Another One Down

Another month has passed and time has flown by yet again. A few weekends ago I convinced Chris and Ramin to go with me up to Fort Bridger, Wyoming to the Mountain Man Rendezvous. This was something my mom took us to when we were littler and when my elementary school hosted our own little mountain man rendezvous day. Anyway, we made up to the real rendezvous this year and it was pretty awesome.  While I didn't actually take any pictures while we were at the rendezvous, I did take some pictures of our stop at Fossil Butte National Monument. Ramin always likes to make our road trips as fruitful as possible so we took a little detour in order to hit up this place.

This place was awesome because they literally had a timeline of the history of the Earth. It said that every 9 inches represented 1 million years. And the timeline started way back at the entrance of the place and continued to the actual visitor center. It was REALLY cool. We spent a good 20 minutes just reading the entire timeline. And then we spent another 1/2 hour in the visitor center reading about all of the fossils at this place. Apparently the entire area is great for finding fossils of ancient sea life - YES, sea life. The whole western part of the US used to be submerged in water. It was all very interesting!

And we did some driving throughout the park and ran across some cute deer! It was a mom and her two babies. We ended up seeing the dad deer when we turned around and came back but he was running too fast we couldn't take a picture of him.

Next weekend is going to be KayDee and Tanner's wedding on Saturday and then on Sunday I need to spend all day packing myself up for my trip to Manila, Philippines. Yep, I am definitely going for 2 weeks - from the 4th through 17th. I'm excited but I'm also really nervous too. I'm glad I have a co-worker going with me as we fly out and he will be with me for the first week. On the 2nd week I'll be by myself but there's always a few eBay people out there at any given time, so I will be ok.

But, the reason I brought all of that up is because I figured next weekend I'd be too busy to worry about Halloween Decorations - and I wanted to make sure I got them up before I left - sooooo....I did them all today!!  I know I know, I always post my decorations and they usually aren't any different than the previous year, but this year I do have a few new things and I tried to mix things up a bit. So here is my decor:

That's all my updates for now!! I'm planning on taking LOADS of pictures while I'm out in Manila so hopefully I'll have a lot to post when I get back!!

WHOA

So I know it's been an incredibly long time since I posted last. I'm trying to do more to make sure I do things for myself instead of focusing 100% of my energy into work. What have I been doing over the past month?  Well...here is a brief list:

1. Finished up my Summer semester of school. BY FAR the hardest semester of my Master's Program so far due to all of the new software I had to learn and all of the projects I had to do.
2. Working my ass off. We went through the process of interviewing a ton of people in order to get us some more help. I'm hoping we'll have 2 new people start in mid-September. Until then, I'll still be on overdrive at work. We're also going through some "performance management" deal to basically determine whether we're the right fit for our job. I'll learn my results on Tuesday ;)
3. Being sick. Thanks to working my ass off I overloaded myself and got really sick last weekend. I took Monday and Tuesday off work. I ended up getting behind but it was worth it in order to stay in bed all day and sleep. Needless to say, since I've been back at work this week I've been forcing myself to take it easier. 
4. Starting Fall semester. Started this week again. I'm anxious for this semester because it's a lot of reading and projects specifically related to Instructional Design. This is where we're getting to the really good stuff. So I'm excited to do lots of reading and learn as much as I can.
5. Helping Tanner and KayDee prepare for their wedding. So last year (I'm sure I posted about it last year), I helped Tanner make cute cards for his proposal to KayDee. Now we're a month away from their wedding!! Tanner is seriously like my brother and I was so happy to help them make their invitations. I told Tanner last year that I wanted to help them with everything. A few weekends ago we went up to Sundance and Bridal Veil Falls and I took their engagement pictures, yes ME! And this weekend we finished their invitations. On Friday I went over to their house and we spent the night cutting paper and gluing it together. And yesterday I spent all morning and afternoon printing on vellum, cutting, hole punching and then assembling the final invitation.  Here's how they turned out:

 
Aren't they super cute? It's hard to tell in the picture but the paper is all metallic. Eggplant, copper, ivory and the envelop is saffron. I LOVE it! I also love their engagement picture so much because it's so atypical from the normal engagement picture. They wanted a fall wedding and their colors are so subtle and pretty. I'm really proud of how hard we worked to make it come together. We made 175 invitations in total. I learned through this process that this really is something I really would love to do for a living. I need to keep making small steps to make that happen.

So what is on the horizon for the next little while? I will most likely be traveling to Manila for work the day after Tanner and KayDee's wedding. We'll see if that happens. I'll also continue doing my thing at work and at school. If I have any interesting news to report I'll make the time to post it up!

Fireworks and Stargazing!

My Dad came in to town over the 4th of July weekend and we all had fun playing games, watching shows and of course doing fireworks. These are the pictures from Saturday, the 3rd of July (we celebrated on Saturday here in Utah because Sunday the 4th is church day)

Ramin, Chris and me on the front porch holding our fun super sparklers :P

Ramin and Chris look on at their handiwork - we had a lot of little fireworks to blow up in the street

Setting up more for more explosions

Chris was proud of this one, I can't remember the name of it but it was weird - just look at how weird it looks!

