A review of 2013

Before we tell you about all of the new and exciting house projects we have going on / have recently finished, we wanted to look back at the big events in our lives from 2013.

• Storm Nemo. We survived a couple of big blizzards last winter, and got a lot of exercise shoveling. Nemo unfortunately shut down all of the airports and made us miss our friends wedding in Illinois. Read more about it here and here. 

• Pantry gets transformed into a laundry room, with a pantry cabinet. We decided to keep our laundry area upstairs rather than put it in the basement. To get it out of the main kitchen area, we got stackable front loading machines to put in the pantry. This reduced our storage space, but has overall been one of the best decisions we have made for this apartment. It's so convenient! Read more about it here.

 

• David renovated our kitchen. We decided it would be worthwhile for David to take a month off from work to really hunker down and get our huge kitchen project finished. We used a makeshift hallway kitchenette and the bathroom sink as a temporary kitchen while David worked. Read more here, here, here, here, here, here, here. 

• We got a temporary roommate. Christine moved in with us for a couple of months. We did fun things like spend hours at COSTCO! Christine now thinks David and I spend most of our time lost in either COSTCO or Home Depot. Sorry you always end up on long excursions with us, Christine... 

• My sister battled SJS. As many of you know, Christine was at MGH for six weeks last year fighting for her life after developing Stevens Johnson Syndrome. She made it, but has experienced both physical and mental changes that have been life altering for her. We are just thankful that she survived. You can read more about her experiences on her blog, http://christinesjs.blogspot.com/. 

• We adopted Pepper! Having two dogs was never something we expected to happen. We signed up to foster Pepper to see how Ash did with a playmate, and the next thing we knew he had been part of our family for eight months and we knew there was no way we could let him go. The adoption became official in May! Read about it here. 

• David and his buddies raced at 24 hours of Lemons. They had fun and the car didn't die - enough said! 

• We finished the backyard patio! It was great to have a place to grill and eat. Because of our fence and the massive garage, it feels nice and private back there. Since then (we have not put a post up about it yet), David has also finished the fencing such that the dogs can leave through the back door of the house and be in a totally fenced in area. It's been nice to not have to use leashes when we take them to the yard to play! Read more about the patio upgrades here.

• I defended my PhD. After Christine became more stable in the hospital I had to turn my attention to preparing for my PhD defense. I spent one month prior to the defense working essentially every waking hour of the day and then flew to Illinois to present my thesis work to my committee on July 10th. I was thrilled when Christine, Alex, and my Dad flew out to surprise me the day before the event! I had no idea and it was very nice to have them there. Oh, and I passed :) Read more about it here and here. 

• We added a dormer to our third floor.  We hired a contractor to add a dormer to the third floor of the house - this makes the hallway much more useable and gives the second apartment (on the 2nd and 3rd floors) a second bathroom, an upstairs laundry area, and a new closet. We have yet to post the completion pictures for this project, but we are happy with the results! Read more about the project here and here. 

• My family threw me a surprise bridal shower! This was awesome. Between helping Christine, renovating the house, and working on my defense I had no time or energy to think about the bridal shower so I just decided not to have one. Christine and my mother remedied that problem though by planning one for me without my knowledge! It was a great afternoon with friends (even two good friends from out of town, Diana and Viki!) and family. Read about it here. 

• We got married! Woohoo! We had an amazing wedding with close friends and family at Burke Mountain in Vermont, a fun honeymoon in Kauai, and are so excited to be married. Let's go exploring! Read more about the wedding here and the honeymoon here, here, here, and here. Oh, and how our dogs felt about our vacation here. 

• I started a postdoc at Boston University. I'm working in Jim Collins lab using network modeling to better understand antibiotic action. So far I love it! Read our post about it here. 

And that just about wraps up our big events for 2013! Thanks for reading, we love you for it! Happy 2014 everyone.