2011?!

Hey Guys!
It's been a month since I have blogged. What a busy month it has been?! After blogging the last time, I had down time with my family and celebrated Christmas with them. On Christmas Eve, Jesse had Amelia, so we celebrated with him and his family that day. What a day! It was so awesome to see him celebrate with his own family. Amelia is always so loving and excited about life. She LOVED everything she got, especially my gifts (of course :]). Joey liked his too. I got him the Risk game, so him and jesse can play together to bond. And Vinnie was tuckered out with all of his gifts! He got a lot of fun ones! He keeps the teether ring I got him with him all the time. On Christmas day, my parents and I hungout and had our christmas. It was a success I'd say. My big present of the year was an ihome for an ipod. We had to have Christmas dinner a couple days afterwards since my dad had to work x-mas evening. I was very proud of this dinner because I learned to make the tomato roast for the first time. It was delicious, and my mom made the fixings to go with it. mmmmm mmmm good! On the 28th, I flew to Detroit, Michigan to see Dean and his family. My time there went well. I met his mom's entire side of the family. They reminded me some of my dad's side. We had a game night with them all, and that went well. The next day, his mom, sister and aunt took me shopping. They are quite the shoppers! I had fun though. This was also the first time meeting Tressa, Dean's sister. She and I will hopefully get to know each other better. Dean, his family, and I celebrated Christmas also. Dean got me a new ipod nano! It matches the ihome my mom and dad got me! They're both pink! His parents got me a dolphin PillowPet (like what I got Mia hahahaha), a Columbia fleece and an led dolphin keychain. His sister got me pj's. He and I went in on gifts for each other's family, so they had gotten their gifts. I was lame and gave Dean pajama pants, the movie and 2 cds he wanted. Other than those occurances, Dean took me hunting twice (in the same day!) where we froze. We also went ice fishing at night with his friend, Tyler. It was a lot of fun besides things moving in the woods and no luck catching hardly any fish. Gerald, Dean's dad, ended up in the hospital for the last little bit of the day. He wasn't happy about having to be in there. He had gained 15 pounds of fluid in his legs. This was contributed to congestive heart failure plus the start of bronchitis. The poor man had to be there for about 5 days. He got home in time to spend a day with us before Dean and I left for my house. It takes about 8 hours from Dean's to make it here. Dean spent about 3 nights and then took off for F-town. I had two days to make his anniversary gift. I decided for our 1 year anniversary I would make him a small scrapbook. In only a year, we had been to Michigan numerous times, New Orleans, Mississippi, Omaha, the cities and my house a few times. AFter having unfortunate luck (the photo machines closed for the night), I had to wait until Wednesday to make it. I was up until 3:15 am on Thursday morning finishing it. It turned out very cute :) He loved it! I gave it to him once I got to Fargo on the 13th. He gave me flowers, an NDSU monkey, wine and a cute card. We then went out to supper and watched a movie together. It was really low-key. Fargo was enjoyable. I got to see almost everyone I was shooting to see. I even made it to Minot and a very quick stop in Bismarck. I had interviewed with Minot and was invited out to see the zoo. I was very, very impressed! Fingers are crossed! Dean and I got to have lunch with Amy in Bismarck before heading back to Fargo. Once I got back, I met with Connie at the daycare again. Funny how things change so fast for me sometimes... Looks like I will be the temp worker at the daycare until May or until I get a job! Samantha is prego, so I will be replacing her! I am excited to have a job even if it is temporary. This means Dean and I can see how things go living in the same city. I will also get a chance to be in the same city as most of my friends!
Since I am moving back, I get just short of a week to be home. Yesterday I spent with Vincent and giving him lovin'. I love that little boy! Hard to think I will have to be away from him, but at least if I am in Fargo I will be home often. I will miss my whole family. We are very close, but this will be good for me. I think.
Besides all of that, things carry on. I am working on getting applications out and doing follow-ups. Don't really know what will happen. My life is sort of a big, huge question mark. It's a little exciting, a little worrying, and a whole lot of not knowing. I don't know how long I will be in Fargo. I don't know where I will get a zoo job or when. So I will keep trying and keep working towards my goal while enjoying the present!
well until next time.....
p.s. I am about 20 days late in this but... HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 2011!!!

