seriously so blessed

*DISCLAIMER: this might be a pretty long post!*

i remember writing one of our first blog entries entitled "spoiled or blessed" and now here i am a year later knowing that i am DEFINITELY blessed. some exciting things have happened recently in the rucks home and we have seen the work of the lord in our lives so much the past few weeks.

first off, jared and i have only had one car since we have been married, which has worked out great for us, but we realized starting in january, ill be going to school in rexburg, and jared will be working in idaho falls, so we were going to need to buy a 2nd car. but with a car payment on the one we have and me not having a job for the last 8 months, we were pretty stressed about buying another car with what little money we have. when we finally decided we were just going to make it work with one car, we get a call from my mom telling us she found a car for us. an extremely nice family in my parents ward, the drapers, have 4 cars and only 2 drivers and were wanting to give away this car that they had. they pretty much gave it to us for free, we just had to pay for some repairs that it needed. we are so SO grateful to the draper family and their kindness they have shown to us. we only hope that one day we will be in a situation where we can help out a newly married poor couple the way they helped us. my parents are going to drive it up to us when they bring my little sister up here for her first semester of school. (which by they way im so excited for her to start college have her up here close to me)

secondly, i got laid of from my job at the USDA in january, 8 months ago, and havent had a job since. living in rexburg idaho, where the majority of the population are college students, finding a job is almost nearly to impossible cause EVERYONE needs one. it seems like you either need to know someone who knows someone or have some other kind of connection. with jared only working part time, it seemed like we spent his paychecks before they even came. my friend candice had a job as an after school aid at an elementary school and it seemed like the perfect job for me! i have been waiting all summer for it to open up and apply because i REALLY wanted this job. after many many MANY prayers, i got an interview and learned this afternoon i will FINALLY be employed, and will FINALLY receive a paycheck again. words cannot express how grateful i am to have a job again and help support jared and i. i love the hours too. ill work from 2:30-5:00 monday through friday so i will still have my nights and weekends to myself. i have never gone to school and worked before so it will be interesting.

needless to say my life is about to take a 180 degree turn going from staying home all day by myself doing NOTHING to school from 8am-12pm and work from 2pm-5pm. ill be busy busy busy, but thats how i like it.

im grateful to know that we have a Heavenly Father we can turn to in prayer, and he will answer those prayers, not in our time, but his own. we really have been so blessed and can only pray that we can reach out to those who need help, maybe not as drastic as the way they helped us, but hopefully we could do something. our testimonies of the gospel have been strengthened so much the past few weeks. my friend deb had this video on her blog, i cant figure out how to upload it, but here is the link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz41YxNiHEg

everyone should watch it. its short, but has a good message.

weekend of weddings

this past weekend jared and i went to logan utah to attend TWO weddings. i have never been to the logan temple before, it is so pretty and really BIG. the first sealing was on friday at 4:00 for our friends mikey and brittney... so i picked jared up from work early and away we went. i was so glad they invited us to be there, the sealer had some really wonderful things to say. they had a dinner afterwards and of course we got their car.

Brittny looked so pretty and mikey was very happy to FINALLY be married!

our friends Garrett and Kaleena were up next on saturday afternoon! their sealing was also really great and i was again very happy they invited us to be there. they also had a dinner afterwards... garrett tried hiding his car because he saw what we did the night before.... but after some driving around....we found it :)

this picture makes me laugh... it looks like they are about to have a harry potter duel over the cake

Kaleena also looked very pretty all dolled up in her wedding dress and garrett too was happy to finally be married!
on a side note: ever since we moved into the apt. we are in now, our 2nd bedroom has looked like a bomb had exploded in there... well jared and i finally decided to go through it and clean it up and it looks like a whole new room... we found these shelves and hung them up and then this is what jared decided to put on them:

he told me when we have a baby boy, these are the decorations that will be in his room haha. sometimes i just dont know about him. but he sure knows how to make me laugh :)

cousin campout

every summer since i can remember, my family always does what is called a cousin campout. usually its in utah, and we've had a few in mexico on the beach, but this year it was in colorado and was SO fun! we had one maybe two good days of nice weather and after that it was COLD and RAINY, but i think we all still had a fun time... we spent the week playing foursqaure, cards, ladder ball, eating GOOD food, sitting around a camp fire, hiking, finding a waterslide formed out of rocks in the river, climbing a castle down the road from our camp ground, and only managed to smash one finger with a rock.

the first day: happy to have made it to the camp spot!

foursquare

this castle was down the street from our campground... it was fun to walk through and was SO high.climbing high on the castle

me and my sisters climing on the castle

my family

the hike to the waterslide had some tough parts to climb upthe waterslide we hiked to... it was COLD!jared on the waterslide

Jared took our trusty SEAHAWK II rubber raft out on the lake one day with my sister carissa and her firend andrea... this was on the COLDEST day we had, notice the coats and sweatshirts...

Thanks mom and dad for a FUN vacation!