rushley & crew

For the first 19 years of my life, I've spent Christmas like most people: with my family.  I'd wake up in my bed Christmas morning and anxiously wait until the whole family was showered and ready to open presents. But this year was a little bit different. For the first time, my bed wasn't at my parents' house. It was in my very own apartment with my wonderful husband :) and christmas morning at our own place was perfect. We woke up, ate German pancakes for breakfast, and opened presents together (we couldn't wait to open our stockings . . . those got opened Christmas Eve). He got me awesome things like Balto ,  What I Like About You  season 1, and a sweet card. Though I spent a ton of time in the days leading up to Christmas making him a passport for destination dates in the upcoming year, his favorite gift turned out to be The Snowman , his favorite Christmas movie from childhood (so favorite, in fact, that the tape got broken from overuse!). He teared up b

So in the last month . . . Russ and I spent Thanksgiving in Idaho with the fam . . . we both got sick . . . so did pretty much everyone else . . . we watched a lot of Monk . . . and of course ate fantastic food!   It was wonderful :) Russ and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary! Crazy to think that just a year ago, Russ and I were just starting to date, and now, a year later, we've already been married for 6 months! Crazy how life works out . . . I love it :) To celebrate, we ate a real breakfast . . .  camel eyes, sausage, and sparkling cider . . . and then that night we ate the top tier of our wedding cake. She decorated it differently than our real wedding cake, and it turned out beautifully! :) It was a nice day :) I also had to study A TON and face finals. They didn't go as well as I would have liked, but not too bad. Not to mention there were a lot of little miracles concerning finals . . . like a teacher being willing to give me some points somethi

Last Friday, Russ and I went to the dollar theater. We saw The Odd Life of Timothy Green. We thoroughly enjoyed it. We also both bawled our eyes out. Yeah. It's one of those movies. :) We highly recommend it. We also started a Thanksgiving family tradition! We adopted it from Russ's family. In Russ's family, they have what they call Gordon the Gratitude Gobbler. They put him up at Thanksgiving time and then write things they're thankful for on feathers for Gordon. When Russ told me about it, I liked it a lot :) So our turkey has a different name and looks a little bit different than the Holmes family turkey, but it's the same basic idea :) Meet Tomothy the Thankful Turkey! **ashleynicole

Russ and I have officially been married for 5 months now :) It's crazy how the time passes, and even crazier how incredibly happy I am to be married to this wonderful man :) Here are a few things that I have learned about him in the past 5 months. He makes crazy noises when he stretches . . .  . . . but his noises always make me laugh. He has really bad morning breath . . . . . . but I'd still kiss him anytime. He likes to pop out and scare the heck out of me . . .  . . . but he always holds me close afterward. He steals all the covers . . . . . . but that just means I get to snuggle closer to him. He eats all the food in the fridge . . .  . . . but he also makes almost all the food in the fridge. He is really opinionated when it comes to politics . . .  . . . but I like to hear him get fired up about stuff. He likes to tickle me mercilessly . . .  . . . but it's actually kinda fun. He always distracts me when I'm trying to study .

I've always been super opinionated about elections, whether I was informed or not. And that wasn't any different with this election. I was quite opinionated about Romney being the best man for the job.  But for the first time, I feel like I was at least a little bit informed. I watched part of most of the debates, I tried to understand what was important to both candidates, and my opinion stayed firm.  Regardless, it looks as though Obama gets 4 more years.  I want to get mad. I want to yell at people and tell them they're wrong. But that's just me being immature and stupid and contentious. And all this contention isn't what America is about. America is supposed to be about unity. People banding together to create something wonderful. That's what our forefathers fought for. That's what they designed for this country.  But there's just too much fighting. Too much of people caring about what they want instead of what's best for America. And w

