Yes, We're Still Alive

Hello to all of you. Sam and I are still alive. Nothing much has been going on. We've been working, going to school, hunting, fishing, and beating each other up. No new pics to report. But if you're really jonesing for one, here you go:


This is one of my favorite pics of us.

Anyway...we're having a girls night this weekend, so stay tuned for more beautiful pics of me and my thousand cousins.....and a few aunts and maybe some moms.

I'll also try to sneak some pics of Sam's butt and post them. It's so cute!!

The Boys and I

Manny and Miguel came and stayed Saturday night at Hotel le Amy and Sam, sans Sam. We carved a pumpkin, watched Transformers, watched some other movies. It was same old fun. P.s. to those of you finding instructions of the net on how to cook pumpkin seeds, don't listen to them when they say let them dry over night on paper towels. They end up sticking to the paper towels and you have to peel if off them one at a time. So much fun!!

We Saw Frida!!

The day finally arrived when the opening of the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Minneapolis Walker Art Center. Corina, Farrah and I made it first to the Hayden Hererra talk. Hayden wrote the Biography of Frida Kahlo, from which the movie Frida is based. She talked about Frida's life, and I am sorry to say, I did not learn much, since my class on Frida has already educated me plenty on the life of this wonderful lady.

We left the talk early to head on over to the exhibit, excited as EVER to see our favorite paintings. Corina's is "The Broken Column," shown here, and the REAL THING!!!!!!:




It's a little blurry because I was sneaking photos illegally! Teehee! I had to do it as the guards were looking away. Here is a better image found of the internet:



My favorite is "The Two Fridas," here is my sneak pic of that one!!!



A better pic of that one is in one of my earlier posts.

We were so excited, finally, a lifelong passion of ours has been realized, we saw most of her best paintings!!!!

Yay Tracy!!

It is 11:30pm, Wednesday night. I am up late for nothing, got a mid-term due tomorrow. But I am here writing this crap. Haha! Who cares about school and work, especially when that new Airwick sprayer I just bought and put up keeps spraying every half hour and scaring the crap out of me.

I wanted to mention that I had dinner with Tracy the other night and it was very nice. If you all remember, Tracy was married to my ex-husband's brother, making her my ex-sister-in-law. They got divorced too, and now we are a team of hating the Wegner brothers!! Tracy was attacked in her back yard last October and was in a coma for a few weeks. When she woke up, she decided to move on to something else other than her marriage, so here we are!!



The last time that I saw her this spring, she had the shortest hair. But how her hair has grown, and how beautiful she is, considering what she has gone through. Don't you think?



So keep posted everyone, Sammy is gone for a while and the opening of Frida is this weekend. I'll also be having Manny and Miguel over to play!

I'll put the pics up on Sunday.

Camping!!

So we went camping a few weekends ago. The weather wasn't too bad, although I found myself bundled up like it was 40 below outside. We drove up to lake Vermillion, MN, which is about a few hours north of the Twin Cities.

We left Friday morning, got to the boat launch, loaded the boat, and found our campsite. Here it is:





It was a fun time, trying to get the fire going at night, trying to catch the fish. But poor Sammy didn't catch any, and I only froze my booty off. Yeah, here's me freezing my booty off:





And Sammy, happy as ever, although he wasn't catching any fish:

Corina's B-Day Bash!!!

It was Corina's 37th (my lovely cousin on my dad's side) and we started out at the lovely Bennigans, but made our way to the Rush in Cottage Grove. We had fun and more fun, and Corina was pretty drunk by the end of the night! And our other cousin Tina ditched us!



Just in case you didn't know, I have one thousand cousins. My dad has eleven brothers and sisters, my mom has 13. Most of them have more than one child, therefore, I have 1000 cousins.



I would like to do a family tree one day to see where my family comes from! My grandma Rivera told me once, after I had learned enough Spanish, that her husband came from Mexico City. She is from Castroville, Texas. How I miss her...

Anyways, we had planned to bring our pal Rodney home with us to watch some scare Japanese movies, but it didn't turn out that way. Oh well! Happy Birthday Speedy!! (Corina's nickname is Speedy, since her last name is Gonzales=Speedy Gonzales)

I'm Back!!

I've been so busy with classes, with homework and with fishing. Haha! Not really fishing! But everything else.

Sammy and I went camping last weekend on Milacs Lake and he caught two northerns. Here he is.




I even tried trolling for Walley myself!



But alas, I did not have any luck.

So we've been working and going to school and fishing and trying to hunt and rooting for the Packers (well, not me, I'm a Viking's fan all the way), and we've been getting tired! I had the boys with me this weekend, I haven't seen them in a month!! I was getting withdrawal symptoms! It's my cousin Corina's birthday this week. Stay tuned for more pics!

Sammy and His Fish

So it's fall, and that doesn't stop Mr. Samuel from his fishing. Actually, 20 below zero doesn't stop him from fishing, as he so kindly pointed out to me the other day. He's been going out a lot on Perch lake and bringing home pretty trout, so I wanted to go with him and catch some of my own. I did catch two, but the expert fisherman caught seven total, I think. Here he is, all cute and fishy.



