Meet Chipper!!

Hangin' with the Ladies!!!!

Silly Doug, if you eat Chipper, you'll be STUFFED! OMG, I'm Frickin' Hilarious!!!!

Kitty says Chipper would be way more fun if he moved more...he's so lazy!

December 29th at the 11th Frame

April and her sister Alicia

April and Blake dancin'

Aaww..how cute! Doug and Karissa picking out songs on the jukebox


Derek and Doug also picking out songs on the jukebox...not so lovingly though!

April and Kevin

Running Ragged

I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post! The whole holiday season really kept me running. I'll give you the outlined version of what's been going on:

December 22nd:
We drove to GF and April took our family pictures with us and Derek's sister Ali and their cousin Ashley. We are giving this picture to Derek's grandma for Christmas. April was having a hard time to get her flashes to work correctly, so I know that she isn't happy with how they turned out, but I'm sure they'll be just fine. I'll let her post some or wait til she's done with them so she can pic the best one.

December 23rd: Aiden's 1st birthday
We stayed in GF on the 22nd after the picture taking and helped April & Kevin get ready for his party. And I made the coolest birthday cake yet! April wanted to have a duckie cake and I was thinking of just doing a simple cut out cake, but then with a little help from Derek, I decided to make a "bathtub" with little rubber duckies floating in "water" and even have some "bubbles" for a good effect. Kevin helped come up with the idea of using a bendy straw to make the faucet. I think it's adorable.




December 24th & 25th: Christmas time with the families
On Christmas eve we had dinner with Derek's Mom, Dale, Ali, Ashley, and Grandma. Then we opened up presents. I got some new lime green pots and pans and a new digital camera. Derek got money for garage doors :-( I told him that I'd share my gifts with him! Because we were busy sticking all our money into the garage, we decided not to exchange gifts this year. So it wasn't all that fun this year. After we were done there, we went over to my sister's (Wendy) house and opened gifts with her, her boyfriend Ryan, our brother Brian, and my nephew Farnum. Obviously, Farnum had the most fun. On Christmas day, we had dinner at Derek's cousins house and didn't do much else.

December 28th & 29th:
April, Kevin, Doug, Karissa, & Blake came to town. We were hanging out with April & Kevin in the afternoon on Sat. and they needed to go to Kevin's parent's antique store. We went with because we had nothing else to do and I had never been in there before. And what do ya know? We found a treasure to bring home! His name is Chipper, but also comes to Rowdy or Hey You! Chipper is a stuffed squirrel. I don't know who thought it'd be a good idea to stuff a squirrel AND try to sell it, and I don't think I want to know how they got the squirrel to stuff it either! Anyway, he's absolutely hilarious and he says the darnedest things...Like..."Hey, who's got my nuts!" Okay, I'll stop there. See pics posted.
We went to the 11th Frame on the night of 29th and then hung out at our place afterwards. The usual.

December 31st: New Years Eve
Derek and I haven't really celebrated New Years since we've been together...at least the celebrating that involves alcoholic drinks. So we both had the 1st off and April invited us to come to GF and celebrate at their house. Amber, Ben, and Bailey came over. We all at BBQ's, meat and cheese, little smokies, crackers, fudge, and April's yummy taco dip....yum, it's delicious! We played Rock Band til close to midnight and then watched the ball drop and bring in the new year. Then because we are all so old, by 12:30am we were kinda sleepy. I know I was laying on the floor and trying not to fall asleep. Nice, right?! Oh well, whatdaya gonna do?!

January 2008!!!!
Not much going on. The days just seem to keep passing by so quickly. I've been busy at work. January starts the time of the fishermen and hockey teams. So we've been reinforcing our rules and I've been retraining my clerks to not be retarded!
January 11th was the anniversary of my dad dying in 2005. I can't believe it's been 3 years already. His birthday would have been on the 12th. He died the day before he turned 51. So that kinda sucks. I haven't been to his grave yet cuz it's been so cold, but when I go I'm gonna bring him a birthday balloon. I don't know why, but it make me smile and that's all that matters.

