My Year In Review: 2014

What a whirlwind of a year 2014 has been! I cannot believe it has officially come to a close!

Before diving head first into the new year, I wanted to take a little walk down memory lane and review some of our favorite moments from 2014.

January:

We began January in a little cabin in West Virginia with Lauren, Eliot, Juan, and Jaclyn!

Shortly after our mini vacation ended, I dove headfirst back into my job and the three courses I took towards my Master's degree (math, science, and social studies/history). As you can imagine those things took up pretty much my entire life, so the blog, along with my social life, took a back seat for a couple months. 

February: 

In February, we celebrated Ryan's 25th birthday... 

...and took another mini-vacation to Foxwoods with Rachel, Chris, Tim, Ashley, Amy, and Kent. 

March:

In March, I drowned in schoolwork and apparently didn't surface for long enough to take a single picture. Fun stuff..

April:

April was the month of celebrations! First, we celebrated Eliot and Lauren's engagement in Maine.

We also made a trip down to Georgia to celebrate Rachel and not-yet-born baby Leah! We threw her an "About to Hatch" baby shower around Easter that turned out adorable!

Finally, we celebrated the marriage of my college roommate and best friend, Vida to Joe!

May:

In May, Ryan and I made a weekend trip down to Plymouth for a marriage retreat with Life Community.

I also took an 8-day, 5 hours a day, intensive course (differentiated instruction).

After the intensive, we celebrated by attempting another weekend of camping with Eliot and Lauren. So far, we are two for two on choosing crappy weekends to camp. Maybe 2015 will be our year.

June:

In June, I finished my first year as a paraprofessional and said hello to Summer vacation!

This month, we also made our first trip up to the top of the hub at the Prudential Center with Kristen and Stephen and a short weekend trip to NYC for a Yankees game!

July:

I dubbed this the beginning of the summer of travel for myself. In July, Lauren, Ryan, and I ran the Tory Row 5K for beer.

We also traveled to Indiana for our annual Schoeff Family 4th of July celebration.

After our trip to Indiana, Ryan flew back to Boston while I hitched a ride with my parents back to Georgia for the remainder of the month.

Towards the end of the month, my family (minus Ryan- boo) went on a glorious cruise to Cozumel and Grand Cayman Island.

August:

This month I celebrated my 25th birthday and Ryan and I made our first trip to Europe!

Towards the end of the month, we boarded a plane for an overnight flight, putting us in Dublin, Ireland around 8 the next morning! We spent a week touring much of the country, stopping in Cork, Killarney, Doolin, and Dublin!

My birthday was celebrated in Killarney, where we drove to Blarney castle to kiss the stone and ate my favorite Irish dish, shepherd's pie!


September:

In September, I began a new job as a 1-1 paraprofessional in the third grade classroom. It was a trying, exhausting month but the patience and experiences I gained in the education field were well worth it.

Aside from work this month, Ryan and I were lucky enough to score tickets to an Eagles concert at the Garden!

 October:

Fall was officially in full swing this month! October was also the month of visitors. This month, we hosted Susan, Aunt Jane, Brandon, Rachel, Uncle Dave, and Aunt Carolyn in three consecutive weekends! While it was a whirlwind of a month, we felt so blessed to have the opportunity to show some of our loved ones around our "new" home.

Aside from our part-time jobs as New England tour guides, we also enjoyed some apple picking and apple pie making with friends!

November:

November was a glorious month. The weather was still beautiful and fall-ish and we enjoyed three Friendsgivings and one Thanksgiving (AKA stuffed our faces for thirty days straight!). This Thanksgiving, we rented a cabin in Virginia and met my parents, Ryan's parents, and Jake and Colee!

 December:

In December, Ryan and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary with a dinner at the Chart House, ice skating in Frog Pond, and a couples massage at Oasis Day Spa!

I hosted my first ever scarf swap which seemed to be a big hit! I will definitely be making this an annual event!