Chris is helping Dad and me light our sparklers - my face is kinda crazy here!

Wooohooo we had success!  ...and lots of smoke

We used most of our sparklers to flush out the ever growing ant pile near the mouth of our garage

Chris and Ramin unpack more fireworks as Dad steadies his American Flag!

So that was our fun filled 3rd of July! For the actual 4th of July we all headed out to Skull Valley in the middle of nowhere near the Dugway Proving Grounds. This was a trip Chris and I had wanted to take for a long time as we remembered a similar trip Dad took us on when we were little. He packed us in the car along with his telescope, we picked up some KFC and headed to the middle of nowhere. This time, Chris had his own huge telescope and Dad would be guiding us from his memory on the trip (from almost 20 years ago!).

We packed up our truck with blankets, drinks and other supplies, including the telescope. We headed over to Tooele and ate some KFC of course. From there we drove across the mountains into Skull Valley. We looked for good places to pull off and found a perfect place! Next to a huge rock/cement creation.  We spent a good 3-4 hours out there until it got really dark and we observed all sorts of planets, stars and galaxies with the telescope. We had lots of fun and plan to do it again.

Don't mind that last picture, Chris and Ramin always so that silliness kind of thing :)

We had a great trip with Dad, I always love when he comes out. We may end up taking another trip to Phoenix around November but we're not sure just yet how things will turn out.

San Jose / San Francisco / Sonoma

Wow I can't believe it's been a full month since I posted anything! I'm so sorry about that. I'm working really hard to try and have some sort of a work/school and life balance. It's hard to do these days. I'm still constantly stressed out but I do see some light at the end of the tunnel and that makes things better.  Back in mid-June Ramin and I took a trip to San Jose as he had some business to attend at eBay headquarters. I decided to tag along so we could go to the Nascar race in Sonoma and also so we could do some sight seeing in San Francisco. Here are the highlights from the trip:

Golf

Ramin loves golfing. And I actually like it too. I didn't bring my clubs because we already had lots of luggage, but I did tag along with Ramin to two really nice courses. One was called Hiddenbrook and it was tucked away in the coolest neighborhood with a brook running through it of course. These pictures are of Ramin at the course - isn't it pretty? I'd totally love to live in a neighborhood like this!

This next course was in the coastal community of Pacific Grove. I loved THIS place even more than Hiddenbrook because of the small town/victorian feel of this place! The course overlooks the pacific ocean of course and it's set up like an old fashioned english golf course complete with a lighthouse! The weather wasn't so great that day but it added to the atmosphere of the entire place which was sort of old and spooky!

The Race

One of the major highlights and reasons for our trip was going to the Nascar race! We had already purchased tickets but when Ramin talked with his San Jose co-workers he found out that the company had already received SUITE tickets to the race - and I'm not talkin just any old suite - I'm talking about the Hendrick Motorsports suite!! This is the race team of Jimmie Johnson AND Jeff Gordon! By that time all of the main Sunday race tickets were taken, but we still were able to get suite tickets to the Friday activities. So on Friday we went up to the track and watched Practice and Qualifying. When Sunday came we made the hour long drive back to the track only to realize we'd left our tickets at the hotel!!!!  We also had purchased special tickets to have a Q&A session with Jeff Gordon (Ramin's favorite driver)...but we spent too much time finding parking and going to Will Call to have our tickets re-printed that we missed the session. But, all in all we did enjoy the Sunday race and we loved the track itself. BTW - my drive, Jimmie Johnson #48, ended up winning the race ;)

Winchester Mystery House

How convenient that one of the places I've always wanted to visit was literally a 10 minute drive from our hotel in San Jose!  If you don't know what the Winchester Mystery House is, just look it up online, they have a great informational website. Believe me when I say that I love, love, love walking around inside old Victorian houses and this was no exception. While it wasn't exactly what I had expected, it was cool and I think Ramin even enjoyed the tour as well.  We couldn't take pictures inside otherwise I'd have a lot more ;)

Alcatraz

The other must-do item for me on our trip was to visit Alcatraz. What an AWESOME experience. From the boat ride over to the cool audio-tour, this really was well worth the fee and time it took to visit! Seriously, if you're ever in San Francisco, you really have to visit Alcatraz and see what the history is all about. When you're on the island it's so weird to think that the island is just out there in the middle of the bay, it's so close yet it feels so isolated at the same time. By the way, it was insanely windy, which is evident by my crazy hair in all of the pictures!

San Francisco

So the day we toured Alcatraz was also the day we toured San Francisco. One of Ramin's friends from work recently moved to San Francisco and was kind enough to show us the major sites and drive us around. We visited all of the staples ;)

Diamond Heights, Chinatown, Lombard Street, Pier 39 and of course the Golden Gate Bridge