This weekend finally felt like summer! Yay!! It was much needed!
Friday after my shift at the gym, I headed down to the waterfront to check out Relay for Life. I always love the excitement there, and of course, the cause. I walked a lap for my grandma and my uncle (who are both recently in remission), my aunt (who passed away after battling breast cancer), and a co-worker whose mom was just diagnosed. I started to get a little choked up thinking about it, but also prayed for all of those people and thanked God for his hand in healing too! When I got back I talked to Maggie (my grandma) and Dewey (my uncle) on the phone for quite awhile. It was great to talk to them. I miss them!
Saturday I administered the ACT's on campus for 5 1/2 hours. I really don't mind doing them at all since I get to bring a book to read while the kids are testing and it's like $20 an hour! After this, Claire and I had planned to hit up the beach for the first time this summer, but that idea crashed and burned when a big thunderstorm came through. I love storms though, so I didn't mind it and it made it feel like summer!
Oh yeah!! I almost forgot, there is a store downtown who will sell my photography! So, Sat. I made a bunch of prints and matted all of them and brought them to put up in the store! I am not sure how popular they will be, but it's still kind of cool! After that, Claire, Charissa (another friend) and I headed for a quick impromptu trip to Duluth. We went out to eat and then wandered around the mall (I am poor, so there was no spending, but it was fun to window shop). We had a great time!! I also found a cute dress on sale at Khol's for a wedding I am ushering in this summer. I was really excited about the deal I found! We didn't get home that night until 11:00!

Sunday, Claire and I got a bunch of great summer food and brought it to the beach. Chrysa and our friend Kate met up with us there. It was the perfect summer day!! The sun felt great, the sound of the waves was perfect, the food was delicious, and the company was fun! We were there for like 5 hours! When I got home, I decided to go for a run/walk. It was great! I went for 6 miles along the Ashland Rail Trail, which winds along the lake shore. It was wonderful.

So, last night was another crafty night. I wasn't really satisfied with my photo collage wall. It just didn't look put together at all, so I decided to try something different and use my crafty clothespins too. I put pictures as well as cards on the wall. Kind of a fun was to mix it all up. Still not sure what I think about it, but I like it better than just the frames, I think. Here is what I did.






I have also been trying to figure out how to organize my earrings. It drives me nuts to dump out my jewelry box every morning searching for a matching pair. So, I decided to make my own earring organizer. I took 2 old frames and staple-gunned window screening to the back of the frame. Then I took some ribbon and staple gunned that to the back too. They look pretty cute and are really handy!

Brand-new Fawn

The other day, there was a brand-new baby fawn curled up against our building. It was so tiny. We all figured he must have been born in the past 24 hours. The mom was wondering around, but wouldn't go right up to the fawn. We were afraid that we were spooking her, so we went inside and watch from the window as she came to her baby. It was really cool to watch!

The past few days have been super lazy and a bit crafy too! It's really nice to relax! I used to have phonecall nights at the college on Thurs, worked at the gym on Wed. and Fri., and belly dancing on Thursday. Now that it's summer, I no longer have phone call nights, belly dancing is off for June, and I only work until 7 now on Fridays instead of 9! I have so much extra time! This weekend was wonderful and much needed. Friday, I had a touch of the stomach flu, so I called it an early night after my gym shift. Patti and Claire stopped over for a bit to say hi and then I went to bed. Saturday morning, I had Saturday duty at the college and then Claire and I drove up to Bayfield to check out some of the cute little shops since it was a cold rainy day. That night, we had invited some friends for a bonfire on the beach, but the rain bombed that idea, so we cooked hotdogs on Grant and Claire's grill instead. Our friend Chrysa joined us and we even cooked smores over the grill too! We sat under a tree which protected us from the rain. It was really fun!Sunday, Nikki and Steve stopped by on their way to the airport to head to Alaska for a week. It was good to see them, even if it was quick. Then I ran to Walmart to print off some of my pics. I realized that as much as I love taking pics, I don't have any up in my apartment. So I got a few more cheap frames to add to my collection and framed a ton of pics to put up in a photo collage. I am not sure if I really like it, but it's nice to have some personal pics up now! Then I decided to be a little crafty while I was watching movies. I took 50 clothespins and decoupaged them with funky paper. I am going to make some into magnets to hold papers on my fridge and with the others, I am going to hang cute ribbon on one of my walls and then clip the pins up to hold papers and photos on. We'll see how it turns out. I just thought the clips were cute! Yesterday, after work, I headed to Washburn (10 minutes outside of Ashland) to pick up an application to waitress at a restaurant. I am in need of extra cash even more now that we took a paycut. I think I could make more as a waitress tham the 6.50/hr I make at the gym. I might get some good weekend hours too!
Then I came home and cleaned my much neglected bedroom! It feels so much better to have my room all cleaned up now!! Sigh!

Here are a few pics of the rainy cookout, the clothespins and the picture collage wall:

Yesterday was such a great day!! When I was at home for my lunch break, my friend Claire calls from the office and says, "hury back! You are missing a lot of great stuff!" So, I went back to the office as quick as I could. My friend Ashley, who used to work in our office brought her 4 month old puppy over to play. He was so cute and fun! Then our boss Paul bought all of us Dairy Queen! What a great boss, huh?!

