rushley & crew

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 ...

What do you want to be when you grow up? When I was really little, like five years old, I wanted to be a princess when I grew up. I mean, who didn't, right? via Now that I'm old (aka 22), I mostly just want to be a mom, with perhaps some magazine editing or freelance design on the side. via But somewhere in the middle of those two dreams, I wanted to be a singer/songwriter. via It started in fifth grade. I really don't know what brought it up, but my friend Briana showed me some songs she had written (just lyrics with a tune, no actual instruments yet). I was intrigued. I listened to music, and like all 10-year-olds, I wanted a rockstar life. But I never actually thought that happened to real people. But for some reason, Briana's songs gave me the idea that we could do something big. So we started a band. I started writing songs, and she continued writing songs, and we recruited our other friends Kaylee and Elayna to join the band. We were going to ...

Last week, my friend Laura and I did a little swap on our blogs, so I wrote about one of my worst dates over at Simpleton Pleasures . It was a bad one, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to my absolute worst date, which is the one I'm sharing today. *   *   *   *   * The summer after my freshman year of college, summer 2011, I went to a Spanish-speaking Mormon church. I was feeling pretty good about my Spanish, but I wanted more practice and more immersion into that language and culture. However, by joining that ward, I realized I did not know Spanish as well as I thought I did. It wasn't horrible, but there were definitely times when I had no clue what was going on. One of the first few weeks, I met this guy and he introduced himself and we talked a bit. I thought he was just being a friendly and welcoming person. Through him asking me some questions, I somehow ended up telling him I was getting married the upcoming December, which wasn't actually true...

Throughout my childhood, I moved twice. I grew up in Kansas, and my first move was to Elk Ridge, Utah (about 30 minutes south of Provo) when I was almost eleven. It was exciting, and I really loved moving. The next time we moved was to Orem, Utah, when I was fourteen. Since we knew we were moving up there, my brother and I just commuted to Orem schools for the first half of the year until we actually moved into our house in January 2007. My brother went to Orem High School, and I went to Lakeridge Middle School. Again, I really liked the change that came with moving--making new friends, decorating a new room, being closer to things . . . those were all good things. However, it's not a change I would want to make every single year. You see, Lakeridge Middle School fed into Orem High School and  Mountain View High School, and the split was about 10%/90%. I was in the boundaries that were supposed to go to Orem High School, but most of my new friends would be going to Mountain Vie...

My father-in-law emailed out this gem yesterday. The picture was taken on Lance's (my bro-in-law) sixth birthday. This is my husband as an almost eight-year-old: Do you love it as much as I do? Probably not, but that's okay.  I love my weird and adorable man . . . He's the greatest :) **ashleynicole

Remember when Russ and I wore our Christmas sweaters ? Well, that's not the first time those sweaters made their appearance in our lives.  Russ and I met just over two years ago at church . Sometime I'll tell the whole story, but for now, I'll just say that we were in the same Family Home Evening group (which is a group made up of my apartment and his apartment that got together every Monday evening for a spiritual thought and an activity). Everyone in our FHE group became really great friends, so when Christmas came around, we thought we'd make a family Christmas card! I brought at least five Christmas sweaters to contribute to the sweater fest. I think these photos turned out great :) maybe someday Russ and I will have a real family Christmas card where we all wear crazy Christmas sweaters :)  What do you think makes a Christmas card awesome? **ashleynicole