rushley & crew

There was a time in my life about a year ago loooong ago when I thought 5k races were pretty lame. I had never even run 3 miles in my life (at that time I would run 1-2 miles at a time), but somehow I still held the opinion that 5k races were pretty much just family races so that kids could run. The real races were anything bigger, and in all honesty, if you ran one of those, I probably thought you were crazy, because who really spends that much time running ? Obviously I have a lot of opinions about running that I feel very strongly about, and I don't even know why. You can tell that I didn't think 5k's were a big deal because on my bucket list , my real goal was to do a sprint triathlon (1.2 mile run, 2.4 mile bike ride, and 150 yd. swim) and then (since I wasn't sure I'd be able to train in time for the one in September) I gave myself a loophole: or a 5k at the very least . You can tell from that sentence alone that I thought a 5k was not even cool. Well, ...

I am less than 2 months away from celebrating my third anniversary with my husband. Can you believe it?! Because I can't. There was a time in my life when I never thought the day I'd get married would ever  come, and now it's come, gone, and taken three years with it! But though we have been married for nearly three years, I had yet to create or order a wedding album! A wedding album came with our photography package, but one with only 72 pictures. After narrowing down all of our pictures, we still had 150 that I wanted. (We had a lot of great photos that you can see here , here , and here .) I had emailed back and forth with my photographer back in January 2013  about options and kind of decided that I wanted to upgrade, but then life got busy and I forgot to move forward with it. That's why it made the 23 before 23 bucket list : I knew that the only way I would get it done is if I made it a real priority. So a few weeks ago, I met up with my photographer an...

I've said it before and I'll say it again--one thing I love about having a bucket list is that it makes me plan things and do things that I might not otherwise do. Such is the case with this item: Have a tea party--complete with hats and/or gloves! There was no real reason for putting this item on my list other than it sounded like a fun theme for a party. I loved the idea of dressing up and eating pretty food! I kept the party small, just inviting a few of my college best friends, and everything turned out perfectly :) Also, my brother was kind enough to photograph for me again, and I am so happy  with the pictures that he took! He was able to capture everything wonderful about this tea party :) Also, he returned the pictures to me in less than 48 hours! Which is a big deal because this week is the last week of classes and he is going out of town, too, but he still made time to get them back to me quickly. What a nice brother I have :) And now, a bunch of beautif...

I was on Dance Company for all three years of high school. I loved it! I loved the girls I danced with, I loved learning new choreography, and I loved performing. Then I went off to college and tried out a dance class there. Unfortunately, it wasn't my company and it wasn't my kind of dancing, so I didn't love it. And I never really planned to continue dancing anyway, so other than Zumba, I haven't done any dancing since then (Dec. 2010). But even though I don't plan to pursue any sort of dancing career, I do still think back on that time in high school and love it, so when I was coming up with ideas for my 23 before 23 list , I ended up adding 10. Take a contemporary dance class. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't want to dance with strangers . . . I wanted to dance with my old company! And this last weekend, I made that happen. Luckily, Aubry, one of the girls who I used to dance with, is now the dance director at our old high ...

I grew up constantly planning my future. I've thought about baby names since I was 5.   Don't even get me started on how often I would think about my future husband. And I got really into home design around age 13--drawing pictures and picking paint samples and even drawing home layouts on graphing paper. The thing about making plans about the future is that sometimes they go one way in your head and another in real life. My baby names have definitely changed over the last ~20 years. My husband is wonderful  but definitely different from what I planned (better in many ways, and just different in other ways).  And when it comes to buying a house . . . the process is a lot more difficult (and irritating!) than I anticipated. We started looking at houses about three weeks ago. We're working with a realtor, so she has listened to things we want and keeps her eye out for them. Then we all work on this website together where we can look at options and favorite ...