Crazy week

This has been kind of a crazy week for the Rusch family.  At the beginning of the week, I found a place listed on Craigslist.org that I thought was fantastic looking.  I have been somewhat "stalking" craigslist for the last few months, hoping to find the perfect place to move to.  Part of the reason is that I am a bit compulsive, and just wanted to find the perfect place for when we actually move out of our condo.  Anyway, I found a post that looked really perfect for us, and the price was right at $750.  I asked Chris if he wanted to go see it with me, and he was busy with his grad school work.  I saw it as important enough that I should go see it by myself.  So, I did.  And, sure enough, it was soooo cute!  I applied for it, but I knew that there had been like 9 other applications, so I was kind of scared.  I dragged Chris to it that night, and we had a fabulous visit with the guy that lives there, and he decided that he loved it to.  The tenant said that he would call the landlord and recommend us.  We had a little "interview" with the landlord on Wednesday, and he called early Thursday morning and offered it to us!  We are moving in a week!   Aaahhh!  We are going to become landlords and put our place up for rent instead of selling it.  We have been trying to sell it for a year, and it has not work, so we have decided that Heavenly Father must want us to go a different way! 

Here are the pictures that made me fall in love with the place!  I am sure that, when we first move in, it will not look nearly this cute.  But it will improve!

We love taking the weekend off!

For President's Day, we decided to take Friday off.  Monday was already a holiday, so we enjoyed a four-day weekend, which was great!

Instead of the traditional President's Day at the cabin, we went to a district basketball game of Casey's.  His team WON!!  At HIGHLAND!!  (this is a big deal . . . )

Chris also got his hair cut by Grandma Davis.  From seeing the previous blog post, he told me that it was time.  I relented.

Other things we did that don't have pictures attached . . . we slept in, watched an episode of Lost, went to the temple, went to church, saw Grandma and Grandpa speak in sacrament meeting in their ward, went to a movie, and just hung out!

Being home was WONDERFUL!!  We love spending time with family and just relaxing!!  Thanks for a great weekend, family.

Casey during a time out with the team

I took SO MANY pictures of the game.  This is just one . . .

You can for sure see Casey on the bench!  He's the tallest!

Our friend Superfan

Grandma giving Chris the fantastic buzz cut!

A very special visitor

Because we don't have kids (yet), we sometimes borrow them from our brothers.  Ever since we had her come stay with us in May, Anna has been begging to come back.  So we had her back this weekend.
We had a TON of fun.  We made Valentines for her family, went to Pizza Pie Cafe, went to the Bean Museum, watched Despicable Me, and had German pancakes in the morning.  We are so grateful to Taylor and Katie for letting us borrow their daughter for the night!

Here are some pictures of hanging out at the Bean Museum:

This is what a rhino feels like.

Learning about starfish from Uncle Chris

Notice the missing bow.  It was left at Pizza Pie Cafe, and joined us again later!

Photography lessons by me

Tonight for FHE, we . . .

Watched LOST.  We got a Wii, mainly so we could watch Netflix videos, and LOST has become our new obsession.  We love it and feel like we know the characters in it!
Went to the Bean Museum on BYU campus.  We actually got there right when the Reptile show was starting, so we saw . . .
REPTILES!

We went to the museum to try my camera out, and because our condo was being shown.  It was pretty cool.  And I found out this fascinating fact . . .

Telling your camera what kind of lighting you have makes a HUGE DIFFERENCE!

So, I took a bunch of other pictures with the new light setting, and think they turned out kind of cool!

This is the animal that Chris wants as a pet . . . a dik dik.  Unfortunately, he found out that they don't make good pets.  Darn.

My new camera

For Christmas, I got a cool Canon SLR camera.  I am still not an expert at it, but I am slowly getting a little bit better.  Today, after Stake Conference, we took the camera on an outing to see if I could get it to do the things I wanted it to.  Here are the results:

I am especially proud of the last couple. . . there were many more, but I will spare all the details!

Christmas 2010

We had a fantastic Christmas break!  We were both able to take off a couple of weeks, which was great.  We went to Idaho Falls and hung out with our family.  Taylor and Katie were there with their kids, and we had a Thanksgiving-Christmas dinner with them (because we all ditched out on Thanksgiving), and then did the musical soiree with them, which was a lot of fun.  The best part was that during the "Christmas pageant" I did not have to play the part of Mary!  It has been passed down to the next generation!



Casey had a basketball game (which was awesome, by the way!), and then Taylor and Katie left and we headed to the cabin.
We took a fabulous snowmobiling ride, then cut down a Christmas tree, and then decorated it.

Dad make Sukiyaki.

We got new Christmas pajamas.

We opened our Christmas presents and got a Blendtec blender, which is very cool!  Chris has enjoyed all the Will It Blend snippets on YouTube, and is now very tempted to try and blend a rake handle, or an iPod.

We were sick the day after Christmas, but on the next day, went on a snowmobile ride to Mesa Falls, which was beautiful.  We even saw some moose on our way!

We got to see a lot of good movies while we were home: Tangled, True Grit (our favorite!), The Tourist, and an edited Touching the Void.

It was a FANTASTIC break!  Thanks, Mom and Dad, for the great time!  We love you!