The trout were furious this day, puking and pooping all over Sammy as he tried to get the hooks out. He rows for us, he baits the hooks, he casts, he removes fish from my hooks, what a gentleman! He's so sweet!



And when we go home, he cleans them and cooks them, but woe is me, I do not eat them, for I hate seafood. It must have been some bad fish I had as a kid...

My Awesome Student

In the fall of 2004, my first year as an Admission Counselor at St. Kate's, I found myself recruiting students from Park Center High School in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. And although I didn't meet her at my initial visit (I remember that day well, because I just found out 10 minutes before heading into the high school doors that I might not be able to move into my house that we had just made an offer on, and I walked into the school drying the tears from my eyes), I met her later when she visited me on campus. Her name was Azieb Kidanu, and she made herself known by the many visits she made to campus.

When I received her file for admission review, I found her resume was like a book! She was so accomplished! Her committment to St. Kate's, along with the great work that she had done academically, I knew I had to present her to the O'Shaughnessy Scholarship committee in December.

Every year, St. Kate's offers one full tuition and fees scholarship to one very accomplished student. It was up to us Admission Counselors to search through all of our 150+ students (each, some 1100 total amongst us all) to find one or two suitable to bring to the committee, and at the committee, we all had to plea our cases, much like lawyers!

Woah and behold, I presented my pal Azieb, with much confidence. She had professed a true committment to St. Kate's, and I knew she would come to us whether or not she earned the scholarship. But great news, a few weeks later, she does it!

She is the first and only student of color, out of ten years, to win the grand scholarship of St. Kate's. And now starting her junior year this fall at St. Kate's, she is still doing many great and wonderful things. She is even featured on the website for Future Doctors of Minnesota, and is one of the featured students on the home page of St. Kate's. Check her out at http://www.stkate.edu/pages/profiles/profile_azieb_k.php

Although I have left St. Kate's, I continue to keep in touch with her, for I am glad to have made a difference in someone's life, and we are all lucky in the world to have a gem like her in it.

School Has Started

It's September and I am continuously going to school. My brother told me he doesn't understand it, but I just love to learn!! What am I doing again, you ask? I am getting my master's in Liberal Studies, with a focus on literature and the arts. I'm taking two classes this semester, hoping to be done by December next year.

So far, I really like one of the classes at least, it's called Frida Kahlo, and it coincides with the grand opeing premiere of Frida's exhibition at the Minneapolis Walker Art Center in October, where a great many of Frida's art will be on display, including my favorite, The Two Fridas!! (shown right)

The other class I'm taking is called The Role of the Critic in Society. I have no idea what it's about, but I had to take it to satisfy a requirement. We'll see if I like it! I find that I learn at least something valuable in every class that I take. The semester will be over in December, but then work is going to be piling on, for we need to get everything in ok by the end of the year for taxes and W-2's. I'm a little scared, and just wish I would win the lottery so I won't have to work at all!

Birthday Shindig!

The day started out fast, we couldn't pick up the boys, I left the address at work and basically screwed myself, but we got there. And when we did, there was no parking, for it was state fair time and apparently everyone was parking at the zoo and walking to the fair. I had to park a mile away. Woohoo!



At the beginning, I didn't think anyone would show up. All that money I spent, wasted! But as the day progressed, more and more people kept popping in, even friends! It ended up turning out awesome! Thanks to everyone who came! And thanks to Sam who was the most cutest cook.

It's Our Birthday!

It's almost Friday, and thirty years ago, a little teeny half Mexican girl was born in a little teeny hospital called Ramsey in a teeny little town called St. Paul. Her parents were only 15 and 16, but they kept her and now she's here to rock the world! Thirteen years later, on the same, warm summer day, in the same little hospital in the same little town, another little teeny half Mexican girl was born. Her parents weren't as young as the first girl's, but that first girl was so excited to have a baby sister, and to even share her birthday, she didn't care about anything! So now, we are getting older. We are ready to celebrate!


Jujee will be a senior this year, yikes! What will she do afterwards? For the longest time she wanted to join the Navy, but now it seems that she's not quite sure. All we know is that her big sis wants her to go to St. Kate's, just like Jujee's Grandma and big sis did. Yay for St. Kate's!!


So now, even though Jujee might ditch her big sis on the day of their shindig, we are getting together on Saturday (I'll at least be there). Come celebrate with us at Como Zoo! I'll bring the boys! (And maybe Clapper, if he behaves)

Fun at the Beach with the Boys!

We went and visited Sam at work today while big brother Gabriel went school shopping with his parents. The waves at Troy Beach on the St. Croix River were rolling in, and Manny almost went in a few times! This is the first time the boys have been taken to the beach by their Auntie. We had fun, but it would have been more fun if Auntie could have put them in their mini boats and pushed them around! (And if she would have remembered her swimsuit)

Hello and Welcome to my New Blog!

Hello to all! I though I'd start this blogger thing because my buddy Briggs was in a car accident a few months ago and her family kept postings about her progress on blogspot.com. It was nice to keep up on what was going on. But who will check up on us? Who knows! It's really for me. Let's see, I've been loving to take lots of pics lately, so I'll try to keep the blog updated.