Alisa, Owen and Halloween

Last week Alisa and Owen came into town for a few days. Here are few pictures from the visit. I took these pictures from Mom's camera since I was working when they got together. But I had to share because my nephews are just so dang cute! Oh and I had to show Amy's boys in their Halloween costumes. Aren't they just the cutest Luke Skywalker and Yoda that you've ever seen?

Thursday night Dad and I went up to Bountiful to have dinner with Alisa and her parents (Mom was in CA visiting her sisters and mom.) Here are a few pictures from the night. I love the one of Dad on the floor playing with Owen. And then Alisa put on Owen's Halloween costume for us....what a cute Incredible he makes! I'm going to see them in November and I'm SO excited!

Here is the only picture I have of my Halloween costume when Mukesh and I went to Jenn's Halloween party. I bought it when I was in India.

PS -- Scroll down to see my post about Mumbai. :)

India Fest 2010

Before you say anything...I know I said I would continue blogging my trip to India. Trust me, I think about it a lot...I just have a problem, I can't choose the pictures to blog. See what happens when I have SO many choices in front of me? But I will get it blogged and hopefully sooner rather then later. ;) But first here is my quick post from the India Fest that I went to last night with Mukesh. I have to admit that I was excited to go so I could wear my new outfit that I had made in India. (I had three of them made and I have to say, I think this one might be my favorite. It was a last minute purchase and thank goodness the tailor who made my other clothes remembered me and was nice enough to have this made VERY last minute for me. I had a friend pick it up for me and bring it to me as I was heading to the airport. SO nice of him!) Anyway, back to the reason for the post...this year the festival was kind of low key but it was still fun and I did manage to take a few pictures of Mukesh and I hanging out there.

Missing?!?!?!

Oh, that would be me. I do have a good reason for not posting again in so long...I was in India for 4 weeks in July and August. I have been a slacker about blogging my trip but that's mainly because this time I took WAY more pictures for me and I have no idea where to start. So, here is my attempt at starting and I'm hoping it will get me motivated to continue on. Let's see how it works. :-) (I will be putting the dates on the posts to try and match when they happened...so you will have to scroll down to see them.)

Iskcon Temple and Bangalore Palace

After being in Mumbai for a few days we flew to Bangalore. This is where I spent the rest of my vacation (Mukesh only came for two days and then had to get back for a cousin's wedding.) One day Sanjay, his roommate's brother and I went around Bangalore to check out a few things. We went to the Iskcon Temple. It's big and very pretty. You can't take pictures inside, so the next two pictures are all that I have from the trip there.

Bangalore is called as the Garden City, so we had to go visit at least one "garden" area. Here are a few pictures from our visit...

Then we also went to visit the Bangalore Palace. It was super pretty, but they wouldn't let you take pictures of it from the front. And then they said that you would have to pay to take pictures inside on your tour. Well, our tour guide was like, oh here let me take your picture....then at the end he tried to hit up the guys for money for that. They didn't go for it, but at least I did get a few pictures.

Mumbai -- July 17-21, 2010

So, we are finally in Mumbai...YAY!!! Mukesh stayed with his family and I stayed at the Hotel Sampoorna. (Sorry for the blurry picture, I didn't take one and this was all I could find online.) I enjoyed my stay at the hotel, it also had a nice restaurant below. Here is something different about hotels in India, they have a spot in the wall that you put part of your key in and you keep it there so the room will have power. Since I was staying there by myself the first day I was there I didn't go down to the restaurant for breakfast because I was being shy or something. Totally understandable....new country, new city, new people, etc...I needed a little time to get a feel for everything. The last two mornings I was at the hotel I went down to the restaurant for breakfast by myself and it was kind of fun. Oh, I even went there for lunch one day too. When I walked in a few people looked at me but that too is understandable a fair skinned girl alone...probably not something they see too often.

While in Mumbai I went to three different malls, saw Inception and experienced a lot of Mumbai traffic. :) Oh, I can't forgot that I experienced Mukesh's driving in Mumbai. I have to say in Mumbai he's a very good driver. ;) These are pictures that I took one night driving back to the hotel after we went to another part of Mumbai to visit a friend. Random shoots along the streets of Mumbai.

This is the view from my hotel window. I was there in the rainy season, thank goodness for me it only rained a little in the mornings when I was in Mumbai. But it was cloudy a lot and HUMID...WOW!!!

For our day of sight seeing in Mumbai we went to Marine Drive, because I had to see the ocean while I was in Mumbai and it's a touristy place. :) It was just Haren and I going around and exploring because we couldn't find a place to park so Mukesh just drove around waiting for us. How nice of him, right? It is also called The Queen's Necklace because if you see it from up higher at night the street lights look like a string of pearls forming a necklace.

Haren and I decided to take a ride in one the horse drawn kind carriage, I guess you would call it. You can see a few of them in one of pictures below.

These are the pictures I took on our carriage ride. So green and so pretty.

This is the Gateway of India (you can see some of the horse carriages just standing around waiting for people to go for a ride.) Even though it was getting dark it was still pretty to see.

This is the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, it's right across from The Gateway Of India.

Another picture of the hotel...this must be the tower part. ;)

The Gateway of India again. :)

Mukesh and I at The Gateway of India...I did get a few pictures of Mukesh during the few days that we were together.

The Taj Mahal Palace again (you know me...I have a terrible time deciding on what pictures to post, so I kind of post a lot.)

