We love riding our bicycles!

For Memorial Day, we purchased new bicycles!  Now that we have a garage, we will hopefully be able to keep them from getting stolen.  My cousin called me on Friday night, and said that she wanted to run on the Provo River Trail, so we kept her company while she ran.  We covered eleven miles!  It was super fun!

 At Bridal Veil Falls

 I thought I was so smart because I had a helmet, so I didn't need to purchase one.  We took it with us to use on the trail.  The clasp was broken, so we used my cousin's duct tape to hold it in place during the ride.  It looked pretty cool!  Needless to say, I now own another helmet.

Going back East

For Spring Break, I went with the other history teachers in my school district back East to visit Civil War sites.  This year is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which is somewhat of a big deal.  It was VERY cool to go see those sites with 24 other American History teachers who were just as interested in them as I am.  A WHOLE WEEK of geekiness!  What could be more fun?  I had my SLR camera with me, and had fun taking some awesome photos.  I took a ton of pictures!  Here are just SOME of the highlights . . .

I know that the bus in back is kind of lame, but the canons in a line are kind of cool.

A statue to honor Abraham Lincoln and his visit to Richmond, VA after the Union won.  The entire city was burned to the ground from the Southerners deciding that they wanted to get rid of their cotton.  It was quite devastating to the president, because he knew that he had to put the country back together.

The land fought in at Petersburg.

In Ford's Theater, by the box President Lincoln was shot in.

At Antietam

A canon at Gettysburg

My favorite picture ever, at the Gettysburg cemetery. 

The Civil War soldiers at Fort McHenry

On my free night in Alexandria, I met up with Colby and Maria.  Hooray for family!

Colby and I are remembering where we parked.  Yes, we are goofballs!

Tour of our new house and a fun weekend!

A lot has been happening lately, and blogging has not been one of those things.  But, I am happy to announce a tour of our new place!

 Here is the guest bedroom.  We got the bookshelves at Office Depot, when we went there on a whim.  Cool.

 Our guest room also doubles as an office.

 Here is our living room.  We love it!  There is a double door that can also be closed to make it a 3rd bedroom.

 More living room and the new 42" TV that we bought and the entertainment center that we bought to put it on.

 Chris making grilled cheese sandwiches in our wonderful kitchen.

Behind him is the door to the best part--the garage.

 The bathroom

 Our bedroom--we have room for Chris to walk by the bed, even with the bookshelf there, and not kick the bed, which is GREAT!

 Yes, we have a total of THREE closets in our bedroom alone.  This place has a lot more closet space.

 The stairs leading to nowhere--and our dining room

 Our yard, which we are in charge of.  We have a garden!

 We have two fruit trees--an apple tree and an apricot tree

For General Conference weekend, Mom and Dad and Casey came to visit and stay with us.  Mom and Dad stayed in the guest room, and Casey was able to shut the door in the living room and take out the sleeper sofa for his own private room.  It was great fun to have them here.  Gosh, we love family!

 Taylor and Katie came over on Sunday, and brought their kids.  Casey read them some of our books.

And Charlie was amazed at how Grandma had a camera that flashed.  Amazing.

Anyway, that is our place!  We get a TON more space than we had before, which we love.  It is close to my work, so Chris just drops me off on the way to his work in the mornings.  We love our house.

Does anyone need somewhere to stay in Orem?  Give us a call if you are interested!

Mixed feelings . . .

I am having a mix of emotions flooding me right now.  You see, I am moving out of the place that I have lived for five years.  Chris has lived with me for two of those five years.  Here are some things that have happened while I have lived here (in no particular order):

• Went on vacation to China and came home to find that everything was clean and the way that I left it!  Amazing!  I have done that on several other vacations too!
• Learned the ins and outs of Lowe's and Home Depot.
• Had many friends, dates, and eventually a husband come over here and play with me.
• Fallen in love.
• Been proposed to.
• Received the phone call to say that my grandma die.
• Watched several movies and TV shows, including, most notably, the Ken Burns's Civil War and most of the first season of Lost here.
• Had 15 people over in my tiny family room watching a movie here.
• Had the Rusch family over for Thanksgiving, and somehow pulled it off to host it here.  That was truly amazing!
• Experienced the adventures of shopping for furniture, a piano, a new water heater, paint, carpeting, flooring, and much more to make this place complete.
• Gotten many callings here, including Relief Society presidency (a few of those), Primary Presidency, and bishopric.
• Made many many meals in our kitchen.
• Had a lot of family members come to visit, including:
• Chris's dad, who came to set him apart as a high priest.
• Chris's mom, who came to stay for a little while.
• My mom, who came to help with the birth of my nephew.
• Our niece, who came for a couple of sleepovers.
• Our brothers, when they have needed a place to stay because their BYU apartments have kicked them out.
• Other brothers, who just came for fun.
•  Read many books.
• Laughed a lot.
• Cried a lot.
• Slept in.
• Woke up early.
• Stayed up late.
• Got a Wii to play video games and watch Netflix on.
• Done a lot of studying.
• Went to the Provo Library to use their internet because I was too cheap to get my own to pay for during three weeks of being in China.

There are many more experiences, in fact, too many to mention.  I always said that I would cry when I leave this place.  And I am right now.  But I know that it is just time to close one book and open another one!

The joys of moving

One of the not-so-great parts about moving out of this TINY apartment is that we don't have very much room to move in!  At all!  Behold . . .

But, progress is being made!

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!