April & May Camera Photos

I have LOADS and LOADS of pictures to share. They are very random of course, but they're representative of my life these days! I'll start where we left off from my last post!

My boss Misty quit eBay during the second week of April. It was a VERY sad time for all of us on her team, so we all decided to make her something unique from all of us. I made her a hand-made felt wall hanging. Jenn Fairbanks made her a blanket and a pillow. Charlie got her a gift certificate to go and paint (she loves that). Brandon made her a fun video featuring all of us - it really was awesome. And Shaun made this:

We call of those little sayings "Misty-isms" because they're things she says all of the time...and we tried to make the facial expression of how she would really say them. It's sort of an inside joke for all of us but we thought it was hilarious and so did she! Shaun did a great job of putting it all together nicely.

I'd had a plant for a few years that never really seemed to thrive because it was in a horribly small basket and it just wasn't good. So recently I upgraded it to a larger pot and moved it to a better location. As you can see from this picture taken in mid-April, there was a point where THREE peace lilies were growing from it! It was amazing!

Ramin ordered a puzzle online somewhere of London...ancient London to current London and it was a 4D puzzle (meaning it captured time as well). So here's the ancient map of London - Ramin did all of the work here.

And here's the puzzle when it was completed with all of the 3D buildings! Pretty awesome! We love London so much - can't wait to go back some day!

I've been trying to interact a lot more with my two parakeets lately. Here's a recent snapshot I took of them. 

On April 21 I tried my hand at making stuffed peppers. This was the first time I'd ever made them, and I LOVED them. But I made so many that I think I tired myself out of them already, on just the first try!

Dingo and I have been doing more and more walks now that the weather has finally gotten nicer! I take a lot of photos while walking wit him.

Ramin and I went out together one morning and when I turned around to look back in our room I found this:

My pregnant friend Genevieve bought my gift card to a place called Color Me Mine for Christmas. At the beginning of May we finally headed over there and spent a few hours painting some cute things! I painted the little gnome and she painted the fish and added her baby boy's name on it!

We had to wait a few days for them to be fired, but here's how mine turned out! I love it. We're going back in June to do some more - I'll get the guy gnome so mine (Henrietta) can have a friend (Henry).

I don't know what we're doing right but the anemone in our saltwater fish tank is growing massive and actually puffing out all of his tentacles.

I have so many plants in my house...one day I need to document all of them or something. Here's what my spider plant looked like before I cleaned him up. I gave away three large baby plants to friends at work. The rest I planted outside!

 One more I realized that I take a lot of pills every morning. They're not medications, they're mostly all supplements and vitamins to make me in optimum condition to get pregnant. Only the large white pills are true medication - Metformin to control my insulin resistance caused by PCOS.

A few weekends ago Ramin and I finally finished up the Spring cleaning outside. I got all of the flowers planted, we got the yard in good condition and we cleaned out our garage. I also cleaned the wheels of my car that day too!

The cafeteria at my work is actually REALLY good. This was one day where we had taco salad!

My tulips were disappointing this year. These were about the only ones I saw - most of them didn't do anything beyond sprouting. I'll need to look into what I can do next year.

Another shot of the walk Dingo and I take in the little canyon in our neighborhood.

I love when our big front tree blooms. It looks so much better now that we trimmed him up!

These orchids were AMAZING. I saw them in the grocery store around Mothers Day and I wanted one of them SO badly because they were so brilliant - but they were also $30 and I literally do not need any more plants :P

I try to reserve my baby-making conversations for my personal blog, but I have to share this picture. No, it's not a positive pregnancy test, it's a positive Ovulation Predictor Kit or OPK as we say in the TTC world (trying-to-conceive). When I see that smiley face every month it's super exciting for me because it's the only positive thing I get to see ever :P

In preparation for our trip to Mount St. Helen's next week - I've been trying to work on the stair master at the gym at work. On my first round I did it for 15 minutes straight and climbed 546 stairs!

This is what the dang machine looks like! It's a beast...this last week I stayed on for 20 minutes, did 670+ steps and climbed 43 flights of stairs!

Another day walking with Dingo. We climbed to the top of the hill and I took this picture of the Wastach Mountains. I love that view!

This was the same walk with Dingo. I made the mistake of going in the middle of the day and the poor thing got overheated. I found some shade for us and let him rest for a bit.

Every time I made the bed, this little punk comes in and moves the sheets and curls up in my spot! One of these days I need to secretly video tape her doing it!

We have two lilac bushes and a large snowball bush in our front yard. I trimmed some flowers off and put them in a vase. Neither of those bushes bloom for very long so I'm glad I have this picture!

This is my shaded front porch pot. The flowering plant is super cute and I've also got some ground cover in there that will hopefully start hanging over the end of the pot.

Can you believe that this is our backyard rose bush?!? Look at the colors of those leaves! I can't wait till this guy starts blooming roses!

This is another of my front porch flower pots. I think I did good job choosing some variety and color!

This is the lilac bush I trimmed from.

And this is our snowball bush!

