Tracy's Story...

Check out this article on my beautiful friend Tracy. Just as a recap: I used to be married to Trevor Wegner. Tracy was married to his brother Trent. Six months after Trevor and I split, Tracy was attacked in her back yard. Let's all be AWARE of the dangers of domestic violence!!!!

www.thankshealtheast.org/stories/tracy.html

We're Still Here...

Yes, I haven't done a post in a while, we've been crazy running all over the place, hit a deer, got a rental car, blah blah blah...

I promise to get back up and running, but I have the Career's Conference tomorrow through Wednesday, and I'll be plenty of busy with that, considering that I have two presentations to do as well as run the Center on Education and Work booth. Yay!

Phew...Back to the Slave Pits...

Damnit, how did my two week vacation fly by so fast?!! I don't want to go back to work tomorrow!!!

Lacey and Miguel went home yesterday evening. My brother and his wife drove down here to pick them up, and they left right away to head back. Boo! I'm having serious Miguel withdrawals. He just turned six and he's completely adorable, loving and very courteous and sweet!

Sammy and I took the Christmas tree down today, along with all of the Christmas decorations. It's time to move on and start the new year. I'm not super excited about this month coming up. I've gotta head up to St. Paul again next week to defend my master's thesis. We also have the Career's Conference coming up at work in which I am in charge of the Center on Education and Work's booth, along with presenting twice at the conference. My pal Stephen Gresham and I are presenting on cultural diversity. This means a lot of work. I think I'll just be happy once the master's defense is done, for even though I finished the huge project, I've still gotta write one last 10-page paper on why I did what I did. So much fun.

Well, I wanted to share with you some of our great photos of the vacation. If you can remember, I headed up to the Twin Cities area on Saturday the 19th to celebrate my cousin Mindi's 30th birthday. Then I hung out at my bro's for a little over a week. We celebrated Christmas and had a lot of fun, went to see the movie New Moon. I wasn't too thrilled about those Twighlight books after I tried reading one and realized that it was written for 11-year-old girls and not for serious and cool writers such as myself. However, New Moon was quite fun, and I'm not sure if it was because of the half-naked buff men running around or the actual plot. Oh well, I am also a serious and cool adorer of naked men....where was I? Sorry...yes, so I hung out at my brother's house until last Monday. I then brought my 12-year-old sister Lacey and my 6-year-old nephew Miguel home with me to spend some time. We hung out, did some arts and crafts, blah blah blah.

So here are the random photos of the vacation that I haven't shown you yet...

Here is Manny, my 5-year-old nephew, playing with a Nintendo DS. Notice the extreme look of concentration on his face:



Oh, and I got beat up by my brother's couch. Stay away from it, it's very testy and hates being sat on too fast. See my sweet bruise?



We went to go and visit my best pal Yobe before we left. Here's a pic of her cute baby girl Emma...



And last but not least, here is our buddy Miguel, posing with his wonderful artwork. How creative buddy!



All the meanwhile, Mr. Sam stayed back in Milton and had to pull a few extra long shifts for the heavy snow fall over Christmas. He went out with his pals on New Year's Eve, but I stayed home because of some random cold that I caught. I was able to take some of his allergy medicine and they cleared me up quick, but also knocked me out! I'm over it now, thank the Lord! Sam was able to get in some ice fishing and last minute hunting. I actually went out ice fishing with him this week with Miguel. It was Miguel's first time ice fishing. We didn't catch anything, and the ice was super slippy, Miguel and I fell about 20 times each. It was quite hilarious. Sam was able to get out and go hunting today, as today was the last day for hunting. He did not get a deer this year, but he was able to see a few. I think there were some loud people and dogs walking around his hunting land that scared the deer away. No worries though, the deer that he shot last year is now sitting gracefully on our spare bed, waiting to be placed on the wall. We also have another freshly done walleye hung up in the other room. I actually like those walleye more than the deer. I'd take a picture and post it here, but I think the only people who read this blog are Sam's mom, dad and Gina who probably don't care too much about seeing plastic fish.

That's it for now. I'm dreading heading back to work tomorrow. Stupid work. I hate you.

