Thanksgiving- turkey dinner

This was the first Thanksgiving in 10 years of our marriage that I cooked the whole (very traditional) Thanksgiving feast by myself, with the help of my family and friends, of course :))

We had a small but very fun group of friends over. Thanks, Kim and Eric for bringing delicious yams souffle and wild rice. And thanks, Zarochka and Nico for bringing the drinks.

To my great surprise, everything turned out pretty well, including the turkey. It actually wasn't dry at all!

After we stuffed ourselves, we spent some quality time downstairs playing Wii Fit and Sports.

Eric tried to break our records on Wii Fit but was only successful in breaking one of them! He promised to be back for some more challenge :) However, with me being the queen of Wii Fit it won't be an easy task for him :)

In the evening the Sullengers stopped by and guess what we did? Come on, take a wild guess??? Yeah, correct, we played Wii again.
Alex had a lot of fun visiting with his cousins.

The next day was Dave's birthday and we went out to Pei Wei for some casual dinner with the Sullengers and the other Gudgells. Then we all came to our house... Guess again what we did???

We ate pies! And yeah, of course, we played some more games downstairs, except this time it was rocking to the familiar music.

I thought Jeanette got pretty good at it. She looks like a Pro!
Happy Thanksgiving! And Happy Birthday Dave!!!

Our Anniversary

On November 19th our family celebrated our 10th Anniversary! 

It was a great day. Dave worked all day and I spent all day in the OR assisting in surgeries. When I was done at around 6pm Dave came to pick me up. Before I left the surgical center the staff there told me that I had a surprise delivered. Honestly, I didn't expect anything that day because Dave and I decided that we've already given each other a present in a form of a big-screen TV earlier this year. When I came out into the reception area I saw a HUGE beautiful bouquet of red and white roses. I couldn't even tell at first how many there were!

I came outside where Dave sat in the car waiting. He said later that he couldn't even see me behind the HUGE bouquet. It literally was my height! I found out that there were 4 dozen roses there!!!

We went home, changed our clothes and headed out to eat somewhere. Alex came along. This is 2nd year in a row that he gets very upset on our Anniversary and wants to come with us. O well, since it's the family celebration- really, Alex should be part of it.

We were driving somewhere south and I had no idea where we were going. The only thing Dave told me was that we weren't going to Park City... Figures. 

Alex fell asleep in the car on the way to the restaurant and he woke up only.... the next morning! We drove to the Tree Room restaurant, which is located at Sundance. It was dark, a bit scary but magical. I can't believe I've never been there before! That place is SO beautiful!

The setting itself is very gorgeous and different from any other restaurant I've been to. There is a huge real tree in the middle of the room that grows out the roof. Most of the tables have couches with pillows (which came in handy since Alex was sleeping through  dinner :). A big fireplace is in the middle of the room and our table happened to be not far from it.

To start, we ordered the beet salad, pictured above. Then I ordered duck served with wild rice and mushrooms with sweet apricot sauce, and Dave ordered elk served with quinoa. For dessert we ordered berries with custard.

Do I even need to mention that the food was DELICIOUS! The kind of food I wish every restaurant in Utah had. 

It was a magical evening accompanied by great food and even better atmosphere. We'll definitely go back to that place, the sooner the better!

Happy Anniversary to us! I can't believe we've made it this far!

Introducing...

... A brand new family member of The Gudgell clan. She is a 4 month old domestic medium hair kitten. As you can see she's pretty much the same color as Sandy (we do like red heads at our house :).
Alex named her "Bessie" but we're still not sure it fits her. Dave wanted to name her "Nema" and my mom- "Rita". As for myself, I don't believe we found the right name for her yet. She's very cuddly and purrs all the time.
Can I say that Alex is SO EXCITED!!! He has been asking us to get a kitten for a long time now. We even went to the shelter last year but came home empty-handed. Then we went again on Monday but I didn't feel right about it. Then we went home that evening and I remembered all the poor animals in the cages and how sad they looked... I thought that it's totally worth it to save at least one animal.
To make a long story short, Dave and I secretly went back there on Tuesday and got the kitten that won all of our hearts the night before. Alex and Babulya were so excited when we brought her home.
I encourage all of you to save an animal and give him (her) a good home that they deserve!

A typical weekend at our house

This is how every weekend starts at our house: Alex in his PJs helps Papa to make pancakes- Dave's specialty- the best pancakes you'd ever have in your life!

Then Dave cooks them: I'm not allowed anywhere near the stove...
But who says I can't enjoy them with raspberries wrapped inside!
Dave can't wait to join us at the table so he eats them off the hot stove (well, not really but it was a funny picture).
This is the end product!
The day goes on as usual... This is our old TV that we bought 8 years ago.
And this is our new TV that Dave and Alex bought yesterday! Although I don't watch much TV myself I was still excited to get a new one- welcome to the 21st century, Alex's family :) 

(Well, this is NOT a typical weekend thing but I thought it was worth mentioning in this post).
Then we decided to drive up the canyon and see what we can find (actually something we do almost every weekend, weather permitting).

