. So obviously, the teams that night were Team Boston and Team South Africa. We've had a lot of other great team names but most of them are too inappropriate to post on here. After we draw teams, each team makes up as many things as they can for the other team to act out. Some of the things people have had to act out before: Kate Gosselin, plastic, marsupial, "everyone here hates twilight," monkey business, Man Pig Bear Snail Bird, Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, and so many more ridiculous things. Again, some are too inappropriate to list here.

I think our favorite game night tradition is our annual Christmas party. It's just like every other game night except we do a white elephant gift exchange which is always super fun/funny. Past gifts brought to the party have included UofL basketball tickets, a collage of pictures of Elizabeth, a box full of stuffed pigs and Jesus band-aids. This year we had a New Year's Eve game night party which proved to be a ton of fun. This past weekend, our game night/going away party happened to fall on Mother's Day Eve, so at 1 minute 'til midnight, we counted down to Mother's Day like it was New Year's Eve. A lot of our game nights also end up doubling as birthday celebrations which are some of my favorites because someone always brings a cake or cupcakes.

My favorite thing about this group of people and our game nights though, is that most of the things that happen at game night can't be explained. And if they were explained, no one else would find them as funny as we do. There is just something about this group of people that makes sense but at the same time, doesn't make any sense at all. And I love it.  This is a group I'm really going to miss once we are in Boston. I can't imagine how sad I'm going to feel the first time I see plans being made on Facebook or Twitter for a game night that I know we will not be able to go to.  These friends are all so important to us. We all celebrate each other's successes, feel sad with each other when someone is sad, and generally just have a damn good time together.

To the Everyone Here Hates Twilight group: we expect to be skyped in at least for a few minutes to say hi anytime you all have a game night and we are not there. Also, whenever you play charades from now on I think the team names should be Team Rachel and Team Chuckie so we will always be involved in game night even from a billion miles away. :)