We're Back In Milton!!

I've got Miguel and Lacey with me until Saturday or Sunday. We've been trying to have fun but I got this stupid cold that is wiping me out! It's ruining our vacation fun!

Vacatiaon Diary: Day 6

MERRY CHRISTMAS YA'LL!!

We laid around all day. It's snowing up here and I was hoping to go home tomorrow, but Joey said he didn't want us to leave just yet. I want to bring Miguel home but Joey doesn't want Miguel to be gone for so long.

On another note, Lacey, my twelve-year-old sister, made the mistake of falling asleep way before the rest of us last night, so me, the big sister, had to mess with her. You HAVE to watch this video, it is HILARIOUS...me smacking Lacey in the face while she's sleeping!!!



Merry Christmas everyone and thank you Lacey for the good times!!!

Vacation Diary: Days 2, 3, 4 and 5

Phew, Monday and Tuesday are over, spent all day working on my master's thesis. Woke up Monday, headed over to St. Kate's, spent all day on the thesis. Didn't get it done, they kicked me off campus because they closed at six pm. Went over to Kinko's to try to finish it and print, only to find out that Kinko's charges .49 cents per page to print, which, at 80 pages times two copies of the paper that I needed to print, would have cost me $75 dollars just to print! So I gave up, left Kinko's, went home, trie again on Tuesday. Went to St. Kate's and worked some more, but found out that St. Kate's now charges to print as well, even though they never used to. However, they only charge .10 cents per page which is a HUGE drop from .50 cents. Sadly, printing at St. Kate's was not going to be as easy as I thought, since I was not a student, they would not let me print. I was going to have to actually drive over to Hamline to print. But alas! One of my students at St. Kate's offered to let me print my paper on her print account! Since the semester was over, she let me know that she had a huge print balance on her account and let me use it! Thanks so much for that Becky!!!!

So, the moral of the story is, I got the paper done at 5:30 Tuesday night. Went off to Benihaha to have dinner with my beautiful friend Ania. Here we are:



Ania was a fellow student at St. Kate's and we graduated together.

Wednesday was a lazy day for me and the boys. I was supposed to go visit my pal Yobe, but I was too tired, and the snow was on the weather radar to be heading our way. So I laid around all day with my little buddies.

Today is Christmas Eve and we are relaxing together. My mom is here with Lacey. Pa Chia is home and my dad just ran off to get some McDonald's. We're hanging out today again. I went out and shoveled the walk for my brother, who went to work for a little bit today. Ooops, my car is running outside. I had Lacey go out and stick my cell phone in there, it was out of juice. I better have Lacey run back out and get it!!!!

Here's a video of my little buddy Manny giving me a full body massage. These boys are just so adorable, Sam better be HAPPY that he stole me away from them!!!



Today was the day that the boys got their hair cuts. Here is Manny, he's got the old man haircut:



And here is Gabe, he's got a mowhawk and he's really mad about posing for the camera. This picture seriously CRACKS me up:




Stay tuned. It's Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas! We'll have more action for you tomorrow!! .

Vacation Diary: Day 1

Hello to all of my fellow blog followers!!! I am now sitting at my lovely brother's house in Minnesota. Sadly, the boys are not here, my brother needs to go get them from my mom's house.

How did my first day of vacation go? Well great, thank you for asking!! I left my house down in Milton at about 1:30 on Saturday and went straight up to St. Croix Falls to celebrate my cousin Mindi's 30th birthday. My wonderful cousins Tonia came up from Iowa and Heather came up from Stillwater, Minnesota to hang out with us. Here we all are:



From left to right: Lacey is my cousin Mindi's step sister. Tonia is my cousin. Kayla is Mindi's little sister from another marriage. Then me. Heather is my cousin and Aunt Val is Mindi's mom (Mindi's dad is my mom's brother). Teehee!

And here we getting ready for some fun...



And here we are at the end of the night:



That concludes our Saturday night evening and Mindi's 30th birthday shindig. I am now hanging out at my brother's house waiting for my little buddies to come home.

Happy birthday Minders!!!