21.5 hours in the car + 3 people +1 goldfish = a long 2 days

We made it! My mom and Dean made it to town Saturday, Dec 18th. Right after I got home from my last day at the aquarium, they met me at the apartment and off to Mississippi we went! We headed over there to give the girls and Laura their gifts. This wouldn't be so important if I had never seen the girls open their christmas gifts. Mailing christmas gifts just isn't the same. Pait and Kay loved their gifts, so it was completely worth rushing over there :) Well after that, we drove back and packed the car before heading back to the hotel where we repacked the car haha. So happy that part of it is done! The next morning, after packing up Sharky in a bag pumped full of Oxygen and a cooler, I had to say goodbye to everyone at the aquarium. We all stalled... I can't wait to go back and visit :) Then we headed to the Coffee Pot Restaurant in the Quarter. Dean had a crawfish, shrimp, catfish omlette (yuck!) And off we went, "like a herd of turtles in a windstorm" (as Dean says). It took us a total of 21 1/2 hours to get home with a stop for supper and COUNTLESS stops for gas and to use the restroom. We finally made it home at 7:30am Monday morning. My mom and I stayed up and ran to the store to get necessities for Sharky's new tank. He now has an all-equiped aquarium with beautiful, fake plants haha I was so happy he made it in the first place! so after getting the things, we had to set it all up. So pretty much, my mom and I didn't nap until after 1 in the afternoon. Last night, we all went out for my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday, Dad! Love you! Today, Dean and I finished our Christmas shopping, and he was off to Michigan tonight. I fly out there on the 28th. Should be good! I have to meet the whole family though... nervous about that! haha well as for me the next days include unpacking and applying for jobs! I may miss NOLA but getting to hold my nephew last night made it all worth it :) I am so happy to be with my family and near my friends for the holidays!

My last NOLA weekend

"I haven't a clue how my story will end, but that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, that's when you discover the stars."
~Nancy Willard~

This weekend was a great weekend. Yesterday, Mary and I went to the Audubon Zoo! It had been 5 years since I had been there last. As they say here, that was "before Katrina." They only have 2 forms of time, "Before Katrina" and "After Katrina." The zoo was beautiful and empty, because it was chilly out. Afterwards, we went and had the best burger in NOLA at the Harbor restaurant. Even got a chai tea down here, no worries wasn't as good as Babb's in Fargo.
Today, I stayed home since I had an interview. And I have another one on Wednesday! It's too bad that they are across the country from one another. I wish I had an inkling of how things will turn out. If I don't get either of those, I will keep applying while working.
The motto above comes to mind each time I get ready to move. And now that it gets closer, I keep reminding myself that with each move the more I gain.
As much as I hate leaving, I am looking forward to seeing my family. I had to start packing today.........
Well better get back to applying!

Are we sure it's December? Only one week left?!

