rushley & crew

Last year, one of my parents' Christmas gifts was an " experience ." We (my parents, Brandon's family, Brooke's family, and Russ & I) went to the aquarium, dinner, temple square, and the Little America hotel all together. We enjoyed the experience so much that my parents decided to do it again this year. This year, things were a bit different with our little one in tow! I get so stressed about bringing Ada out of the house to do anything because she's young enough that she needs a lot of sleep, but she can't seem to figure out how to get past a half hour of sleeping. So even though we might be able to get her down to sleep in a place/situation that is out of the ordinary, it's nearly impossible to get her back  to sleep like we try to do when we're at home. Then I know she gets overtired, and I just feel bad for her! So like I said, I get a bit stressed. We first went to Rumbi Island Grill for dinner, and then we ...

christmas tradition stolen from  her heart & home  -- framing christmas cards! :) new mexico, pregnancy announcement , gender reveal , sod installation seattle family reunion, babymoon, maternity pics , ada's birth day ! ada released from the nicu , halloween , thanksgiving , our girl's cute smile Another year has come and gone -- time sure flies when you're an adult! It seems like it was just yesterday that I was  recapping 2015 , lamenting the fact that we still weren't pregnant after a year and a half of trying. But shortly thereafter, in January, we found out that we were finally pregnant! And that  little  baby has dominated our thoughts and lives ever since :) It was so exciting to finally experience  pregnancy . I'm one of the lucky ones who didn't really have to deal with sickness or food aversions; my biggest complaints were simply being HUGE and having swollen feet. The best parts about pregnancy were the super ...

It's interesting how the older I get, the less exciting Christmas becomes. I'm sure it will get more exciting when we have more (and older) kids, but I guess I've just done a bad job of finding the Christmas magic the last several years -- both the Santa magic and the Christ magic. For one thing, Russ and I are bad at planning ahead, and while we have given each other some great gifts in the past, we haven't done well with it in recent years because we're bad at taking the time to think about gifts in advance. Christmas obviously isn't all about the gifts, but it's nice to know that someone thought about you and what you might enjoy, and we haven't been very good at doing that. This year, we got online and talked about the things we wanted/needed, and we just ordered all that stuff at once . . . that means we didn't spend any time actually thinking about each other. Another thing is that we just get busy or lazy and we don't plan time for the f...