rushley & crew

My birthday was yesterday, and I had a great day! I think part of what made it so great was that I really tried to have zero expectations and to ask for(/make happen) what I wanted. Several months ago, I wrote about my " birthday epiphany " which was essentially that we should always plan our own birthdays and not put the pressure on other people to make our day great (because people aren't mind readers, and we often don't even know our own minds well enough), so I was trying to put that into practice. As my birthday approached, I started to feel all this pressure to come up with something fun to do on my birthday. I honestly didn't have any ideas, which kinda made me feel ... dumb? ... like, why don't I know what I want to do on my birthday? But then when my birthday came, I had this realization that I was feeling pressure to do something that other people might think was cool, so I let that go and decided that what I wanted on my birthday was just to rel...

shane & chelsey jonson, jessica & dan porter, us, and katie & tyler allan  Russ's birthday is January 3. Incidentally, my dad's birthday is also January 3. I grew up hearing all the time that it's the worst time to have a birthday because you've already had to plan the whole holiday season, and then you're expected to have more energy for a birthday?! Haha I totally get this, and I've been guilty of it for many of Russ's birthdays thus far in our marriage. However, I've also learned recently that truth is reallllllly relative, and you can kind of choose your truth. For instance, someone can like peaches, and someone can hate peaches. Who is right? Both? Neither? It's relative! So. While I could give in to believing that January 3 is a horrible time for a birthday and therefore never put in effort to do nice things to celebrate Russ, I decided I wasn't going to do that. I decided that January 3 is going to be a great time for a b...

As I've started my own family, I've thought a lot about traditions. What are things that I want my family to do to celebrate various holidays and occasions? As I've thought about it, I've often gone to Pinterest to see what ideas are out there. When it comes to birthdays, I've seen that some people celebrate "birthday week" or even "birthday month." In the past when I've seen these things (because the Pinterest scrolling I'm talking about took place years ago), I've thought, "How great! That would be so awesome to be celebrated for a whole week!" I thought that again as I watched the stories of an Instagrammer that I follow, when she said that on each day of "birthday week," the birthday kid gets one present and there is one fun activity. However, my recent experiences with planning Russ's birthday and some Insta stories (that I saw the very same day as the above stories!) from Fun, Cheap, or Free  gave ...

Last year I mentioned how my birthday was not very exciting. I detailed the fact that birthday celebrations are not Russ's strong suit, and I'm not even very good at making fun plans for my own birthday. I vowed that this year would be different! And I followed through. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I shamelessly celebrate my own birthday. I think it's the one day of the year where it's okay to be completely selfish (but obviously still kind). For that reason, when I started seeing things on Pinterest and other social media outlets about people who celebrate their "birthday week" or "birthday month," I thought that was awesome! And I thought it would be fun to not only do that for myself, but also for the family Russ and I are building together. I tucked it away as a tradition for the future. So this year, a month or two before my birthday, I was listening to the Happier podcast (by Gretchen Rubin & Liz Craft). In one ...