Chuck turns 27

Last year you may remember I basically failed at celebrating Chuck's birthday in Seattle. We went to brunch and I gave him a gift, but overall it wasn't a very exciting birthday. I forgot to make him a cake or dessert of any type and gave him a lame (in my opinion) gift. In my defense, we had JUST moved to Seattle, our furnished apartment had no baking appliances or pans, I had only a day or two to find a birthday present, and we didn't know anyone else in Seattle yet who could celebrate with us. On top of all that, he had to fly to Phoenix the night of his birthday, so spent most the afternoon packing and getting to the airport.

So this year I made an extra effort to make the whole weekend fun and birthday related. Unfortunately, Chuck's birthday weekend happened to fall right before the due date of the first draft his thesis. Stupid thesis trying to ruin my plans! So he had to spend a majority of the weekend writing, but we got to squeeze in a little fun here and there.

On Friday, Valentine's Day, Chuck had made reservations for us at a restaurant in Cambridge we've been meaning to try forever. It was really good food and a lively atmosphere so we had a lot of fun.

Before dinner, Chuck gave me a Valentine's gift in the form of donuts. He knows me so well....  But seriously. Who wants a box of chocolates when you can get heart shaped donuts?

For his birthday gift I had purchased tickets to see a comedian, Mike Birbiglia, at a theater in Boston on Friday night. So after dinner we killed some time in a bookstore and a Starbucks and then headed into Boston for the show. Mike was pretty funny and I'd definitely recommend going to see him if he ever comes to your city. Also the Wilbur Theater, where we saw the show is a great venue to see a show in and it has this trippy ceiling thing going on that will entertain you while you wait for the show to start.

The ceiling design is oval, so it looked like the ceiling was crooked from our seats. Or is the chandelier crooked? (Neither are but tell me it doesn't look like something is off here?)

Saturday and Sunday we barely left the house on account of a blizzard and Chuck's thesis. At one point we left to go to a friend's house for dinner and some Olympics watching, but other than that we didn't really leave the house.

 On Monday, Chuckie's actual birthday, we were both home due to the President's Day holiday. He still had to write his thesis AND do homework for his Tuesday classes, so I tried to make his day still a little fun by cooking him brunch and a late lunch. I basically just kept bringing food to his desk all day.

A french toast sandwich, chicken and cheese quesadillas, and birthday strawberries, because Chuck isn't a huge lover of cake.

That night he took a break from working and we met up with friends at Green Street Grill, another restaurant we've been meaning to try forever that is literally 2 blocks from our apartment.  It was so nice of our friends to come out and celebrate his birthday, even though some of them were also in the middle of thesis writing!  We had a lot of food, a lot of drinks, and sang "Happy Birthday" to Chuck not once, but twice at the table.

Pinkies up!

All in all I think it was a birthday win this year, especially because on Monday night before bed Chuckie told me it was "one of the best birthdays ever." Mission. Accomplished.

Happy 27th Birthday, husband! I think this will be your best year yet!

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.

Nieces Say the Darndest Things

Remember that show "Kids Say the Darndest Things"? I loved that show! Chuckie and I have 5 nieces and they would all be stars on that show if it came back to TV.

Technically they are all his nieces, but I claim them as mine too because 1) we're married and that's how it works and 2) he and I have been dating since before any of them were ever born. None of them know Chuckie without Rachel, and I like it that way.

The girls range in age from 2 to 10. They are all sweet and beautiful little girls, and they're ALLLLLLL kinds of funny. It's so fun to see the world through their eyes and hear their thoughts on things that we, as adults, probably never even think twice about. It's kind of like being in those AT&T commercials 24/7.

While we were all in Virginia, the girls had some pretty funny things to say.  Here's some of the conversations from the weekend, and a lot of pictures of the girls because if I'm being honest, about 75% of the pictures I took last weekend were of them.

While in the car on the way home from Busch Gardens....Sloane (2nd grade): When are you done with school?
Chuck: In June I'll be done with school FOREVER.
Sloane. Ugh. Lucky.....

While watching the Lady Gaga and the Muppets special on Thanksgiving.....(Which may have been the highlight of the weekend. Seriously. So funny.)

Ava: Lady Gaga forgot her shirt!
Sloane: And her nose is running! (Mistook her nose ring for snot.)
Caroline: If there's a Lady Gaga, is there also a Manny Gaga?

Next song, Elton John joins Lady Gaga onstage.
Sloane: Who's that guy? Is that Manny Gaga?
Ava: He's not very good........ (talking about Elton John)
Sloane: Now she's not wearing pants! I can almost see her butt!
Caroline: Look she has a tattoo!