I'm so sad this picture came out blurry. As we were looking at the Gateway of India, this guy comes over to Mukesh and asks him if I would take a picture with them. So, I was like...sure, why not? What's it going to hurt to stand there and smile? But it was just his son that he wanted in the picture with me. So, I stand there smiling and the guy like tries to stand as far away from me as possible and is like SO embarrassed. I thought it was fun, just too bad the picture that they took of it for me turned out blurry. :(

Typical Mukesh and Haren...they are tons of fun to hang out with.

Mukesh and I in the cab on the way to the airport to go to Bangalore. I heard that it started raining when I left and then continued to rain for like the next 10 days. I'm SO glad the weather was nice to me while I was there.

Stuck in Mumbai traffic on the way to the airport. The driver came prepared and had some entertainment to help pass the time. (Oh yeah, and notice the driver is on the wrong side of the car.) It's so bad that most people turn off their cars and just sit and wait. I took the opportunity to take pictures. :)

The auto's in the rain. They are trying to keep their passengers dry and it does help but you still get wet. That's kind of the fun thing about being out in the rain, right?

This one I took just to show how close they get to each other while driving. This time I didn't close my eyes nearly as much as I did the first time. I wanted to enjoy the rides this time. :)

Random shot of people in the rain in Mumbai. I tried to doucment more things this trip. :)

July 16, 2010 -- The flights to Mumbai....

So, there is no way to get around it...to get to India it will take you about 24 hours. The big question is what is the way you will go, which airlines will you be flying on and how many flights do you have to take? The journey began...where else but in Utah County (hehe) and then of course eventually at the Salt Lake City International Airport. You would think that a 7:40am flight would leave on time, right??? WRONG! Amazing how it took FOREVER to get the plane from the hanger to the gate. That started the trip off late, thus the rest of the flights were late as well. Which I guess is a good thing because the layovers were kind of close at times. The bright side of the long trip was that I was flying with my friend, Mukesh. It totally helped having company on the long journey.

From Salt Lake we went on a small United two seater airplane (yuck) to Chicago O'Hare. My first time at that airport and it wasn't bad. I did get to see a lot as I walked from one terminal all the way to the like the farthest terminal. Who says you don't get exercise while you are traveling. ;-)

From Chicago we went onto Newark (on another United flight :P) to say Goodbye to the USA for a couple of weeks. Once again we flew into one part of the airport and of course the International terminal was at the other end, they had a bus thank goodness.

From Newark we had and 8 hour flight to Zurich on Continental. It was a LONG flight and the staff, not that friendly. I just have to say, I knew this before but this trip totally confirmed it. If you are flying International get on a non-US based airline ASAP, they are just nicer. (I'm sorry if some of you LOVE US based airlines but I got spoiled last year when I flew on Emirates they are SO nice, the cream of the crop for sure. Thus changing the way I see airlines forever.) From here we were on Swiss Air, oh how I enjoyed it. :-) Here is the interesting thing of the trip...besides every flight being late, every place we went got a little more humid (living in the desert I can feel the tiniest bit of humidity in the air) and then we reached...

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. And all I have to say is WOW, welcome to the HUMIDITY!! It's intense, I guess it didn't help that we got there after a rainstorm. ;) So, four flights later (they had to print up two luggage tags for each of our bags to cover the flights...crazy) and over 24 hours later we were in Mumbai! Woo Hoo!!!

Namaste INDIA!!! Let the vacation begin!!!! :-)

Birthday and Kentucky!

This year I decided to take a trip for my birthday to Kentucky to visit Candice and her family. Since I left on my birthday, the day before I came into the office and found my cube all decorated...SO cute!!

Since they are stationed at Fort Knox, we decided to go check out their tank museum. It was interesting to see how they have changed over the years. We put Abigail next to some of the tanks for some something to measure the height with.

I brought Abigail some of the cute Tutu's from Jen's company. One morning she was playing around with them...I couldn't resist documenting it. I think she liked them, what do you think?

When Candice and I are together we like to experiment with new things in the kitchen. We made a super yummy veggie and garlic pizza with dough from Pampered Chef (the dough is awesome!) Then we made a Quiche, it was our first time, we just made up our own recipe and it was really good. And then made some Peanut Butter Cupcakes with
Chocolate Frosting and Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting for Justin to take to work...can you say AMAZING!!!

It was Derby Festival time while I was out there. The night before the Hot Air Balloon Race, they had a Balloon Glow. We decided to go and check it out. We got there early so to pass the time we took some pictures. They even have a Derby Queen and her court. I have to say that it was kind of nice to "real" people being "royalty" for a change. I'm sure the girls have to have riding skills and such to be able to be in the Derby Court.

Then here are some pictures from the evening. There was at least 20 different balloons on the field and it was way cool to see them all light up at the same time.

Here is Owen chilling in his car seat on the way to the airport. Such a cutie!! He was born in December two weeks before Ryan and Alisa's Owen was born. So, easy for me to remember the name. :)

This was my first trip to Kentucky and I have to say, I really liked it. I will be back to visit! :) It was SO green which was such a nice change after winter in Utah. Oh and the drivers are SO polite it's almost annoying, the will almost stop traffic to let someone in in front of them. Not aggressive in the least. Here is one "Kentucky" type story. We were driving in Louisville and Justin says that he thinks this lady in a two door sedan has a baby seat in the front seat. So, we of course need to check it out. When we catch up to her we find that not only does she have an infant carrier in the front seat, she is also smoking in the car with the windows up! Oh, that poor baby!!