October Update

First of all, I can now officially share my good news on this blog - WE ARE EXPECTING A BABY!!

I did set up a new blog strictly dedicated to documenting my pregnancy and family matters. I think that perhaps I may end up switching solely over to that blog to document our family because it's more fitting.

Here is how to access it: http://gilbertfamilygrowth.blogspot.com/

For now I'll still keep this blog going - I've had it since 2008 or something but as I transition from a merely married woman to a mom, I may change my mindset and want to stick to a more family-oriented blog :)

Anyway - here are the random pictures from the past month!

In September, Ramin was changing the brakes on the car. It was the FIRST time they've needed to be changed in over 5 years and so you can imagine how tight the bolts were on the car after that amount of time. He was putting all of his weight into getting one of them off and slipped, doing this to his finger. NOT pretty!

We decided that it was bad enough to actually go to InstaCare to get it fixed. I took Ramin and here he is soaking his finger in some soapy water. The doctor ended up numbing his finger and then he was able to pull the skin back over the nail - which is why it looks so ugly. His nail is still black and blue today...but the skin is all healed :)

In early October we drove down to Las Vegas to meet up with Ramin's parents. They flew out from FL for a few days. Here we are a Hoover Dam - somewhere his Dad had never visited. We took the power plant tour and it was fun :)

Me and Fati at the Wynn garden.

This was at The Cosmopolitan mall I think...or Crystals Mall....they were cool little tornado things.

Back at home we had some AWESOME Fall colors in our yard. I just LOVED how red our fire bushes get!

One morning we had an early snow. It melted the same day but the dogs were happy to see it!

A few weeks ago some of the girls set up a cookie decorating day. We learned how to use royal icing and we made Halloween cookies.

We were silly :P

Another shot of Belle tucking herself into bed. Yes, the bed was made before she got in there!

This past weekend was spent time doing the last yardwork of the year. Our big yellow Maple dropped the rest of it's leaves AFTER we cleaned them up...so now we have another large pile, but our trash is full. :)

And I took final pictures of my roses. Too bad we're going to get a cold snap this week and they'll start to die.

That's it for now! Check on the other blog for pregnancy updates!!

July and August Camera Upload

I didn't have too many pictures worth posting up the past two months but I've got a few. I've started to realize that I need to start taking more pictures with people actually in them ;)

A collage of some shots of all of the birds in both of their cages. For Christmas I'm going to ask Ramin to buy me a larger cage so that they can all live in there together. Right now they just have to talk to each other through the cages.

This is Belle watching a video of a dog on Ramin's computer. I have a video of her barking at this dog and eventually jumping up on to the desk!

I LOVE my summer evening walks with Dingo. These are some pretty roses at the local neighborhood church house.

On night coming home from the walk I saw this view of the sky. This was the Tooele fire burning over the mountains. It made the sky look interesting for a while that's for sure!

Once Dad moved out I decided to redecorate the bathroom downstairs. I found a great shower curtain and matching towels, but I had THE toughest time finding the perfect wall art to hang up. So, I made my own! It's all handpainted on canvas done by me :)

I've never own orchids before and the local supermarket I shop at always had these gorgeous blue/purple ones I've been dying to buy - but they were $30 each and I thought they were just too expensive! One day I went shopping and saw they'd marked some of them down to $15! So I took the opportunity and bought one plant. I also bought a $6 regular orchid plant as well. The blooms have all expired now so I'm hoping they'll bloom for me again soon!

In August I hit my official 10-year anniversary with eBay. I took a picture of my name up on the TV screens posted around the building. I've got an anniversary dinner coming up that I get to go to in October.

Cool looking red sun due to the fire smoke in the sky.

The sunflowers have started popping up everywhere outside!

I've been working pretty consistently on my scrapbook from all of our National Park trips. This scrapbook contains our honeymoon pictures, Mesa Verde, Arches, Canyonlands and Zions so far. I still have Death Valley and our Pacific Northwest trip to add...I hope it will all fit!

The summer pots in our backyard. I planted some spider plant baby starters earlier in the summer and they've done nicely outside surprisingly. The rest of the pots are filled with ground cover we tore up in our yard. They look really nice!

Pacific Northwest Trip: Day 9

On the final day we drove through Portland throughout the night and stopped at a rest stop along the way. In the morning we made our way back into Idaho and we stopped at some Fossil Beds and then headed to the Minidoka site. This was one of the internment camps for Japanese Americans during WWII - very sad stuff there. But very interesting to learn about.

I believe we found this building when we were driving through Shoshone. We just had to take this picture for our friends Matt Jenn Baugh.

Our last stop of the trip was Craters of the Moon National Monument. We only thought we'd spend 1-2 hours there but we ended up spending 4 hours! We hiked pretty much everything there! 

All of the black is some form of lava.

Crazy tree probably got burned during the lava flow.

This was our hike up Inferno Cone. It reminded us of a mini Mt. St. Helens climb...it doesn't end over that ridge...its always deceiving!

Ramin at the top of one of the ridges.

At the very top of Inferno cone.

A few from the top of Inferno Cone.

Heading up one of the Spatter Cones.

Inside one of the Spatter Cones.

Inside one of the Spatter Cones.

View inside the North Crater.

Cool shot of the oozing lava.

On our way to the lava tube caves!! It was HOT!

Inside of the entrance to one of the caves. We made it into Indian Tunnel, Boy Scout Cave and Beauty Cave (my favorite), but the battery on our camera gave out just inside of Indian Tunnel and it was way too far for us to walk back to the car and get a new battery. So this is the end of our 9-day trip in pictures  We were a bit exhausted by the time we got back home - as you can probably tell from all of the things we did.

THE END OF OUR PACIFIC NORTHWEST TRIP 2013!

Pacific Northwest Trip: Day 8

On Day 8 we left Vancouver and Ramin's parents and headed back down to Washington. First stop was North Cascades National Park!

This is the old power generator station at the bottom of the park. 

Spectacular view!

We then took a ferry ride over from Seattle over to the western peninsula and made our way into Olympic National Park. Lake Crescent is BY FAR the MOST beautiful lake both Ramin and I have EVER seen!! Seriously!

Ramin at Lake Crescent. No joke, those colors are REAL and so beautiful!! 

We made our way down to the Hoh Rain Forest and took our obligatory sign picture!

Yes, we did drive through Forks (where Twilight was set), and no it wasn't anything like the movie (which I knew it wouldn't be because most the movies weren't even filmed there! :P) 

The Hall of Mosses trail was probably one of my favorite trails because I had been wanting to go there for some time. It was very peaceful in there and just awesome! 

Want some moss?

Can you see the elk? 

Cool natural arch! 

Roots and moss everywhere!

Inside a hollowed out tree stump...

Underneath the roots!

Here I am underneath some roots.

This gives you some perspective of how tall those trees are. This one had fallen down. And where Ramin was standing wasn't even the end of it! You can see me way off in the distance!

Even the telephone booth (with no phone) had moss on it  

Yep, we drove down Highway 101 after leaving Olympic National Park - and we did see the Pacific Ocean