Next song....
Ava: Her face is skinny and weird.
Sloane: And her hair is bigger than her body!
Caroline: Oh! She's not wearing pants again.

I told Ava I own the exact same onesie. I think she thought I was joking. Sadly, I was not.

While playing piano....Amelia (age 2): This is my piano.
Me: Oh did you bring it with you?
Amelia: Yeah. In the car. It's mine.

Also while playing piano.....
Amelia: Sloane is my Ariel.

While eating chips and salsa......Caroline (5th grade): Chips and salsa are my third favorite food. My first favorite is a chocolate volcano explosion from that one rainforest restaurant. My second favorite is cheeseburgers. And then chips and salsa.

While coloring at the table.....Audrey (age 4): Do you kiss Chuckie? That's gross. You can only kiss if you're married. Then you just have to deal with it.

While doing Thanksgiving crafts....Audrey: I'm drawing a snowman. Because I'm thankful for a snowman.

While sitting on the couch....Amelia: My Chuckie is my little friend.

While me, Chuck and Caroline are in the car on the way to the grocery on Thanksgiving Day to get a couple last minute items...Caroline: When we go in the grocery, I'll show you how I get TWO cookies from the bakery by telling them I need an extra one for my little brother. (I like her style.) 

They crack me up. And I know I'm slightly biased... But you can't tell me these aren't the 5 most adorable little girls you've ever seen.

Road Trip: Days 5 - 12

Days 5-12

We stayed in Louisville for about a week during the cross country trek to visit friends and family once again.  This was our 3rd visit to Louisville in 4 months. I'm afraid our friends and family are starting to feel spoiled! ;)  I'm glad we were able to visit several times this summer though since we probably won't be visiting Kentucky again until Christmas break.

The week was very busy as it always is at home. Dinners and chill time with our families, a trip to Lexington to see my little sis and cousin, church, the pool, catch-up lunches with friends, etc etc etc.

My favorite part of our visit was the weekend. Friday night we had dinner at Havana Rumba (obviously- we freakin' love that place STILL) with our combined families. Saturday was our 1st anniversary. We went out to my Uncle Tony and Aunt Kelly's house for a swim party with all of my aunts and uncles during the day, then to Jeff Ruby's for our anniversary dinner, then to our friend Jen and Matt's house where we sat around the fire pit in the backyard with some of our best friends just talking and laughing until way too late in the night. :) Sunday was church, lunch, and then we spent the entire day at the pool playing with the nieces and relaxing. Do weekends get any better than that one?

The trip was entirely too short, as it always is, and we will miss home until we visit again in December!

And now... pictures.

I love this little face!

Sami and Anna out to dinner in Lexington after a full day of walking UK's campus, the mall and a movie.

I got to meet little baby Jayson while in town! Jayson is the baby of my former supervisor and now just my friend, Shannon. It was so fun to see them and hold the little guy. He will be so big next time I see him!

Dinner at Havana Rumba. Yum.

 

 

 

 

The perfect pool day out at my aunt and uncle's. 

Our anniversary- a picture of a picture taken and given to us by Jeff Ruby's. :)

 

 Candles on our wedding cake topper?  A little weird but we went with it. :)

Another perfect pool day.

For these pics I said "Jump in the pool and do a funny pose and I'll take your picture in the air."  And they did!

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.

Blaine Anderson- The Inspiration

I have never explained the inspiration for the title of my blog, so just for fun, I've decided to share how I got the title "Somewhere Only We Know."

The short version of the story is that "Somewhere Only We Know" is the title of a popular song by the band Keane. If you listened to pop music in 2004-2005, you probably know this song. I didn't really know anything about the band Keane, but I knew when I heard this song that I loved it. I'm not sure why I loved it so much, but all I know is that out of the 100 songs on my 1st generation iPod shuffle, I played this on repeat for pretty much all of the year 2005 and 2006. Every playlist I made on my computer or iPod for the rest of college included this song.

Timeout: Y'all almost forgot about the 1st generation iPod shuffle, didn't ya? Man that thing was awesome.

Anyway. Fast forward several years to circa 2011 when Chuckie and I started watching Glee. (Timeout again: Yes it's cheesy and silly. Yes the plotlines are pretty unrealisitc. Yes, the actors playing high school kids are all really in their 20s and 30s. No, we don't care about any of those things. Because Glee is fun and happy when most shows on TV are about murders and other sad or gross things. And we like the music. The end.) So there was an episode where Blaine, my favorite character on the show, sings "Somewhere Only We Know" to Kurt in front of the whole school with the Warblers singin' back up and oh man was it glorious and oh man did it rekindle my love for this song.

