rushley & crew

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