January 13th-18th: Playing Mom!
Derek's mom and Dale are going to Mexico and we are going to be watching over Ali. Jana, a family friend, will be staying with her at her house, but she doesn't drive so we'll have to help out. I will take Ali to school and Jana to work before going to work myself. Derek will pick Ali up from school and take her home. After work, I will pick Jana up and go to their house and make supper for them. I made supper on the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 18th. The 18th was Dale's birthday and they were coming home so I made roast beef sammiches, coleslaw, baked beans, and angel food cake with powdered sugar frosting and a strawberry/rhubarb sauce (optional with cake and ice cream). On the 18th, Farnum stayed over night at Ali's and on Sat. I took them swimming at the hotel. I think they swam for almost 3 hours. At around 6pm I resigned my Mom duties and took the rest of the weekend off!!

So that's the last month for me...next time I'll try to post more frequently so it's not so much to read at once! ;-)

I'll see ya when I see ya!!

So I Finally Did IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy Crap!!! After months of saying I was gonna do it, I cracked and made the phone call this morning! After all, today was the day of Donna Wolf's breast cancer benifit to raise money for her AND today was also the day that Derek's Aunt Joni went thru a 9 hour surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her jaw.

Some back ground info (and to procrastinate the point of this post): Joni was going to need part of her jaw bone removed because of cancer that had settled under her molars. They were also removing the small bone from her leg to replace her missing jaw bone, and skin from her thigh was going to be removed to repair her leg and inside of her mouth. She will have a trach (for breathing) and a feeding tube for 3 weeks, and have to stay in the hospital for at least a week. But she came out of surgery ok, she probably have to do chemo and/or radiation. For now she will be recovering with all of us thinking of her. Donna had breast cancer a few months ago and they were able to remove the lump without taking everything. But is was pretty close to entering her lymph nodes so she had to do chemo and has to do radiation after the first of the year. The chemo made her hair fall out......

Which leads me to.....Yep, you guessed it....I cut my hair!!!

Almost 3 years ago, January 2005, I donated 17 inches to the Locks of Love Foundation and I still had hair down past my shoulders. Derek's little sister, Ali, also donated 10 inches on the same day.

So today, I figured that I should beat that and donate 20 inches!! Now my hair is super short. I told the stylist to cut it so it would still be about 2 inches below my shoulders, but she got a little trimming happy and it actually sits ON my shoulders. And for those of you that remember, probably only April, I haven't had my hair this short since, like, 7th grade, seriously. It's so weird!! Derek doesn't like it at all, it's too short for his liking. I wish it was a bit longer too, but I can't glue it back on?! Well....no nevermind! Anyway, cuz I'm sure you all are dying to see or you scrolled down already and are reading this after seeing the pictures (shame on you), here they are:

BEFORE:


BEFORE:


FIRST CUT:


AFTER:


AFTER:

All I want for christmas...

Is to have the whole store all to my self...No stupid clerks asking if they can help you with anything...No retarded shoppers to get in your way or take up over half the isle and know that someone is waiting behind them to get by but the still won't get the fuck out of the way!!!! My GOD, What chaos! I, a.k.a. WE, got our most of our shopping done this weekend. We drove to Grand Forks on Saturday and shopped for a couple of hours and only went to two bookstores. Then we went and watched Aiden while April and Kevin went to Kevin's work christmas party. I can't get over how big he's getting...Aiden, not Kevin! Silly readers, don't be goofy. Aiden has four teeth now and is just the cutest thing ever! April asked me to make his birthday cake and I've already got a few cool ideas. I figure it's the least I can do since she's gonna take some family pics of us and Derek's little sister and their cousin. We're gonna do that on Saturday, then I'm gonna do Aiden's cake for his party on Sunday. So, Doug and Karissa, we'll be in forks hopefully early Saturday, I'll call ya and see if you want to do anything.
Oh yeah, so I'm not the greatest critic, definitely no Doug, but I said my next post would have comments on the movies we saw; here ya go:
Beowolf 3-D: I'd never been to a 3-D movie before so it was pretty good, very cool graphics, it really did feel as thou things were jumping off the screen, the characters were awesomely drawn (or computerly animated, whatever), sometimes they looked so real and other times they'd look so cartoony, I'm not quite sure how well I would have enjoyed it if it wasn't in 3-D since a lot of the frames were made to be cool for 3-D but not lame old 2-D!
The Golden Compass: I actually enjoyed this one a bit more than I thought I would. It was pretty good. Nicole Kidman did pretty good as the "bad guy." I've never really like any of her movies, so this part suited her in my opinion. I loved the idea of having you soul be a companion that walks through life with you as a counterpart. And being based off of another trilogy of books, they left you hanging for some closure, so now you're stuck seeing the next two.
That's All Folks!!!