After work, I went home to power clean my living room and kitchen. It looks so much better now, I cannot even believe it! I always feel better when things are straightened up. Since we have the month off of belly dancing, I invited the girls over to go for a walk. It was such a great day, and we walked down to the water along the little trail there. I will definitely be walking down there more often. That part of the trail is so green and peaceful. I am really glad I now know about it. We then walked back to my place and ordered pizza, which was ate on the porch with a glass of wine (although, I am not much of a wine drinker). It was so nice to be outside that much! After everyone left, I crawled into bed only to be awakened at midnight with a horrid stomach ache. Yuck! Maybe it was all the ice cream and pizza! Opps! I have not felt that sick to my stomach in a long time. It was awful! I ended up taking the morning off because I was so tired from being up. I am back at work now, but am still feeling a little gross. Hopefully, it will pass soon enough! I want to be able to get out and enjoy the weekend!

Trip to Florida

So, I don't think I mentioned that I was going to Florida for a few days!

Well, I just got back and it was wonderful! I went with 2 of my college roomates for a quick 5 day trip to Orlando. Originally, I had booked the trip so I could audition for Disney World. In case any of you didn't already know, being a Disney character has been one of my dreams! Well, due to the layoffs at Disney, the open-call auditions were no longer being held. Guess I will just have to go back and try again! It is something I have always wanted to do, and thought, why not! Tickets were cheap and I had plenty of vacation time and the travel bug was itching at me again. 2 years ago at this time, I was snorkeling on a remote Fijian Island, last year I was exploring around the island of Crete Greece, and so I needed to do something fun to keep me sane!

On the flight there, I got an email about the decision being made towards my job on campus. I still have it! Phew!! But, unfortunately, I took a paycut. It's only 3%, but with money as tight as it already is working 2 jobs, I am left a little nervous. But I pushed my worries aside to relax and enjoy the trip!

Our first full day there, we did all 4 Disney parks in 1 day; Magic Kingdown, MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot. It was exhausting but so awesome!! I love rollercoasters, so it was great. We even did the Tower of Terror, which was so freaky! I think it was scarier than skydiving! when we were at the Magic Kingdom, we saw this little girl who was all alone, she was yelling for her mom, so we went up to her and asked her if she was lost and what her mom looked like. We searched around and didn't see her mom, so we brought her into the store and told the clerk what happened, figuring she could make a call to help track down the mom. As we walked out, I glanced up the street and saw a woman a ways off that looked like the description on the girls mom, so we took off after her. When we caught up to her she was panicking and talking to another store clerk about her lost girl, so we told her we knew where she was and brought her to her little girl. When they saw eachother they were both hugging and crying. Sometimes God just puts people in the right place at the right time to help out. The day ended with fireworks over the lake at Epcot. It was so great!

The next day, we got to go and see my Aunt Joni and Dewey. Dewey was just recovering with chemo treatments for cancer, so I was really excited to get to see them, especially because he is now in remission! It was so wonderful to see them. Aunt Joni gave us girls a tour of her place and then took us our in the gold cart for a ride. Katie and Kayla sat in the back and I took shotgun. She showed us the little community where she lived and we went gator-hunting. We found a little alligator in one of the ponds. Then we went back for some lunch and my friends left for the beach and I stayed to hang out with Joni and Dewey a little longer. It was so great to catch up with them and to see Dewey was doing so much better!! I couldn't believe how good he looked! They talked about his cancer a little bit, and then Aunt Joni and I just had some good girl talk.

The next day, my roomies and I went to Universal Studios. It was SO much fun!!! I loved all of the crazy wild rides. I wanted to do all of them over and over. Sigh!! I love rollercoasters!! The day went by so quick though!

Sunday was our final day there. We went on an airboat ride, recommended by Aunt Joni. It was awesome!! I absolutely loved it!! We saw some huge gators, some were almost 12 feet long! We even bumped over one on the boat. Then the guide took us into the cypress forest. It was so neat and peaceful. I loved it!! I would totally recommend it to anyone who goes there!

Then we hit up the beach and went body boarding. I haven't done it since I was in New Zealand, so it was really fun to do it again. We couldn't bring our boards back on the plane with us, so we gave them to some little kids who'd been watching us ride the waves. They were so excited! They grabbed their brothers, sisters, and cousins, and ran back out into the water to test out the boards. It was really cool!I swear I could spend the rest of my life just laying on a beach and playing in the waves. It was wonderful. I got to see Aunt Joni again that afternoon for about five minutes because we were running late for our reservation at Al Capone's Dinner Theater Show, which was also very fun.

I posted some pics of us below and the others are on my photo blog. Check 'em out!
http://www.bethwilliamsphotography.blogspot.com/

Belly Dance Video

I forgot to post this awhile ago! Here is the video of us dancing from our show. We messed up a few times, but not to bad considering we learned the last 1/2 of it the night before! Enjoy!