Fall has always been one of my favorite seasons. I like the crisp air. I like the colorful leaves. I like the anticipation of upcoming holidays. I like wearing sweaters. And boots. And scarves. To me, music has a preferred season. Some songs are meant to be volume up, windows down, sing it loud, summer songs. Other songs are more of the cuddle up by a fire, grab your hot cocoa (except not me, since I hate hot cocoa . . . ), and watch the snow fall outside your window.  The following are songs that I've been hearing lately that just scream autumn to me. I love them :) **ashleynicole

School is starting to drive me crazy. I just want to spend time with my husband and family and friends . . . is that so wrong? But alas, school likes to get in the way. Luckily, last weekend I did get a break. We went up to Boise for some Holmes Family Fun! :) It was a packed weekend! I am seriously not quite sure how we manage to fit so many things in when it's a Holmes trip. It's crazy, but super fun! We only had one full day in Boise--Saturday. Here's how we spent it: first The boys went and voted . . .  . . . while the girls painted for Empty Bowls.  lacey's lacey's mom's mom's mine Russ didn't actually think he was going to be able to vote this year because he realized he wasn't yet registered after the registration deadline! So it was lucky that we happened to be going to Boise so close to the election because he just got to register and vote all at once.  For Empty Bowl

For the month leading up to Halloween, Russ and I talked about dressing up as Captain America and Peggy Carter (the girl from Captain America). We figured we could find cheap blue&red stuff for him, and a military looking jacket for me all at DI.  false. Stuff at DI isn't as cheap as you would think. We toyed with other ideas (Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Tetris pieces) but never did anything to make any of the above ideas happen. Then, twas the night before Halloween we still had no clue, and Halloween Day was going to be a busy one.  Luckily, I saw a pic of my friend's Halloween costume  on Facebook , and BAM we made a decision.  Meet Wenda and Waldo! :D I think our costumes turned out pretty great! We didn't have time to do hats, but everyone still knew who we were :) People at our ward party kept coming up to us saying "found ya!" And my amazing husband made the chili  (which is actually taco soup and is delicious)  that I

No, no. Not a baby for Russ and me. We're still newly-weds :) But a baby for my brother Brandon and his wife, Amy! While we were in Idaho this past weekend (post soon to come), little miss Hadley Ann decided to come a whole month early! When Brandon told me that Amy had had the baby, and I straight up thought he was lying.  But no! She's here! She's currently in the NICU but things seem to be going pretty well. Russ and I got to meet the little angel last night :) She's super cute :) I usually think babies look like aliens, but I don't think Hadley does. Russ says it's because we're blood-related. Who knows? I actually felt like I was going to faint while we were in there. All the beeping monitors freaked me out! Hopefully she'll be out soon so that I can actually hold her in a stress-free environment :) Congrats Brandon and Amy! **ashleynicole

I didn't try cake bites until my freshman year of college--2 years ago. But since then, they have been one of my absolute favorite desserts because, well, they're delicious.  duhhh. So the other day, I was on Pinterest trying to decide what pumpkin-themed dessert to make since it's officially pumpkin-dessert-season, and I saw these Pumpkin Cake Truffles (how many times can I say "pumpkin" in one sentence?) delicious looking, right?! So I tried to make them, and this is what happened . . .  They took forever and they turned out so ugly! I didn't even do the butterscotch drizzle because I wasn't about to spend any more time on them. However, don't judge a book by its cover, and don't judge a cake bite by its chocolate covering . . . they were DELICIOUS and I'm pretty sure Russ and I have gained approximately 50 pounds in the past few days eating them. moral of the story? Don't use chocolate chips for the chocol

I'm 20 years old, and to my recollection, I have never been to a pumpkin patch. My family always had pumpkins around Halloween, but they usually just came from the grocery store.  So when my visiting teacher, Eryn, invited Russ and me to go to the pumpkin patch for FHE this past Monday, I was all over that! We had 2 pumpkins all picked out before even meeting up with Eryn and Kelly (Eryn's husband), but decided to look around some more once we did meet up. While we were looking around, Eryn asked us if we like to find the perfectly round pumpkins or if we prefer pumpkins "with character." We hadn't really given it much thought, but apparently we prefer pumpkins with character, because this is what we ended up with . . .  Yup. A completely GREEN pumpkin!  The pumpkin patch was fun, and I'm excited to get to know Eryn and Kelly better . . . I think we have some new friends :) But I did figure out why we got pumpkins from the grocer

