Christmas 2019

Merry Christmas, friends and family! We hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season.
Last winter we had snow- tons of snow! It was so deep that most people couldn't get into work. We had a lot of fun running around the neighborhood with our little dog, Kepler. He loves the snow! It was nearly as deep as he is tall so he had to follow our boot prints. I love the snow days up here! It doesn't snow often enough for people to know how to properly function in the snow (aka, nobody can get to work), so it's always an excuse for fun.

Summer Vacation
As fun as snow is in the winter, snow isn't really something I want in the summer. Korben and I went on a two week trip to Yellowstone with Korben's family. The first week was freezing! One morning we woke up to snow outside our tent-- in June! That was the day I questioned whether we should have planned to go to Yellowstone for our summer vacation. The second week was in the Grand Tetons and the weather was sunny and warm. It was gorgeous! Yellowstone is a lot more crowded with tourists than I had remembered when I was a kid, but it still has a very wild feel to it. We saw so many bison we stopped announcing it, we saw bears (some in our group saw them on their hike!), as well as the spectacular hot springs, geysers, and boiling mud pots that are a constant uncomforable reminder that you are camping on top of an incredibly active super volcano.

Justyna, Korben's niece, keeps us company at Mammoth Hot Springs.

The Grand Tetons were incredible to hike on and camp in as well. Korben (who knows a little bit of french), let me know immediately what "grand tetons" means in french which kind of skewed the beauty of the mountains for me. I now also strongly feel that women should be in charge of naming our geographical tourist sites and not some lonely french men.

While in the Grand Tetons we went on a beautiful hike on the other side of Jenny Lake. We saw moose! I also was accidentally abandoned on this hike and all I could think about were the moose that were certainly hiding behind the trees, waiting to trample me. There was no cell service and we had taken a ferry boat to get to the hike and the last ferry was going to leave in an hour. I had no way of knowing if my group had already gone across the ferry or was still somewhere on the trail. I retraced my steps and asked everyone on the trail if they had seen a group of people hiking. (You know, the kind of people who looked like they could abandon someone in the forest!) Luckily a french woman who also spoke English (she offered no explanation concerning the name of the mountains) with bear spray befriended me and kept me sane until Korben and his family finally found me. (The explanation I had been given was that they were supposed to meet me at a certain spot on the trail but they accidentally took a horse trail and got completely off the main trail so they weren't able to meet up with me. Hmm...)

Family News
Every year is filled with both joys and sorrows. 2019 hit hard in the spring with an unexpected sorrow. Korben and I were very happy to find that I was finally pregnant after we had been trying for a couple of years, but it ended in a miscarriage. We are blessed to be surrounded with such supportive friends and family. I was happy to hear about friends of mine this year who have struggled with infertility for years that are now pregnant! 2019 isn't our year to start a family, but we are blessed with a wonderful marriage, our pets that we treat as our babies, and good friendships. We continue to trust God even when things appear disappointing.
Our family may not have grown in the way we wanted it to this year, but we did decide to adopt a puppy and he has brought us a lot of joy and headaches this year. He actually comes all the way from Korea and he was a meat-market rescue pup. We named him Anyong (On-yawng) and yes, it is a reference to the television show, Arrested Development, and yes, it does mean "hello" in Korean. He is a very friendly puppy so it suits him well, but people have a hard time remembering and saying "Anyong," correctly. The good news is that Anyong doesn't care. You can call him Onion, Yongi, Bongo, Fluff-Mutt, or, as my mom calls him, "Any-dog."

He's a short-legged, long-bodied fluffy boy who thinks all of our rules are mere suggestions. We think he's part Westie (aka, needs constant grooming and hair-cuts) and part Jack-Russell (aka, Tigger). Kepler loves his brother in a way that most big brothers do: with deep, heavy, exasperated sighs and grumbles. They do play together a lot and occasionally snuggle, too. One day when our back gate didn't shut all the way, the dogs decided to go visit the neighbors. Anyong was in heaven, but Kepler was extremely anxious and most certainly only there because he felt like he had to keep an eye on his little brother. They are very opposite dogs in their personalities. They are about the same size, but Kepler is black and Anyong is white. When they snuggle together they look a little like a Ying-Yang symbol.