Two weeks ago we all headed over my mom's house to move my old Avenger into her garage so some workers could come and trim a large tree in her backyard. I was afraid that the Avenger might not start and we'd have to push it to move it...turns out it just needed a battery jump and the engine fired right up! Sitting in that car made me very nostalgic - I still love that car very much. I'm glad it's in the garage now though...it needs some protection.

I'll post more pictures of our actual camping trip later, but here's what our preparation for the trip looked like. The place we went to literally had NO facilities, so we had to take everything with us, including lots of water!

Ramin had a tough time fitting it all in there but we were able to get everything organized in the bed of the truck!

Here's a quick pic I took of Ramin when we were in our tent getting ready for bed. He was reading his book on the gems were going to hunt for!

And finally, I took this just yesterday at work. When my boss Misty left eBay, I took waited a few weeks and then moved into her old desk because it was near the window.  Charlie sits right near me and it's easy for him to wheel over and talk to me through my little desk window. My plant kept getting in his face and I decided he looked funny so I had to take a picture. He made the funny face on purpose!

March & April Camera Photos

Because I had so many posts about the Death Valley trip, I got a bit neglectful with uploading all of the camera phone pictures - not that there were a ton, but there are a few that are worth sharing :)  Here we go:

I went to see Oz, The Great and Powerful with some friends on opening weekend. I LOVED it and I loved the little China Girl even more! I went out to Target to see if I could buy her because I thought she was so cute! I brought her home with me :)

This was all of my decor for St. Patty's Day! I'm especially happy with how my wreath turned out!

My Crocus bloomed early, as usual! they were pretty for a week or two :) Now I'm waiting on the Tulips to get going!

I took Dingo for a walk one night and some dumb lady opened her front door and allowed her huge dog to come up to Dingo...Dingo wanted to play but the other dog thought he was fighting so they started fighting. I got a few nice rope burns on my fingers from pulling the leash so hard. This one below wasn't the worst one...it just looked like it was on the day it happened.

Here we are on another day taking a walk! The weather has been so up and down. You think it's starting to warm up for Spring and then it snows or rains again and gets cold. This was literally a few weeks ago and the weather is basically the same on that day as it is now.

Ramin's brother, Babak, came to stay with us for a week at the end of March. Here he is hugging Dingo :)

Ramin's brother was in town on the day of our wedding anniversary. We went downtown to the City Creek center for lunch and spent some time walking around. It was a beautiful day!

This is the same day up at one of my favorite parks. It overlooks the entire Salt Lake Valley. It was weird, my camera had this weird halo effect every time we tried to take a picture up there!

My friend Jenn and I had a girl's night out to dinner and shopping. We brought her little girl Liesel with us. We went to Leatherby's and had ice cream for dessert of course. Liesel loved her rainbow ice cream!

 At work one day my friend/boss, Misty, and I wore the exact same shirt...we shop at the same store all the time!

The crazy dog behind us likes to fight with Belle under the fence whenever he can. On this day he knew Belle was outside because she was barking to try and get his attention. His name is Oozo by the way...anyway, he was inside of course and couldn't get to Belle but he heard her through the bedroom window because it was open slightly. So what does he do? He plows himself right through their window screen so he can stick his head and bark! Crazy dog!

At one of my girl's nights we did a fun project where we made real wood signage! This thing is HUGE! A friend of a friend cuts wood out in her garage and sells it. We painted it and stained it during the project night. It was fun!

This is my cute Spring/Easter wreath. It turned out SUPER cute. It's one of my all-time favorite wreaths that I've done.

I broke the faucet in the downstairs basement one weekend when I needed to clean my fish tank (I have an attachment to the sink)...and so Ramin and I bought ourselves a new faucet for our bathroom upstairs and moved the old downstairs. I'm happy!

At work we moved into a MASSIVE new building two weeks ago. This was what my new desk looked like the day we moved in. I've since changed it a bit to make it better for me...I'll try and take more pictures of my desk as well as the entire building...because it's pretty cool!

Here's another rain/hail storm coming through. The big black cloud was hanging right over our house when I took this picture. We do get some good storms during the Spring!

Last weekend all of us went over to help my Mom and Bob do some Spring cleaning. They had a few mattresses that needed to be thrown away as well as a few couches that were ruined by their dogs, along with loads of other things from the garage. She rented a dumpster and we all helped load everything in there. It was an exhausting day but we were glad to help! This is the dumpster - FULL - at the end of the day.

At our new work building things haven't quite settled yet outside...there is new landscaping but of course it's all new. I made the mistake of walking on some mulch to access a sidewalk and to my surprise my shoe got sucked in like quick sand! That is my shoe covered in mud. I'm not the only one that has had this happen to them...I'm walking in the parking lot from now on so this doesn't happen again! Good thing I had an extra paid of shoes and socks in the car!

One of my plants is now sprouting THREE Lilys....it's so amazing I can't believe it! Once I re-potted it it just exploded with growth!

 Ramin and I bought a 3D puzzle of London. It has multiple layers to put together. Ramin has done most of the work on this...but here is the first layer. He's now finished it and so we'll be starting on the second layer next.

This was last night...Belle has such a routine and likes to go to bed at the same time every night. Of course, he has to cuddle herself under the covers...in MY spot no less!

But....how can I resist that face?!? :P