Week-end Happenings!

I had an awesome week-end. Friday night started off with the comedian, Jeff Dunham, in Sioux Falls. It went a couple of hours, and was super funny. Here are a couple of pictures from the show. We had awesome seats!

After the show, we spent the night at some friends. It was great to be able to see them again, even if it was for a short while, to catch up! On Saturday morning we headed out for Minneapolis. We stopped at Mystic Lake casino on the way into the cities to eat at the amazingly large buffet that they have. It was fantastic. Adam was fortunate enough to even win some cash while playing black jack! From there we headed to our hotel, only to be mesmerized by the Super Target on the way, so of course we had to make a pit stop there. It was the cleanest, most well organized Target I have ever been to. It was just really cool, nothing like the Targets around here. That evening we went to the Melissa Etheridge concert. It was in a small auditorium on the campus of St. Catherine. There were only about a 1000 people there. Adam, once again, got us amazing seats for the concert. It was such a small place that none of the seats would have really been bad, but ours were awesome. She put on a 3 hour show that she was able to tell a story with. She tied all of her songs together and talked a little bit between each one about what they meant to her and it went throughout her life. I had never been to a concert like that before, and it was a great experience. Below are a few of the best pics that we got.

Today will be my third day of new teacher in-service. So far both of the days I have learned some things. I am realizing that there are so many resources that are available to teachers - it is just going to be hard to swim through all of them and decided when and where to use all of them. I am fortunate enough to have a SMART board in my classroom. I am really excited to have this, as the possibilities are really endless with it. Students really enjoy learning with it, so hopefully I can create some exciting and engaging ways to incorporate it into our day.

Tonight Adam and I will be seeing a comedian, Jeff Dunham. After that we are fortunate enough to be able to see our friends Erin and Dan. We will spend the rest of the night with them and then head on out in the morning to another concert - Melissa Etheridge.

I'm definitely starting to feel a little overwhelmed with school starting up real soon and having all of these inservices to be attending. They are a great way to be able to meet some of the other teachers.

We are also pretty disappointed, Nitwits, the comedy club that we went to every week in Sioux Falls, is now closed. We looked forward to our one night of comedy a week, and now we don't have that! Hopefully it can reopen or a similar venue will come along sometime soon.

Now, off for another long day...

Omaha Outings

Our huge concert line up has officially started. On Sunday night we went to the Tom Petty Concert. Then on Tuesday night we went to the Dave Matthews Band concert. Tom Petty put on a great show and we were able to sing along and dance to all of his songs. The opener for him was Steve Winwood. I only knew a couple of his songs, and it was probably the least I have ever paid attention or given a hoot at any concert I've been to. Thank goodness I knew something great was coming after him, otherwise it would have been torture!

Dave Matthews Band, on Tuesday night was not so good. I was surprised that he came out and introduced Ingrid Michaelson. She was pretty good, for not being that well known and having hardly any fans in the audience. The arena was super scarce, almost felt bad for the girl in a way. People waited until the last minute to show up for DMB. Overall, it was really hard to understand the words to DMB, thus making it difficult to sing along to any of the songs that I knew.

On Tuesday we went to the Omaha Zoo. It was huge! I've never been to a zoo that big. They had quite a few impressive sights. They also have an IMAX theater there, but we didn't take that in. We had lunch right there at the zoo and were able to see the monkeys while we were eating. We were at the zoo for about 4 hours. It was a lot of walking and was a hot day. But overall, it was well worth it. Seeing some of the animals in a zoo environment does make me kind of sad for them though. It is just not their natural habitat, and they hardly have the space that they would have if they were left in the wild. I know that the zoo does their best to take care of them and gives them all that they need to survive, but really, how great of a life can an animal be living in that small of environment?

We were able to go to a couple of the shopping malls, Cabelas, and Bass Pro. We managed to get a few things. It was fun to shop someplace other than Sioux Falls. The stores are the same it seems, but the selections are so much larger!

It was a great few days away, but it is also good to be back at home! There has to be something said for sleeping in your own comfy bed. :)

Rodeo

This week is "rodeo week" here. There has been so much hype and advertising for this week, so I had thought it was a "must do" event. So trying to take in different entertainment venues and do something different we got tickets to the rodeo last night. There was a lot of people there, for this small town - lots of people coming out of the woodworks for it. However, the rodeo itself was disappointing in the fact that it's performances were lacking. In ever different contest, probably only 3 people would score. Going to this rodeo after going to the Black Hills Stock Show made this a let down. Maybe if we had tried this rodeo first, we wouldn't have been as disappointed - who knows. However, it did prove to be another great people watching event.

Coming up in just a couple of days we get to see Tom Petty and Dave Matthews Band - definitely excited to see them as I have been looking forward to it for awhile now. Hopefully they turn out to be as great as I am expecting it to be!

Wii

We finally broke down and got ourselves a Wii. We have been thinking about it for awhile now, and friends and family members keep on telling us how amazing and fun it is. So of course, we had to find out for ourselves what all of the fuss is about. Definitely an expensive little toy, not just the system but it adds up when you buy all of the games and controllers to go with it. Last night we set it up and played the games on Wii Play. It is not like any other gaming system I've played. Any tiny movement really moves the controller a ways a way. Learning how to use the controllers will take some getting used to. Definitely made me think about the first time I played Mario. - It seemed that if you jumped slightly, Mario would too! Only now the controller really does take into account you moving all of the place - wow, technology has come along. I am looking forward to getting Wii Fit soon. Hopefully it will be great exercise, just something new and different to do instead of the same old thing at the gym!

Fishing

Today was a gorgeous day outside, it was in the mid 80's and hardly any wind. So, this afternoon Adam and I went decided to go fishing. We usually try and go a couple of times a week since we live only about 5 minutes away from Lake Mitchell. Unfortunately, the water is really disgusting now and filled with algae. Doesn't make it too inviting nor intriguing to want to go swimming in it, but we usually have some luck with the fish.

Here is a picture of the big carp that I caught - of course we didn't keep it.

This is Adam with all of his fish and then of him cleaning some. He does a great job of getting them all nice and ready for us to eat eventually as I stand by and watch.

And in case you were wondering why he has jeans and a long sleeve shirt on in July, he was trying to keep the bugs away. They can be pretty bad sometimes around the lake.

First Blog!

After viewing a few others blogs recently, I decided it was maybe time for myself to start one. We'll see if I use it often to post things or if it is something that will get put to the side later on. I think it will be fun to keep in touch with people using this. For some reason this seems more professional than facebook, who knows if it really is or not. Feel free to post comments/suggestions/your thoughts to this as well.