So obviously, the day after the I saw that show, I purchased Blaine's version of the song on my iPhone because I had long lost the song in the transitions from computer to laptop and iPod shuffle to iPod nano to iPhone 4.

 

 

P.S. I do a REALLY great impression of Blaine. Like, you'd think he was standing right in front of you, that's how good I am.  Just ask me sometime and I'll do it for you. 

So now fast forward to March 2012. I always knew if Chuck got into LGO that I would start a blog to chronicle our adventures and keep our family up-to-date. So when we found out he got in, I started thinking of a blog title. I tried several different things but they were all taken, so then I decided to resort to my iPod. I scrolled through my song list looking for any kind of title that would make sense with what my blog was going to be about.

Here were some of the songs I saved as options as I scrolled through alphabetically.

"The Best Is Yet To Come"  (Michael Buble)
"Defying Gravity" (Wicked. It doesn't make much sense but man I freakin' love that song.)
"Feels Like Today" (Rascal Flatts)
"Go Your Own Way" (Fleetwood Mac)
"Many the Miles" (Sara Bareilles. This one was my runner up.)
"Nicest Kids in Town" (Hairspray. Initially I thought this made sense because we were Southerners going to a Northern city where the reputation is that people are mean but as I've told you before, they aren't mean. Plus there are a lot of people in Boston nicer than us. So I'm glad I didn't choose this.)
"Remember the Time" (Michael Jackson)
"Somewhere Only We Know" (Glee. YES. WINNER.)
"Take Me There" (Rascal Flatts)
"Uncharted" (Sara Bareilles. This was my second runner up.)

Ok, before I go any further, YES I KNOW I HAVE AMAZING TASTE IN MUSIC. 

So, I debated between Somewhere Only We Know and the two Sara Bareilles songs for about 1 minute before I decided I had to use the Keane/Glee song. It was perfect. Everyone in LGO has the same experience, yet totally different. We all move from different places, all participate in different things, make different friends, move to different internship locations... No one else will ever have the exact experience that Chuckie and I are having during these two years. Therefore, this adventure truly is Somewhere Only WE Know.

Or maybe I just like the song so much I wanted to name the blog after it. You can decide for yourself.

1 Year Engagement Anniversary

One year ago today, Chuckie asked me to marry him.

I had the day off from work and had lunch with a co-worker. After lunch, I was reading Hunger Games on the couch, waiting for Chuckie to pick me up to go see a movie. Chuck left work early so we could make the last matinee showing of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  We went to dinner at The Melting Pot, because I had won a $100 gift card there at a work function earlier in the month. We went to Chuck's house to watch a UofL Basketball game, which almost didn't happen because I was convinced we needed to get to his sister's house earlier than 9 o'clock. Finally I gave in and we went to his house.


At Chuck's house, I saw a wrapped present labeled To Rachel From Chuckie under the tree and asked why he had a leftover present.  He told me it was part of my Christmas present- something he had ordered but came late in the mail, so he thought about saving it for my birthday but then decided to just go ahead and give it to me.  I opened it and it was a photobook, the kind you can make on Shutterfly or Walgreens and have printed. Chuck told me he wanted to give me something tangible on Christmas, since his other Christmas gift was tickets to a show happening in March.  I flipped through the entire book, clueless, and distracted by how sweet I thought it was that he put this book together. I lingered on each page, pointing out pictures that were my favorite and asking him where he found certain pictures. "The times in high school," "The time at the Derby," "The times in college," "The times on vacation..." etc etc and finally... a page with no picture but with the caption "The Time We Got Engaged. December 28, 2011."

After that I blacked out. Everyone always says they basically black out when they get engaged and can't remember what was said or what happened in the few minutes after. And it's true. I thought I would remember every detail of the moment, but really I just remember crying a lot and being so shocked and asking myself over and over again in my mind "Did this really just happen?" Especially because UofL was playing! Chuckie was missing the game to propose to me. This was huge! He really DOES like me more than UofL basketball! (All things I remember thinking that night.)

The first picture we took of ourselves after getting engaged.

We called some family and friends to tell them the news. Some people who didn't answer simply got this picture with the message "Call me." It was so exciting to tell people over and over again! After we called some family and friends, we finished watching the UofL game and then went to his sister's house and had champagne with his family and saw his nieces before they had to go to bed. Then we went to my parent's house and celebrated with my family. It was the best date night EVER. I'm still trying to figure out how Chuck was able to act so normal all the way through the movie and dinner, knowing what was going to happen later that night.

Adorable pictures his nieces drew for us that night that I will keep forever and ever.

And now here we are a year later- married, going through grad school in Boston, and loving life.

So much can happen in just one year!