Hello All!
Can't believe for the life of me that it's already December eleventh! Where has the time gone? As of 3pm today, I have been on my last weekend here. No worries I am making the most of it and headed to the Audubon Zoo tomorrow! And Monday hopefully I will make it to insectarium. Well since I last wrote, not too much has happened lol I have been really focusing on job apps like I have been the whole time here. I have a couple of nibbles, so let us hope and pray. I have changed my resume and cover letter so many times something HAS to work! But anyways... Work here is going very well! I have gotten to touch Emma and Buck's paws! I will surely miss them terribly. Emma's birthday is this tuesday on December, 14! She will be 13! no worries, in captivity, sea otters grow to be in their 20's. Well for her birthday celebration, I made two awesome ice cakes for her :) I put one together that was a "Castle by the Sea" theme. I had a castle with towers topped with flower ice cubes with crab claws coming out of them. This castle sat on a sunflower to look like cliffs and the sea was orange with fish ice cubes and normal ice cubes for coral reefs :D I'm really proud of it! Each item (except the small ice cubes) had clam feet or crab claws frozen in them and dyed different colors using food coloring. My second cake was a purple car driving on grass along a river. It had a flower for luggage and rubber ducky ice cubes on the river and under the bridge. The cake was also decorated with palm trees, shirts, flip flops, and sun ice cubes. I'm proud of this one too! It's to symbolize Emma and her travels with Buck to Monterey Bay Aq during Hurricane Katrina. Each cake has two main layers before the decorations I just described. Today she got the castle cake for her first day of celebration. It took her about 2 seconds to pull the castle cake into the water. She will get the car cake tomorrow. There's video of me explaining each cake that was posted on my facebook wall that I videotaped for the aquarium. Can't believe only 5 more work days here. Everyone has been so amazingly nice and appreciative. I am going to miss everyone so much!! Not to mention Buck and Emma!!! I get attached so easily; it just gets harder and harder to leave places. I calculated it and this is my 4th or 5th place I have lived this year. I am looking forward to going home since I miss my family dearly. I have seen them on webcam, but I bet Vinnie is so big by now! I am excited. And I'm sure after Christmas sadness will set in. Hope they don't forget me :/
As far as everything else...Thursday night was more than interesting! It was 80's night at One-Eyed Jacks :D they even had dancers on the stage dancing very seriously haha They were all decked out in 80's gear and each had about 4 moves total haha Sarah and Dee were on a mission to make Friday hard for me if you get what I am sayin. They succeeded. It was rough, but I did it. I hungout with Sarah last night, and we saw Social Network at a small, cute theatre on Prytania. It was a ton of fun! So enjoying my last bit here :) Hope you are enjoying winter so far!
V

17 days to go?!

17 days to go already. Hard to believe that it's already December! I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss home. With it now being Christmas season and all, I'm looking forward to spending the holidays with my family. Thanksgiving was amazing. If I haven't made it clear yet, I LOVE spending time with my nieces and sister. I can't get enough of it. I wish MN wasn't 20 hours away... Dean came to visit as I had mentioned earlier. So when we went for Thanksgiving, we went the day before and took the girls to Tangled, lunch, the beach and the park :D It was a blast! Paityn (4) asked me the next day if I had had fun. I told her it was the most perfect day :) Thanksgiving was good. Spent it at my sister-in-law's extended family's celebration. It was so nice of them to allow us to eat with them! After we ate, we watched the Saints almost lose (darn! ha). Black Friday... oofta.... my sister dragged me to go shopping at 3 in the AM! The line was so incredibly long for Target!!! We went to Target, Wal-mart, and then the mall. 8 hours of shopping was enough for me haha On the way back to NOLA that day, Dean and I stopped and went to the NASA space center. We toured and got to see rockets and spacesuits. They had fun gizmos to play with. One in particular were the "glove boxes," where you put your hands in these gloves that are attached to the box. While your hands are in the box, you have to build legos and imagine what the astronauts have to do so that things don't float away.
The rest of Dean's visit was very good. He was here for 8 days. We went down to the French Quarter for an entire day, where we took a horse-drawn carriage and got a famous hurricane drink. I made sure he got beignets of course. We went on a riverboat ride also to the battlefield. it was a little chilly that day but the boat was a lot of fun! We also saw Harry P. with a lot of ppl from the aquarium here. We cooked together and went shopping a little bit. We even got daiquiris from a drive thru daiquiri place! We got a 44 ounce daiquiri that was a mixture of 190, hurricane and sex on the beach along with 3 jello shots! They get away with that since they didn't place the straw into the cup haha It's one of those things you gotta do once haha A lot of our time was spent just hanging out. We have never had 8 days in a row to hangout, so it was different. It was nice though.
The Aquarium is still great. I got the last behaviors to do with Emma, so that's great! Buck is still handsome lol And Sharky is learning to play football! hahaha I feel foolish teaching a fish to play football, but why not? ;) Muffy stepped up on my hand 2x in a row on command!! We are making headway except for her nipping at me yesterday haha
Well til next time :)