rushley & crew

I've wanted to send out Christmas cards every year we've been married (this is our fourth together), but it has just never happened. I never plan ahead well enough and I never feel like it's a top priority. I wasn't going to send one out this year, either, but then I saw Elise's post  about her Christmas card which caused me to head over to Tiny Prints and spend hours looking at all the cute cards! I was sold, and in typical Petersen fashion, I had to write up a giant letter to go with it! So here's our little family's Christmas card and letter! :) I had to steal Elise's address idea , too! And the idea to frame yearly Christmas cards! I already can't wait for next year just so I can add another to the display! 2015 has been quite the year for us! We've hit some milestones, traveled a lot, and enjoyed one more year together :) The biggest thing that happened in 2015 is that we bought our first house! We upgraded from our one-bedroom...

Russ and I usually do three different celebrations of Christmas--one with his family , one with mine , and one just the two of us. But this year, Christmas for us just never happened! We kept talking about when we would do it, or what kind of gifts we would buy each other, but we just never solidified anything. At one point, I proposed just giving "one thoughtful gift" to each other (because I hate the idea of saying "Hey I want that purple shirt in a size medium" and then opening that up on Christmas Day because it was obviously something that he had to put zero thought into). However, that kind of just made me feel pressure, so then we weren't sure what we were going to do and then we never did anything! However, it seemed to work for us this year. We just didn't want the stress, and we had two other lovely celebrations, so I guess we didn't feel the need for it this year. However, we're actually really smart about saving for Christmas, if I ...

We moved into our house in May of 2015, so Christmas 2015 was going to be our first Christmas in our new home. The only difficulty was that it was a Holmes family year for Christmas! For a while, we considered this being the year that we started to stay home for Christmas, but I didn't really want that; we don't have any kids yet and I love spending holidays with lots of people! But everything ended up working out perfectly because at one point, Russ's parents said that maybe they should come to Utah for Christmas; after all, Lacey, Russ & I, and Lance, Mackenzi, and Zander all live in Utah, so it made sense for 3 (mom, dad, & Chantry) to travel instead of 6. We offered to host and Mom & Dad Holmes accepted. Somewhere between those plans and Christmas, Lance's family changed their plans and decided to spend Christmas in California, making it so that whether we spent Christmas in Boise or Utah, 3 would have to travel, but the Holmes folks were great and sti...