The NEWS

Remember how my last post said I had more news to give? Well here it is!!!

I finally got my ring from Ramin!!! He did officially propose to me and I'm so excited!

We're just planning to do something VERY small so we're keeping it kind of quiet....I know that not very many people read this blog...but I'm not adverse to telling anyone either.

We're actually planning to just get married in a small ceremony at the courthouse on March 16th. It's a Friday night so we'll either have a nice family dinner that night or Saturday night - not sure yet. Initially, we wanted to keep it very small, just our parents, siblings and a few very very close friends. But we're not sure what we'll end up doing just yet.

And yes, we've already got the honeymoon planned out and paid for! We're going to England from March 19th through the 28th! SO EXCITED!! I've always wanted to go there and so has Ramin.

Anyway, that's the big news. Finally something newsworthy to write about on here :)  Hope you like my ring!

UPDATE

Holy cow - I know I'm bad at updating this thing lately! But I can tell you it's because I've been very busy at my various hobbies of card making and sewing! I've started to use my new camera quite a bit lately so I'm going to attempt to be better at updating the blog like I used to be.

Here are the latest updates:

• Been back at eBay for a little over a month - 5 weeks to be exact. It's been GREAT and I'm so glad I made the decision to go back. I am hardly ever stressed out and I can leave work at a decent hour and get home early enough too!! It's AWESOME.
• Sending out my Christmas cards tomorrow - here's a snapshot of the cards I've been working on. I decided to hand make my cards because they just seem nicer when some thought is put into them. I'm also making some hand made gifts again this year to give away to local friends...I'll post pictures of those when I'm done. They are what I've been feverishly working on these last few weeks!
• My next post will be AWESOME! But I have to talk to some other family members before I want to post it online.....so be patient for that!

Here are the cards I've been working on:

Just wanted to share this picture taken back in July up at Cascade Springs. We had a nice trip with the Baugh Family - some of our best friends!

Speaking of the Baughs! Here's a picture of them that I took last past weekend. It was so awesome to take these pictures and get into editing again - that's the part I LOVE LOVE LOVE. I hope Jenn won't get mad at my for posting these...I just love them too much!

Anyway that's it for now....stay tuned ;)

Summer End Pictures

Ramin and I had Jill take some "End of Summer" pictures of us at the railroad near our house. They turned out super cute!!

I don't have much of an update to provide other than I'm still working hard at the new job and learning more every day! I'm kind of excited to get the holidays started, especially Halloween! I plan to really go all out for decorating this year since we've got Jill and her kids living with us for a few more weeks.  As usual, I'll talk pictures of the decor and post them on here - it seems to be my new tradition!  I'm also working on a new Halloween yarn wreath ;)

The News

Holy cow....long time no post eh? I'm not sure who really even reads this blog. I think I mainly update it to keep my Grandma updated and to share pictures. And then I also have it as a personal record for myself. It's a good place to keep a journal of the events in life.

So let's just get down to it - the biggest news update of right now: I've changed companies AND careers!

I am no longer working here:

Instead, I am working here:

You might be asking - what the heck is Vivint? And, why the heck did you leave eBay?  These are two very good questions that I can definitely answer :)

To start off with, Vivint is a home automation and security company. A rapidly growing company at that. If you're not sure what home automation is, check out their website here and learn more - it's kinda cool!

I've actually been working at Vivint for the past month now. In fact, today marked the start of my 5th week! Holy cow! And I totally love it so far! Every day is a new challenge and there is so much room for me to grow as a person there, it's really amazing.

So what do I do there? Well, I am the Manager of Customer Support. It's a pretty hefty responsibility and I have about 20 people reporting to me...most of them Supervisors. And each of them has about 13-14 phone agents reporting to them. It's been really challenging getting to learn a new place and a completely new job, but I have my previous boss from eBay, Tim, with me. We help each other through everything. In fact, he's my new boss at Vivint and it's been great working for him again.

