January and February Updates

I've been bad about updating the blog the past 2 months and that's because it's basically been boring all around :) In a good way of course!

The latest excitement only recently happened the past two weeks where my mom went into the hospital for a hip replacement. Last weekend my Dad and I went to see Cinderella the ballet at Ballet West - it was FANTASTIC!

I've just got a hodge podge of pictures and videos from January and February so I'll just list them all out here.

One bit of news is that Ramin and I are travelling to Death Valley this coming week (Feb. 28 - Mar. 4). We are SUPER stoked because there is actually tons to do down there AND we will be staying in a "supposedly" haunted hotel...the show Ghost Hunters is even going to be filming at the hotel while we are staying there! How cool is that?!?! The show Ghost Adventures already filmed at the hotel and here's a recap video of their time there:  http://www.travelchannel.com/video/recap-amargosa-hotel Check it out!  It's funny because Ramin and I were kind of disappointed that the hotels we wanted to stay at were already booked up (last minute planning on our part) and he just happened to find this hotel outside of Death Valley in a place called Death Valley Junction and it only had 1 room left for the weekend!! He did some research on the place and actually thought I'd like it even better than the other hotels because of it's history. And of course I was excited to go...and then when he called the hotel to extend our reservation to Thursday night the manager told him that they'd be filming Ghost Hunters at the same time. It's funny because Ramin said she sounded hesitant when she told him the name of the show after he asked who would be filming (she had mentioned we couldn't enter taped off filming zones). After she said the name Ramin said "That's cool!" and then she sounded relieved. I'm sure she was worried we'd be creeped out and would want to cancel our reservation. Of course, we LOVE that type of stuff and so it's going to make this trip even more exciting for us. We can't wait!

On to the pictures and videos!

Random picture of Dingo chewing on a paper towel cardboard roll. He is so much like Lady sometimes - she LOVED these things!

Sunrise in January. Cold and smoggy, but beautiful. Our lovely inverted air makes for pretty skies!

A Sunday morning in January. Belle is literally curled up with Ramin, you can see his body outline in the blanket.

I have no clue what Dingo was doing here...but he was sitting next to me on the couch just staring forward...in a daze. What a weirdo!

 I got really sick at the end of January and our great friends Jenn and Matt brought dinner over for us one night. It was so nice of them!

In February I hosted a little mini project night with a few of my friends! We made felt heart mobiles. It was great sitting around chatting with the girls!  Angie and Gayle below.

Amy did not want her picture taken!

Ramin's parents sent us this lovely bouquet of roses for Valentine's Day. They were so pretty!

Last weekend for President's Day Ramin and I went up into the mountains to stay at Jenn and Matt's family cabin. It was SOOO nice outside up in the clean mountain air. The guys took little Liesel sledding down the hill and they all had fun.

Ramin with one of the icicles from the house!

 

Snow and ice hanging from the house!

The guys getting Liesel ready to sled down the hill!

Liesel even enjoyed holding an icicle!

Videos: Liesel going down the hill by herself!

Matt taking Liesel down the hill on his back

Matt and Ramin racing down the hill

This is my part of my Valentine's decor. I won this wood block set from The Wood Connection and I painted it, mod-podged it with paper and glittered it up. It turned out really cute!

We had some CRAZY fog throughout January and February - some of the worst I've seen in years. Here's one Sunday morning. You can't even see the gas station 200 yards away from our house!

And here we are to my mom's hip surgery. She won't like me posting these pictures but I think she'll appreciate them in the future for documentation of her experience ;)

Here she is right before going in for surgery.

The surgery went well, however, 2 days after it was done my mom's blood pressure dropped extremely low because she had lost too much blood...so she had to have a transfusion. Around 5am in the morning the start of her transfusion messed up somehow and it "infiltrated" meaning it started backing up and spilling out all over the place and it leaked into her arm everywhere! It was a bloody mess and my mom texted me at 6am that morning to come and help her. Here's what I found when I got to the hospital...it was all cleaned up...but blood bag kind of freaked me out.

She spent a few more days in the hospital but then moved to a rehab center so she could have physical therapy to help learn to walk using her new hip. She's making progress on that front but here's what I found last Monday night when I went to visit her....the "infiltration" bruise from the transfusion...

