Ok... this one's weird :)

Ok, this may come as no surprise to some people.... but I like to grow plants. Actually, I should correct myself. I like to grow just about anything that will grow. Do you consider mushrooms to be plants???

Well, my adventurous being decided this year to order a "mushroom growing kit" from a reputable online gardening store where I usually get my organic fertilizers.. I had a perfectly good coupon "get $25 off any order". How could I NOT use it? No matter the financial situation in the country. Blah, blah, blah. So I did. I ordered 1 mushroom growing kit. Imagine my surprise when I got the package and there were actually TWO kits!!!

I followed the directions precisely and, just like stated on the package, in about 3 weeks I got.... mushrooms!

Ehh, WOW! MUSHROOMS!!! At first I thought "what the (blank) is this???" Each of the 4 of the mushrooms was about 4-5 inches across!!! Have you ever seen mushrooms THAT BIG!?? They were supposed to be "white button mushrooms"...
Well, if you know me at all, you won't be surprised to learn what I did with these GIGANTIC mushrooms... Fried them up! Dave was brave enough to try them with me for dinner even though I warned him that if I started to hallucinate after dinner to please call 911 immediately! Mushroom ingestion can be dangerous as I learned growing up in Russia and going on numerous "mushroom hunts" with my family.
I'm pleased to announce that the "mushroom ingestion" turned out a success. They were delicious and we didn't even get a stomach ache! YEAH!!!!

In the next few days we actually got some "normal" mushrooms growing in my magic kits! Can't wait to fry them up!
And to finish this weird post, this is a picture of my mom in Russia through skype. Alex misses her so much that he took a picture of her while we were talking on skype.

By the way, she says hi to everybody and their dog! (you know, she's VERY friendly)

Only in America...

Currently I'm doing a rotation with the trauma service at the IMC hospital. On my first day there on monday, which ended up being the President's day, I came at 0630 in the morning and parked without any problems right in front of the building. No problem! Little did I know that today I would come to a big fat STOP sign and a smile of a nice old man who informed me that I cannot park in the parking lot next to the building but I can go ahead and park across the street. From there, he informed me, a complimentary shuttle will take me back to the building. Ok, I thought, crap. Being 0630 in the morning and being in the lowest mood of the day, which is not unusual for me at 0630 am, I mumbled under my breath. I can't guarantee that there weren't any profanities said under my breath... It was a cold, dark, and humid winter morning after all...

I turned around and parked across the street, came out of my car and immediately got confused... I was still VERY close to the hospital, just a short walk from this new (but not favorite) parking lot. I pondered taking the shuttle but it made me almost laugh. Why in the world would I wait for 10 min for a shuttle when this walk couldn't take me more than 2 min? I bet I would walk there faster than a shuttle would drive to the same spot. I decided to test my theory. The shuttle was actually idling next to me and waiting for more passengers. I started walking and I saw the shuttle leave his parking spot. I didn't run but I wasn't slow either. I got there right before the shuttle doors opened up before the hospital door. I won!!!

Here comes my dilemma. I can see how beneficial the shuttle can be for people who can't walk far or who are disabled (but why would they park in that far parking lot anyway?). But I can also see how this shuttle service is evil and contributing to the high obesity epidemic that is growing out of proportion in the US. I've lived here long enough to just accept the way this culture is but it never fails to amuse me how Americans are single-handedly, and by choice, putting themselves in the hospitals with heart disease, out-of-control diabetes, and multiple complications of obesity. I don't try to say that people in other parts of the world are not getting sick but I do have something to compare to. My life in Russia as a teenager.  We ate white (yummy) bread, high fat dairy products, fried foods, full fat everything, lot of chocolates and desserts, but we walked EVERYWHERE. 

Wake up, America! Walk! DO NOT TAKE THE SHUTTLE! I urge everybody to get off their butts and start getting yourselves healthy. Do not become one of those patients that I take care of, who smoke their whole life, sit on the couch and drive cars and then are amused by why do they have diabetes? Why do they have high blood pressure? Why can't they lose weight even though they're drinking skim milk (what is it anyway??? colored water???), eat fat free chips, and low calorie cookies? Why? Why? Why?

I'll tell you why!!! It's all the shuttle's fault!

Get up and get moving!

Happy New Year 2009!

2008 has come and gone. We were all very happy to see year 2008 become a history. It brought us much grief and many tears so both Dave and I sighed with relief once the ball dropped in NY city. 2009 finally came and with it come hopes for a better year, better luck and hope for no more medical emergencies.
We spent New Year's Eve at our friends' house eating good food, opening white-elephant gifts, and watching Russian movies all night.
We also took some not-so-professional family photos.
The only member of the family missing is Bessie; she must have been hiding and we didn't have time to look for her, so she didn't make it to our annual Christmas tree photo session. O well. It's her loss...
We didn't make any New Year's resolutions this time. The only hope we have is that this year goes smoothly for all the members of the family and we don't have any more "excitement" in a bad sense of that word, if such exists.
We feel very lucky to have each other and we hope for good health this year!

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 :)