Since we're newlyweds, Russ and I are trying to use our money wisely. One of the things that we've done to save money is buy some secondhand furniture from Craigslist and KSL with the intention of turning the furniture into fun projects to do together. what have i learned? . . . projects aren't that fun. I don't really recommend going that route . . .  Okay so they're not too bad, but it's hard to finish projects with school AND work AND all the busy-ness going on! So our projects have just been sitting in my parents' garage for the past couple weeks with no progress. Not only have the projects been sitting there, but so has a mountain of sawdust since we sanded through the finish of the kitchen table so that we can stain it black.  My parents have been asking us to finish up, but we just haven't had the time . . . therefore, the dust and projects have just sat there.  Yesterday I went to my parents' house after work to grab a couple of th

Conference this weekend was awesome! Russ and I spent the weekend at my parents' house since our TV isn't even hooked up yet in our apartment. It was nice to have some family time while listening to the words of the prophet and other general authorities.  That was quite an announcement! I think lowering the ages to be a missionary is an awesome (duh, it's inspired . . . ) idea! I've already had so many friends say that they are now mission-bound.  The husband (Jeff) of my recently-turned-20 friend posted on Facebook, "Considering myself incredibly lucky: if this announcement had been made a year ago, I'm not sure Rachel would have married me!" I laughed and showed it to Russ, who echoed the same sentiment as Jeff.  Although a mission would have been wonderful, I, too, am glad the announcement came at this time because my life could have gone a totally different direction if the announcement had been made a year ago. I'm glad I got to meet

Life is pretty crazy when it goes from a blissful work- and school-free summer to a work- and school-filled fall semester. I don't get to spend nearly enough time with my favorite person ever! We make what time we can to see each other, and we spend a lot of time studying together, but I sure do wish we had more time to do FUN things together. So since we hardly have time to see each other, do you think we have any time to clean the apartment?? Of course not! Which is why yesterday, when I came home from work to a sparkling clean bathroom, a newly picked up and vacuumed living room, the dish strainer full of clean dishes, AND dinner on the stove . . . I had to hug and kiss my husband a lot because, well, he's the absolute best :) Not a day goes by when I don't remember that I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be married to such a wonderful man :) **ashleynicole

Part of what got me back into blogging is the Spanish class that I'm taking this semester--Spanish Literature. For the class, we have to do a blog post each week (it's in place of writing a one page paper each week . . . going green or something) using a quote from a poem we've read that week.  Well.  I just finished my Spanish blog for the week and I realized it's actually kind of perfect for my life/love blog! I usually write my Spanish blog in English first so that I can get all of my thoughts organized in my own language . . . soooo lucky for you, you get to read it! ;) First. The poem in Spanish. Then.  Don't worry, all you English-only speakers, I'll translate it. It's just beautiful in its original language.  The bolded part (both in Spanish and English) is the main part that I based my blog post on. And finally. My analysis. Enjoy! Tu risa Quítame el pan, si quieres, quítame el aire, pero no me quites tu risa. No me qui

So I'm feeling a little green . . . green with envy, that is. I think some people are just born to blog. They're just so creative and funny and they make their ordinary lives sound so exciting. [[Which is, I guess, how it should be. Well, maybe not blogging-wise . . . buuuuut people should be excited about their ordinary lives because a little excitement can change things from ordinary to extraordinary.]] But anyway . . . I don't really think I was born to blog, and I'm not even sure if I'll be updating very often, or if my updates will be worth reading. But I guess now that I've started my happily ever after  (and since I got a little push from a friend), I'll try my fingers at blogging once again. Since I know everyone is just dying to read about my incredibly wonderful new life with the man of my dreams ;) :) **ashleynicole