And we found this very cool place with HUGE rocks...
...which Dave climbed in his great "climbing" shoes AKA sandals.
Meanwhile, Alex wanted to take a picture on every rock he found- literally. If I didn't stop him we would end up with a million pictures of Alex on different rocks :)
The colors were beautiful- I think we were at the right time of the day for the best lighting.
Babulya and Alex posed together.
This year's family photo (you can tell we were "ready" for picture-taking today- all of us are dressed in our weekend/leisure/house clothes wear).
I was actually surprised how good a photographer Alex is!!! He definitely got my genes there! 
A beautiful october weekend day near our house.
Hope everybody had a great weekend, too!!!

Time for a change!

I have been growing my hair out for no apparent reason for about 3 years now. The thought have crossed my mind more than once to cut it off but I never really acted on it. So it kept growing and growing and growing until one day when I woke at 5am to start getting ready for my rotation with plastic surgery as part of my school. The reason I had to get up this early was.... my hair. It took SO long to dry my hair in the mornings that it was the final push that I needed...

...I cut it off!
And although I wanted it even shorter (my hairdresser, and my friend, Olga just about had a heart attack when I told her I was going to cut it all off- because she thought my hair was nice the way it was and the only compromise she would do is to cut it to my shoulders... at least this time around), I'm still a much happier person today. Having to get up at 5:15 instead of 5am :) It may seem like not a big deal but 15 extra min of sleep is a big freaking deal to me!

Naturally, a few days later Alex also got his haircut as well. Now he once again looks like a big boy :)

Alex's first day of preschool

This was one of the most exciting days for Alex so far in his life. He started preschool this year. He has known that he was going to go for a few months and he kept asking us all summer long when his school would start. Every time we drove by his elementary school, he would acknowledge that it is his school! And then finally the day has come...

He had to make a scrapbooking page for his class album before his first day (yes, yes, guys, don't be surprised, I actually had to do a scrapbooking page- I was shocked myself :)
He got a new outfit for his first day (which he at first refused to put on in the morning; he definitely didn't wake refreshed that day...).

And then our little boy headed to school. Since his school is within 15 min walk, we committed to walking him to school every day: benefit of exercise, saving gas money, and being green all at the same time! Can't get better than that!

Alex has been going to school for a week now and he loved every minute of it. When we walk home from school he sings songs to us every day that he learned there! I'm so happy that we put him in preschool- he's going to learn a lot there and also make new friends.

Our little boy grew up...

August adventures

(The flowers by our front porch are dinner plate dahlias that I grew again this year. White and yellow grow the biggest from year to year. I also planted orange, blue and red and they were just as beautiful, but not as big.)

August was full of relaxing adventures for our family. First, we went to the annual Parade of Homes- kind of a tradition since Dave and I got married. We visited about 15 different houses and saw many different decor ideas and interior designs that we liked.

Alex found his favorite room in one of the houses where he played soccer. We could barely get him out of there!

This house had a nice, landscaped backyard where Alex and I got to swing for a while.

This mansion was a multi-million $ house, which was nice but the interior layout was less than perfect. 

In the backyard of that mansion.

We finished our Parade of Homes outing by jumping on the trampoline until our feet almost fell off :)
The next weekend we went to the Pineview reservoir in the Ogden canyon- also our family's annual tradition. First, we all put on lots of sunscreen- a must in the sunny, high-altitude Utah mountains.

Babulya swam on the mattress peacefully...

...while we set up our "camp". We had a great location and were especially glad that Dave brought the canopy- our most important "do-not-forget" item on all of our outings this summer.

We played a little badminton (one of my most favorite games as a kid in Russia).

We swam.
And even played some volleyball in water. The water was warm and very clean.

It was a very nice and relaxing Saturday. As an annual tradition, right after the lake we went to the Brigham City farmer's market where we bought lots of different fruits, berries and veggies- these are the best you can find all around Utah!

The next weekend we spent 3 days/2 nights camping with our friends near Kamas, UT, at the camp site called Soapstone. I wouldn't say this was my favorite spot- I still love Moosehorn the best- but we had great company and had a lot of fun. I don't remember laughing this hard in a long time!

While there we went to the Lilly Lake to fish. Kids had a lot of fun fishing and so did the adults until we realized that we weren't catching anything :( Part of the group went back to the camp and took a nice, log nap (you can only guess that I was part of that group) and part stayed at the lake tempting their luck in fishing (they also didn't catch anything so our plans for fried fish were cancelled and replaced by other yummy food that evening).

Our camp had 5 tents set up in a half-circle pattern around the empty dirt-field where we all played a fun game of ring toss- for the Olympic record. I think that Jason ended up being the Olympic champion with Nico running not far behind with a silver medal.

Then we started the fire and the food preparation began.

Meanwhile, kids were enjoying their company running around and playing "monsters" with flashlights and both dogs. We had a little river right behind our tents.

Finally, food was on the fire and now it was just waiting time.

These are all the beautiful "girls" from our group. Me, Zara, Katya, and Carine.

This was a great camping trip with lots of delicious food, fishing (although unsuccessful), fun games while sitting around the fire, scary stories by the fire late into the night, and gazing into the starry sky- there were more stars than I have ever seen in my life in one place. I saw a few shooting stars and made my wish :)