The day I met Anyong

The cats have been protesting about the newest member of our house. Kepler knows to respect their boundaries, but Anyong doesn't. The cats are still warming up to the idea of sharing living space with a dog who incessantly licks their faces and struggles to understand the meaning behind the word "no" both in English and in cat-hisses (we haven't tried "no" in Korean, though!). Recently we celebrated that all "our boys" were snuggled in bed with us (Kepler, Anyong, and my Siamese cat: Brewster). You know that warm feeling that just fills your heart? Korben felt that warm feeling. Except that it started to feel a little wet and kind of like it was trickling down his head. Brewster was taking advantage of this opportunity to do a little "pee-protesting." It's Brewster's favorite way to let us know he's upset. But this was the first time he's ever protested on someone's head!

Joys of Home Ownership
Our fence blew down in a big windstorm in January. Our friend, Robin, was renting out our downstairs bedroom at the time and he helped Korben put up a temporary fix until we were able to put up a new fence in August.

Our water heater needed replacing and Korben believed he could install it himself. The only problem is that the water heater closet is behind the toilet and you have to lift up the water heater over the toilet to get it to the closet (I seriously don't know who designed our bathroom!). We were able to get it over with the help of some car ramps.
Korben has hated the yellow walls in our kitchen. I had a long weekend so I decided I would paint them. Of course, what was supposed to be a 2 day painting job turned into a 5 or 6 day job. When we pulled the refrigerator out of it's place we discovered a huge, moldy mess. Rather than scrubbing it off with bleach we decided to pull out all the sheet rock and make sure it wasn't behind it. It wasn't, thankfully. But it did certainly make the job take much longer. The new color of our kitchen is a beautiful gray-blue. We love it!

Getting ready to tackle the mold

After making all of these nice (and pricey) fixes to our home, I found a house for sale in a neighborhood Korben and I have been wanting to move to. We checked it out and both really loved the layout and location, but decided to let it sit for a week (a long time to sit in this area!). It was still for sale so we put an offer on it and are finishing closing on it as I type this letter! We won't be able to move into it until the end of January because of our busy schedules, but we are very excited. It has some things that I've been missing (a dining area, a pantry, a kitchen that has enough storage, a two-car garage, a laundry room that's inside the house, more square footage). Come by and visit us!
Other Happenings
It was really nice to see so many of you this year. I had a reunion earlier this summer with most of the missionaries I worked with during my student mission year. We met up in the Seattle area since most of us live in the Northwest now. Korben's mom also visited this summer and my parents and my sister and her husband. My family all lives in warmer-climate areas so the summer is a great time for them to visit. I have been told that since our new house has a fireplace they are open to having winter visits now!
Korben is still working at Rover and he's enjoying getting to do more programming. He was working as a manager for a while, but had become a little tired of all  the meetings so he went back to just doing programming. Rover has recently moved to a newer and nicer office and Kepler doesn't really go into the office with Korben anymore (Kepler is too much of a grump). Anyong has been going in with Korben and he loves it. I think Kepler enjoys having a break from his little brother, too. For Thanksgiving we went to Florida and got to see most of Korben's family. It was a wonderful trip and great to celebrate his grandma's birthday while we were there.
I'm teaching 3rd and 4th at Northwest Christian School and I currently have 27 students, making this the largest group I've ever taught! Lucky for me, the group I have this year is really sweet and easy to teach. One of my students absolutely loves a jacket that I own. When I don't wear it she says, "Where's your beautiful jacket?" I asked her one day why she liked the jacket and she told me it was because, "it looks just like a bathrobe!" I also have an amazing teacher's aide, Debbie, who saves me hours and hours of grading time every day. 

Korben and I have both been getting more involved in church and I had the opportunity to preach my first sermon in October of this year!
We'll be spending Christmas with my family in Texas this year. I don't know what is in store for the year 2020, but we hope and pray that it will be a wonderful year for you!

With love,
Lori & Korben Rusek
Kepler (the scruff-mutt), Anyong (the fluff-mutt), Brewster (my pee-protester), and Grapefruit (our quiet tabby)