rushley & crew

Each year, I make a huge bucket list of things I  could  do in the year. My goal is (kind of) to do at least one thing each month so that by the end of the year I have 12 concrete things I have accomplished. However, sometimes I forget about the list, so it doesn't necessarily work out to be one thing per month.  In 2018, I did (or at least made some progress on) 16 concrete things! Anything with its own blog post is linked :) Cut back on social media usage  - Well, at least for 10 days, I did a social media fast. I have intentions of putting strict regulations around social media, but have yet to follow through on that 😐 Come up with a meal-planning strategy  - kind of. I started using Citrus Pear , which is pretty awesome for people like me who HATE all things having to do with meal planning and prep. Read a book  -  168 Hours, Make the Bed, The Power of Now, A Simple Favor, 7,  and various sleep books Organize my close...

I have always been a record-keeper. By the time I graduated high school, I had ~20 complete journals (nevermind that I threw away about half of them since they covered in detail how much I liked my high school boyfriend and I didn't need that info anymore). I don't journal on paper anymore, but I do write blog posts. I currently have eight 3-inch binders full of scrapbook pages on my bookshelf. And that doesn't include the ones I got rid of [more on that in a minute]. I started this blog shortly after getting married in 2012, and I've published more than 340 posts (which averages to five posts per month, which is actually surprisingly high given my much lower rate of posting over the last year or so.) Clearly, I keep my records in many ways. I've always loved photos, though. I got my first scrapbook supplies before I was 10 years old (which was a mistake, because my first scrapbook pages are literally hor.ri.ble), and I've been scrapbooking ever since....

A few months ago, I had literally JUST started following @knowhowmomtips on Instagram when she shared about an upcoming marriage retreat in Bryce Canyon. I read the details and decided I wanted to go. If I had been following her for any amount of time, it would have made more sense, because at least I would have had a better idea of what kinds of things she teaches. But I really didn't know anything about her and I wanted to go anyway. I just liked the idea of going away for the weekend with Russ and learning stuff to help our marriage grow and flourish. While it took some time to make the final decision, Russ and I both decided to go for it. And I'm so glad we did! The conference was two days PACKED with everything. The conference was mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially draining! But in such a good way. We learned about tools for connecting and communicating better, how to deal with solvable and perpetual conflicts, and how to move forward building a...

Date night has always been a struggle for me and Russ, even before Ada was born. We've gone through spurts of date night, but nothing ever sticks for long. Part of the reason for this is that, for a long time, I felt like dinner and movies shouldn't count as dates because they were so "normal" and things that we did every day anyway -- date night should be something exciting and special, every time . Another part of the reason is that we could never nail down a way that worked for us to switch up who plans. Trading off weeks didn't work, me planning most date nights didn't work, it just didn't work. Add in a baby and it's been even harder to try to make things work! Enter Erica. Erica is one of my good friends. I should do a blog post all about why Erica is great, but for now we'll just talk about her date idea that just resonated with me, and which has been working really well for two solid months now. She said that she and her husband tr...

We recently got to fly out to Kyle, Texas, to visit my sister Brooke and her family. It was Ada's first time on a plane, and Russ's & my first time to Texas together -- state #10 for our United States Map! :) We get guest passes for Alaska Airlines (essentially 10% cost for standby seats) each year because Russ's dad is a pilot. Our 2017 passes were about to expire, so we started brainstorming where we wanted to go. My only requirement was a new state. Russ wanted to go somewhere warm and suggested Texas or Florida. Since my sister lives in Texas, I suggested that, and we went with it! Since it was Ada's first time flying , I was suuuuuuper nervous. My girl is super sleep trained and super scheduled. That means when she misses a nap, she does not know how to handle it, and pretty much loses it. It also means she is pretty much incapable of sleeping in our arms or even a carseat. However, we got super lucky for all the flights! For 3 out of 4 flights, we got a...