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 :)