We made our trip home for the holidays, soaking up as much time as possible with our family and friends and officially becoming godparents to precious baby Leah.

To ring in the new year, we sat on the couch and watched the Yellow Jackets whoop up on some bulldogs from Mississippi. Those puppy dogs from all over got nothing on us this year!!

Phew, What. A. Year! While 2014 was a wonderful year, I have a feeling 2015 is going to be even better!

Happy New Year, everyone!

730 Days

730 days ago today, Ryan and I got hitched! 24 months ago, with our friends and family by our sides, we vowed to love and stand by each other's side for the rest of our lives. TWO years, people. Two years!

This past year of marriage has brought with it another set of new experiences and adventures. Some highlights: We made our first trip to Europe together. We (Ryan) received a couple promotions through work and (me) completed six out of seven classes towards a Master's degree. We hosted five sets of family members and friends up in Boston. And my personal favorite: We became Aunt Sarah and Uncle Ryan, welcoming little Leah into the world! 

These first two years of marriage together have been full of amazing experiences and we have made so many memories I will cherish forever. I am so excited to see what the years ahead have in store for us! Without getting too much more sappy on the old blog (Ryan, you know how I feel about you!), I'm just going to share how we decided to celebrate these past 730 days together, a couple days early.

Since our anniversary fell on a Monday this year, Ryan and I pushed our celebration up to Saturday night. Ryan, being the stud that he is, won an award through Dow that gave us a $100 gift card to the Chart House, a fancy pants restaurant in Boston.

To make the most of our trip into the city, we went in early to walk around and admire the city decked out for the holidays and do a little ice skating in Frog Pond! Once we parked, we walked over to Frog Pond since we thought it would be a good idea to ice skate before dinner. However, someone had other plans for us. When we got to the rink, the line to get inside the gate was ridiculously long. We stuck around for a couple minutes before deciding it would be a better idea to try to come back after dinner and hope that the line would be shorter. With our new plan, we set out to grab a taxi over to Quincy Market.

We spent thirty or so minutes walking around the Market, picking up a couple extra Christmas presents before our dinner reservation at 6:45. The Market had a special light show every thirty minutes, which was pretty cool to watch, but made picture taking by the giant tree tricky with the crazy flashing lights! We tried to ask people to take our picture a couple times, but could never seem to get all the lights on for a picture. Oh well!

Our dinner at Chart House was unbelievable. The service was so good and everyone made us feel super special for celebrating our anniversary with them. Once we were seated, a VIP sign was placed on our table and at least four or five different people came over to check on us and wish us a happy anniversary over the course of our meal.

Even the menus they gave us were specially printed, wishing us a happy 2nd anniversary! Such sweet little touches made our experience so wonderful!

For our meal, we started with crab stuffed mushrooms, followed by coconut shrimp for the Ry-Guy and a short rib and scallop dinner for me. Everything was D-E-LICIOUS!

As a compliment from the restaurant, our waiter brought us out a ridiculously tasty mud cake with coffee ice cream and an oreo crust. It was so large that the table next to us congratulated us on finishing the whole thing before we left. Win!

 With full bellies, we made our way back to Frog Pond to try our luck at ice skating again. Fortunately for us, there was no line, so we walked right through. The rink closed at 10, which gave us a good 40 minutes to play around on the ice. It had been YEARS since either Ryan or I had been ice skating. Needless to say, we were both pretty unsteady in our skates to begin. While Ryan seemed to get the hang of things pretty quickly, I tended to stick closer to the wall for the majority of our time on the ice! However, I am happy to report than neither of us fell on our butts the entire time!! Ice skating success!

Ryan on the move! 

Hanging out on my wall... 

Overall, our night was pretty similar to our first two years of marriage: extremely fun and full of new adventures!

For our actual anniversary tonight, Ryan and I are spending the night at home with some homemade spaghetti and meatballs and a bottle of champagne. Cheers to many, many more anniversaries, Ry!

Read about our first anniversary here.