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 :)

It's Thanksgiving time!

Hola! Bonjour!
I've been busy since I last blogged. So here we go ;).... the weekend of the 12th was so much fun! I was invited to the wedding reception of a girl who works at the aquarium. She is so nice! I feel really special to be the only intern invited :) She had gotten married in MS a few weeks before. Afterwards, we had a great afterparty!! woot woot! I got to see what the dance clubs here are like. They're smaller but are a blast! The next day, I got to try-out for the Wheel of Fortune (twice) and went to the Po-boy Festival. This festival is all about the sandwiches they have here called Po-boys. Po-boys were originally invented in the French Quarter and sold to the cab drivers (poor boys... hence Po-boys). They are huge sandwiches that these days sell for $4-9 but back in the day sold for 5 cents. They are delicious. Most po-boys are seafood but some are roast beef or pigs cheek etc. I went with Mary, the jellyfish intern, and we tried the garlic-stuffed roast beef, soft-shell crab (yuck!) and pigs cheek. The roast beef was delicious. And we ended it with a made-to-order crepe with strawberries and nutella mmm mmm mmm... This past week was great! Thursday was above all other thursdays as being the best day here EVER. Not only did I get to tour the ACRES (research facility by the Audubon Soc.) AND get to take an ALL DAY BOAT RIDE TO RELEASE TURTLES(!!!!!!)AND I got to meet the Stranding Coordinator BUT I SAW WILD DOLPHINS!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was truly a dream come true!!!! Other than that a normal week last week, getting resumes sent out. no word yet. Dean came on Saturday evening. His plane was held up an hour on the runway in Minneapolis, but he finally got here :)We went to the new Harry Potter, which was AMAZING! then Sunday we took it easy. He took me out for breakfast, and then we got groceries. Monday, I took him and we toured the entire French Quarter and showed him the aquarium. He even got to watch me train Buck :) I gave him a tour of the aquarium even though it was closed. Priviledges of working for free hahahahaha I will miss most everyone here.... It's a good and bad feeling. Sad to leave, but I'll be happy to see snow again as weird as it sounds! I think he enjoyed the Quarter. There's so much to see! We got to even take a carriage ride <3 We had a fun tour guide, and the mule's name was Cadillac. Not gonna lie, when she asked if anyone wanted to feed the mule a treat, I was the first to jump at it ;D hehe We even got some shopping done! Tomorrow, he and I head to MS for Thanksgiving! We are gonna take the girls out to the new Tangled movie and then celebrate T-giving with my sis and her fam. And Friday is well... Black. Friday. Shopping oh. boy. We will be in Target at 4 am. wow. I'll let ya know how THAT goes! haha well 'til next time...

Utterly Otters

Hard to believe it's already November eleventh! Today was a pretty good day, best day yet this week. I'm working on "toy" with Buck and Emma. So far so good. Can't wait for next week when I get to put "basket" with "toy" and they put the toy in the basket! I'm excited :) Buck and Emma make me smile. Emma is sweetheart. She holds her paws up to her mouth almost as if she was "nervous." Buck is so spunky it's admirable. Hard to think they have the bite of a black bear. Today I helped the asst. curator again, and I love helping her since she has a whole new perspective. Still training Muffy, the cockatoo. Today she bit me to see my reaction. it was more of a placing of her beak on my finger and looking at me. She sort of had the "What are ya gonna do?" look haha. So I walked away, but yesterday she stepped up onto my hand! So slow but sure :) Sharky, the goldfish is doing swimmingly :) he's onto the large tunnel since he is fully trained on the hoop and sm. tunnel. It's kind of funny how when I sit in my chair (next to the tank) he's at the corner of the tank staring at me. haha I'd love to take him home. Well I suppose that's all for today. I won in cribbage against Paul. Dean comes to New Orleans in 9 days! Can't wait to spend Thanksgiving with my nieces in the South :D Miss you all! scheduled 10:15:00 PM by veckhoff Delete