It was tough to leave eBay after 8 years. I mean, it was comfortable and I knew it well. I was just starting out my Instructional Design career and things were good. In fact, I wasn't out for looking for a new job....but I was feeling as though I was just done with eBay. After a while you just realize that it's time to move on. And when I got presented with the Vivint opportunity, I felt I needed to take a chance and see what I could make of it.  It's quite a bit more money and much more challenging...but I don't mind taking the risk. The only downfall I've found with it so far is the drive. It takes an hour to drive to EACH way. If you're familiar with the Salt Lake area, you'll understand when I say I'm driving from the far west side of West Jordan all the way down to Provo....yeah.

I've met tons of great people so far and I absolutely love what I'm doing. Sure, I've had to do some hard things already (I won't go into details)...and I've been extremely stressed out...but I really feel as though it will pay off in the long run. I'm getting extremely good experience managing an entire department, as opposed to just projects and people.

So anyway...that's the main update. I don't really have many pictures to share other than this one:

This was Ramin and I on our anniversary - 6 years! I'm hoping I'll be able to post a wedding update soon. What I can tell you right now is....plan for March! :P But that's all I got.

Florida Trip 2011

Ramin and I got back from Florida this past Tuesday. We spent an awesome 2 weeks there visiting his mom, dad and brother AND attending the Gilbert Family Reunion!  Here are some pictures that captured our time there:

Racing. One the second day we arrived in Florida, Ramin and Babak went to drive Indy cars at the Walt Disney Workd track. This was the gift that Ramin bought for Babak this past Christmas and they finally got to us it!

Dirt Track. Next, our little family drove from Daytona over to Pensacola where the family reunion was taking place. It's a good 5-6 hour drive. We arrived at our cute little condo and unpacked. Ramin and I decided to head to the local dirt track that night since there were no large family activities going on that night. This was a fun place! And it was totally southern and redneck! The people were SO nice though :)

Naval Aviation Museum. Once of the activities for the family to do while near Pensacola was to visit the Naval Aviation Museum AND watch the Blue Angels practice. It was freakin awesome I gotta say!

Navarre Beach. This was the beach that the entire family stayed out. We would get together every night for a big dinner and just hang out. It was pretty fun! Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of the rest of the family because there were lots of other people around taking pictures. If I get any of those I will post them. The pictures below were taken on a beautiful night at sunset!

Fort Matanzas and St. Augustine. After we returned home from Navarre Beach, Ramin's mom wanted to take us to St. Augustine to check it out and I'm so glad we did!  Fort Matanzas is a smaller fort south of St. Augustine that helps to protect the inlet. We took a small ferry to an island where the fort was located. It was pretty cool.

St. Augustine. This was seriously THE coolest place I've been to in a long time. If you know Gardner Village here in Utah, then imagine that only 100 times larger and older! It was awesome with so many shops and little restaurants. It was extremely hot and humid though while we were there.  First we visited the actual fort called Castillo de San Macros. A really cool fort to see! Then we strolled through the streets of St. Augustine and visited shops and had some lunch. It was a super fun day!

Grandma. And finally, on our last day in Florida, Ramin and I drove the 3 hours from Daytona to the Tampa area to visit my Grandma Ceil. One the way there we did take a small detour and tried to visit Fort DeSoto near St. Petersburg. I had been there before when I lived down there but Ramin had never seen it and we were on a fort seeing mission this trip. We got all the way there only to see that it was closed due to renovations. We were seriously disappointed but I'm sure we'll have more opportunities in the future. So we drove the hour back north to my Grandma's house. It was so great seeing her and her friends - and of course her dog Patty. We took her out to lunch and then headed home. We were only able to stay for about 3 hours because we had another 3 hours to drive back home. I know it was a short visit but I'm glad we had the chance nonetheless.

The End. That was the gist of our trip. We relaxed a lot and got tons of sun :)