And the bruising on the other arm was caused by all of the needles she had going in...not fun!

My mom has a slight fever right now so I haven't been able to visit her for a few days - she doesn't want me getting sick before our trip to Death Valley...but she is OK.

A final picture of Belle and Dingo making out on my bed while I was laying right there...WEIRDOS!

When we have large meetings at work we rent out a theater close by...we had one of those meetings last week and I snapped a picture from my seat. We'll be moving into a brand new $50 million dollar building in the next month or so that has it's own theater so I'm excited for that! It's the building my Dad does security for over night!

And that's the end for now! My next picture dump will be pictures from our Death Valley trip!

Christmas and Beyond

Here are the pictures from our Christmas :) It was very relaxed and small - which didn't bother us at all!

On Christmas Eve, Dad took me to see The Nutcracker performed by Ballet West at the Capitol Theater. He took me when I was 5 back in 1986 and it's now 26 years later and we got to go again. I LOVED it! We have to do it more often!

Here I am in the lobby of the theater.

 

Me and Dad trying to take a self-portrait - didn't turn out too well :P

 The ceiling in the theater was AMAZING and had an awesome chandelier!

Our view of the stage before the curtain rose.

Christmas Day before we started opening presents. 

Chris and Tara came over in the morning to make a large breakfast for us and we spent the morning having Christmas with Dad.
Here is Chris with the dogs piled on the couch with him.

A ham sandwich!

For one of Dad's presents I got him an Airborne poster to hang in his room.
Here he is opening it up...

 ...and his smile after seeing it. He was really excited to have it!

 Chris and Tara got him a gift card for the iPad Mini he won from work!

Ramin got Chris a pre-order of the new Sim City computer game. Because it's not actually out yet, Ramin wrapped an "air" box of the game :P  Chris was confused at first and couldn't figure out what it was...

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...this was Ramin's reaction when Chris couldn't figure it out!

Dad got Ramin a gift card to Lowe's and Ramin loved it!

Dad got Tara and me some similar items. Some perfume and makeup :)

 This was another one of Dad's gifts from me and Ramin. Keeping with the Airborne theme he got a fleece jacket with the logo embroidered on it

 I got Ramin a remote control Audi A6. He had joked earlier in the month that he wanted an A6 for Christmas after seeing a commercial for it on TV. This was my compromise :P

Here is a video of Belle chasing around the car. It's OK...it wasn't very expensive and I knew she'd have fun chasing it :)

I got Tara some good hair products now that she's gone darker. She seemed to like them :)

Chris and Tara got us some new dishes. I LOVE THEM! I think I may need to go buy another set of them because I love them so much and I want to throw away all of our other plastic crap!

I got Chris some Ninja Turtle glasses. He seemed to like them :)

Dad had to go to work that afternoon and so Chris and Tara went to spend some time with her family and then later that evening they came back over to our house and so did Mom and Bob.

Tara bought Dingo and Belle some candy cane treats....here's Dingo with his.

Ramin opened some more presents from me. This was a new Puma shirt.

My mom got Tara some card-making supplies.

We wrapped a few of our gifts in funny boxes...this was one of them - cat weights! 

I got Chris a National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation t-shirt. We also happened to be watching that movie on the TV at the same time so I had him stand next to the TV holding up his shirt :P

Tara had some actual good dog reindeer antlers and so we put them on Belle and made her sit cute for a treat....she is soooo sweet when she does this.

And that was our Christmas - we also had my mom's famous lasagna for dinner and then went to bed. It was a great day.  Here are some other random photos from the past 2 weeks.

I snapped this cute picture of Liesel and baby Lizzie on New Years Eve Jenn and Matt the other week. SO CUTE!

That same night we came home to find a few candy wrappers on the floor...I looked in our bedroom and sure enough my stocking (which was still filled completely with candy) had been torn open and all the candy and most of the wrappers had been consumed. The only culprit was Belle as Dingo was in his crate. I wasn't that upset actually....I get to make a new one now and I didn't have all of that candy distracting me from starting my new P90X workout plan.

It's been DAMN COLD in Salt Lake City the past week...it never gets above freezing and it's usually in the single digits...this was the temp when I went to work one of the mornings this week.

