The latest additions to the Ahmed family

Due 22nd January - Ultrasound at 10 weeks - big smiles all around - our 2 little munchkins are officially fetus :)

Shammy graduates

We pulled ourselves together for some graduation celebrations with Friday being the formal ceremony and Saturday the fun dinning and award ceremony. Congrats should go to my hubby, he is obviously well liked by all his colleagues and received the award from the other residents for the best cardiology resident. The night was fun even if the DJ let us down on the dance floor. One step down, yeah Shammy!!

Grand Canyon/Vegas

What an experience, its hard to describe the view when you first look over the edge into the canyon. It is truly overwhelming and almost meditative at the same time if that makes sense.
We managed to catch sunset and sunrise at the canyon, although Muneer, Shammy and I left Pallavi and Raj at the motel for our 2:30am start, perhaps a little too early for them.
We were hoping to do more hiking, but the heat wave during the day (43 degrees celsius) prevented this and we were warned not to climb down into the canyon unless it was very early or late in the day as the temperature increases as you descend. We did manage to hike along the rim on Day 1 and do a nice hike before sunset however and also got in a cool forest Mountain hike close to where we were staying in Williams.

It was a fun group of people and I don't think Muneer has felt so sore and exhausted from hiking in a long, long time as his daily activity usually involves walking to the car and around the hospital.

We also went on a gorgeous drive through the Sedona area where the rock land formations were incredible. Shammy commented that the boys would love to ride through that area.
We were a pretty sore and exhausted crew by the time we arrived back in Las Vegas but we managed to pull ourselves together after a quick nap in the afternoon to check out the sites of Vegas. I was not overly excited about this part of the trip but it turned out to be great fun and even though it is a completely fake set up the design and layout have been done to perfection. There are the beautiful fountains of Bellagio, the Venetian with its complete mini Venice set up, Caesar's Palace and the list goes on, very luxurious buildings. We were also happy to try out some different cuisine as everyone was full to the brim on American style dining, no more burgers and fries for a while!
On the day before we left we lined up for 2 and a half hours for the cirque de soleil show "O", we managed to get in on a cancellation and got the best seats in the house, even though costly it was worth it and after waiting so long we were not going to give this opportunity up. It is labelled as one of the best shows in Vegas. It was absolutely incredible, the stagging, costuming, acrobatics, the athletic performances and it all was based around water, so the stage would drop and lift filling with water as required. James and Sarah its a must see when you are in Vegas.

We stayed in the stratosphere accommodation which has the tallest tower in Vegas at 1149 ft where people bungie jump and do all sorts of insane rides off the top. We forgoed this but did watch them from the viewing tower with clammy hands and then proceeded to have lunch in the revolving restaurant on top instead.
The one major hiccup to our trip was missing our check-in time at the Vegas airport. We arrived 40mins before departure with just carry on luggage to be told that check in closed 45 mins prior to departure, so this then meant a 10 hour wait and a $140 fee per ticket ( which at this stage sounded better than $700 which delta airlines was offering us). We left at midnight and arrived in to Allentown at 10am the next morning looking worse for wear after no sleep and a change in time zones. We are still recovering but it was well and truly worth it :)