What's new with me?

Absolutely nothing...nothing exciting anyway.
I'm sick again. This is like the 4th time this season already, which is definitely out of the ordinary for me. Normally I only get sick 2 or 3 times every winter. My immune system must be really out of wack this year.
I haven't done any of my christmas shopping yet. Mostly because all our extra money seems to be going to the garage lately. Hopefully I'll be able to get it done this weekend or next weekend. I'll have to make a trip to Grand Forks or Fargo because shopping here sucks balls!!! I hate it.
Garage Update: STILL NO ELECTRICITY!!! That's all I will say about that. Derek is driving me nuts because he is so board but has no where to go to tinker with things. It better be done by next weekend. Stupid electricians! Grrr!
Work is the same old work. We've really slowed down now. We're at our 10-15 rooms a night during the week and if we have and hockey or wedding groups then our weekends are at 20-30 rooms a night. Sundays, if we're lucky, we'll have 3-4 rooms. Very quiet times. On the upside of that, I am able to get a little bit more done. This week I put up all the christmas decorations. And I am training Lisa, my boss/owner, on doing manager stuff so she'll be ready when I decide to leave.
Yes, we do still plan on moving. But it's probably going to be next fall instead of the spring. My bosses offered me a really good deal to stay at least thru the summer. It's going to be a very hard decision to make. I make really good money here and I know that I would continue to make more good money with them. But, I wanna have babies!!! And I don't really want to do that here. Reasons: 1-Doctoring in forks would be much more comforting than here, 2-We would already have daycare for our baby with Karissa, and 3-I'm not to keen on having a baby in a hotel room! It would seem a little trashy. Plus, I really want a house of my own. I really, really, really, really want a house of my own. I have been waiting for, like 5 years to have a house. And I'm tired of waiting. But it wouldn't make much sense to move away form a really good paying job without having a pretty good job lined up. So that's the next step, I suppose.
We'll that's enough for now. My next post I'll tell you about Beowolf in 3D and The Golden Compass.

What we did this weekend...

I worked on Friday til 3pm and had a very frustrating week with my desk clerks. My boss and I had a unannounced meeting with our night auditors, because they seem to think that we are paying them to watch movies and play on their laptops and only do about 50% of the work that we ask them to do. Our full timer, I think is just retarded...he doesn't do even the simplest of tasks; like taking out the garbage in my office, making a new bucket of wash water of the breakfast room-cuz I love to wipe down tables with 3 day old cold water, and stocking breakfast supplies...OMG I could go on forever, but I'll spare you all. Then one of our evening clerks isn't very happy with us either. She complains because she doesn't get enough hours, but then you offer them to her, she says yes, and then the day she's suppose to work she call 3 hours before her shift and assumes that myself or my boss will work it for her because she wants to go to Fargo....uh, NO...I DON"T THINK SO!!! I finally said that we are not working for her, so either show up at 3pm or don't work here anymore. She said "Well, you guys make it seem like it's such a big deal!?" I said "Ah, Yeah! It is a big deal! Your scheduled to work, so show up and work!!! It's as simple as that!" She was all pissy and I didn't think she'd show up. But she did and she didn't even say anything about our conversation! I hightailed it out of there like 5 minutes after she showed up.----Sorry for the rant!
So Friday after work, I took a nap, then Derek and I stayed up late watching TV and went to bed again later. Saturday was filled with housecleaning. I spent 3 hours doing laundry, but I cheated because I did it all at the hotel and got to use the big huge washing machines and dryers.
Then it got exciting when Doug and Karissa came over on Saturday night and hung out with us. We hung out at our place for a little while and then ended up going to the 11th Frame. Karissa was fairly tuned before we even left so she made it lively. Her and Doug are so funny when they're "arguing." It's just hilarious...Sorry guys...the drinks I had may have made it more funny than it really was, but who cares. We left there around midnight and I made Cheeseburger Macaroni Hamburger Helper when we got home. It was a pretty good night.
Sunday was pretty boring. I got called in to work at noon because our battery backup was flipping out and constantly beeping. I found out it was because the breaker for all the front desk outlets got flipped off and then on again. So I got that fixed and then Derek and I moved his pickup from the hotel to our garage. I know exciting, right? Now I'm kinda being distracted by Family Guy. So I'll check ya all later...Peace Out!