And here is Belle again...invading the bed. I had literally just mad the bed all nice not 10 minutes before I found her like this. She somehow takes the corner of the comforter and moves it down so she can lay in the bed. What a little punk...but she's a cute little punk!!

Anyway! Happy New Year 2013!! I'm sure there will be more pictures over this next month...but I won't be doing too many extracurriculars as I'm spending a lot of my time working out. I work out for an hour+ every day, except for Sundays....which is why I have time to write this blog post :)

A Month's Worth of Updates

I could lie and say I haven't the updated the blog because I've just been too busy. That would only be partly true....but mostly, I've been avoiding the blog because I was in a continuous "wait" mode for a few weeks.

The fertility stuff....needless to say it's taken an emotional toll on me but I'm doing better. Having constant communication with Ramin about everything - how I'm feeling and the next steps we need to take - has really helped keep me in good spirits!

We've decided to stop seeing the fertility specialist for a while. Why? Because I don't like having to squeeze into their "protocol" and model for PCOS patients. Their goal is to get you pregnant as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary. Yes I want to get pregnant, but I don't necessarily want to do it by any means necessary. Case in point, they wanted to start me off at 100mgs of Clomid...after doing my own research (extensively) I already knew that 50mgs was actually the starting dose. When I pressed the doctor for reasons why she wanted to start me at 100mgs, she basically told me it's "standard procedure" for PCOS patients and that it's what my main doctor wanted me to do. Things just didn't feel right to me. I wanted to give my new medication (Metformin) another few months to try and work on my cycle by itself before introducing a whole new drug into my system.

So I'm not a few weeks into my next cycle with just Metformin and I'm hoping for good results. Ramin and I have discussed the possibilities of it not working and we know our next steps. I'm pretty hopeful about things right now.

Starting on Monday, December 31st, I'll be starting an entirely new workout/diet plan - more like a lifestyle plan. I'll be going on my insulin resistance diet (to help me control my hormones) and I'll also be starting the P90X workout program. The workout program lasts for 90 days and I've got a calendar all ready to go. Ramin will even be my coach and help me stay on track. I even have negative consequences for myself if I don't workout every day I'm supposed to! I also have a good reward at the end if I complete the entire 3 months - a trip to Disneyland!! So I'm looking forward to working on some health goals.

As for what we've been doing over the past month - it's basically been the usual. I decorated for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving (pictures below) and we've just been getting ready for the holiday.

I'd also say that I've been a bit more nostalgic lately and I've been reminiscing about the past. It's always funny to me how the choices you make lead you to your current circumstances. I always like to think and trace back to how I got where I am today, whether it be in work, education, relationships, etc. It's always fascinating to me think about my path up to the current point and sometimes I like to think about how things would be different if I'd chosen a different path. Not that I am unhappy with my current circumstances, quite the opposite, I just find it interesting to think about what could have been.

Here are the camera phone pictures from the past month!

Belle and Dingo laying on top of me on the couch - they are my cuddle buddies!

A beautiful sunset one night as I was driving home from work.

Belle loved watching the AKC Dog Show on Thanksgiving. 

Day after Thanksgiving shopping with my friend Jenn and her daughter Liesel - she loved trying on all of the different glasses in the store :)

A look at some of my Christmas decorations

Ramin's brother Babak requested that there be a picture of the dogs wearing reindeer ears - they didn't like it very much!

The holiday wreaths I made - this one is the indoor one to match my jewel-tone Christmas.

My outdoor yarn wreath in peppermint candy-cane style

I actually finished my stocking in time for Christmas! Now Ramin and I can have coordinating stockings!

Closer up view of my Snow Queen stocking

The second week of December I had to fly to San Jose for work for a few days. Here's a shot of my hotel room - it was rather nice :)

While I was in San Jose I met up with my great friend Marci and her husband Lock and their new little baby boy Aiden! Here is Lock enjoying his massive ice cream sundae from Buca di Beppo!

Here I am with Marci and Aiden - that little guy is so stinkin cute! I'm so happy for them :)

The day we left the hotel in San Jose I saw these lovely flowers and had to snap a picture.

I came home and made Christmas cookies that weekend. It was the first time I used my Kitchen Aid that Chris bought us for our wedding! It was way easy and fun to use!

And then I got sick....this past week hasn't been too fun but I've been keeping my spirits up listening to good music :)