Weekend in Merrill

This past weekend I drove over to Merrill to spend some time with my cousins! Friday night Jeremy and I drove to Neillsville where he hunts so he'd be there for hunting over the weekend. I spent the night at their hunting land so I didn't have to drive another two hours on Friday night!

Saturday morning I got up and headed the rest of the way to Merill to my cousin Alyssa's. I got ready at her house and then went to my other cousin Dana's bridal shower. After the bridal shower Alyssa, Bryson and I headed to Wausau to do a little wedding planning for their wedding :) Our bridesmaids dresses for the wedding came in so I tried it on (love it) and then we picked out tuxes! They are going to be awesome!

After some wedding planning we went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse, which was very good. I haven't been there in a long time and since we don't have much restaraunt variety in Owatonna, it was great! We headed back to Merrill after dinner and did a little planning for Alyssa's bridal shower & bachelorette party before I headed off to Dana's bachelorette party.

We started off at Dana's house and then headed down to Wausau to "The Bar." After that we went to Bullshooters, which is a really sweet bar! Dana rode the bull and did good! Of course the man running the bull isn't nice enough to just let you get off, so she did get bucked off after a while. There was a good band and it was a fun night!

Sunday I spent the morning with Alyssa and Bryson and Bry made an amazing breakfast ;)

Overall it was a good weekend with a lot of driving but the driving is always worth it!

Trip to the Dells!

My mom and Eric had a retirement party to go to at the Chula Vista Resort so Jeremy and I made the trip over to the Wisconsin Dells to hang out with my little brother Matt!

We took the puppy to the kennel Saturday morning and headed over to the dells for the rest of the weekend! We meet my mom, Matthew and my mom's friend Tanya at Moose Jaw for lunch - absolutely love that restaruant, esp their beer bread :) Thanks mom for sending us home with batch to make at home!

After eating lunch we headed to the hotel to check in and Matthew, Jeremy and I proceeded to go swimming since that's what you do at a resort in the dells!! We went on rides and played water basketball for a good couple hours before going back to the room! We ordered pizza and watched a movie...along with falling asleep on the couch with my lil' bro!!

Sunday we got up and lounged around the hotel before checking out. We went to lunch at Buffalo Phil's which is the sister restaruant to Moose Jaw! They had an awesome breakfast buffet which we all got! We then played a few video games at Knucklehead's and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the Tanger Outlet Mall. Amazingly, I did not buy ANYTHING for myself! Jeremy got a few items but that was it...can you believe it!

Here's a couple pictures from outside Buffalo Phil's.

Maple's First Halloween

I'm not usually one to dress animals up but I couldn't resist dressing Maple up in a costume I saw at Target! They had quite a few costumes, but by the time I decided to get one they were on sale and the only one I liked that was in her size was a pumpkin! She wasn't quite sure about it at first and was running around a little crazy, but after a while she kept it on like normal. The second time I put it on her she ended up ripping a little hole in it so I had to take it off!

Here's a couple pictures of Maple dressed up:







I was super excited to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween in our new house and to my disappointment, I only had about 15 kids come :( I bought so much candy and was literally giving 6-8 pieces to each kid and have a TON leftover! Jeremy will be very happy when he comes home to all the leftover candy :)

Last night I went to two Halloween parties with my friend Kalisha and her boyfriend Matt. First we went to Adam's house and then ended up at Nicole's. It was an awesome night and here's a picture of Kalisha and I in our costumes!

Texas, here I come!

Tomorrow is my last day of 2 long weeks of training to move to my new position at work! I will now be transitioning from smaller, less detailed accounts in 8 New England states that I shared with 2 other underwriters, to larger, more detailed counts in one part of Texas that are my own accounts! It's going to be so different to have my own Marketing Reps and my own accounts!

As far as I know, I'll be working with the Houston area of the state (see picture below), which means I have lots of rules to learn! As you can probably imagine, insurance companies can be more selective in what we like to cover based on the distance from the coast etc...



I'm very excited to take on more responsibility and apply what I've learned in the past two weeks of training. Doesn't it sound exciting to you? ;) Who doesn't want to spend their day working on a quote for a Petroleum Marketer, an Equipment Dealer, a Machine Shop or even a Lumber Yard!? Amazingly, I love my job and I can't wait to dive into these new types of businesses!!!

I won't bore you anymore with work talk since most of you reading this probably don't have a clue what it is I do everyday!

As of 12:30 tomorrow, I'll be a Texas Underwriter :)

Go Vikes!

Being that Jeremy and I are Vikings Season Ticket holders this year (thanks to Dave & Julie), we were at the Monday Night Football game versus the Packers! Let's just say it was a great game and it's alway great to see the Vikings win!

It's not like I dislike the Packers, I did grow up in Wisconsin with family who is Packers fans, but husband trumps parents with this one! It's much easier to like the Vikings and go to games, especially living in MN :)

According to my dad I'm a trader, but at least Eric likes the Vikings now that they have Brett, so I have one family member on my side!

Go Vikings! Let's see how long we can keep this undefeated streak going!

Nick & Sarah's Wedding

Last weekend we took a rode trip to Missouri for our friends Nick & Sarah's wedding! Their wedding was in New Melle, which is outside of St. Louis. Needless to say, we had an 8 hour drive down there!

We left immediately after work and we rode with our friends Al and Danica. We got to our destination shortly after midnight, and since we'd been riding in the car for so long we stopped at an awesome casino! Although all four of us lost money, it was still awesome! It was the neatest casino I've been to.

We got to our hotel around 3:00 am and went straight to bed! We were up fairly early on Saturday so we were showered and had something to eat before getting on the bus around noon which took us to the ceremony, which was at 1:00. The ceremony was gorgeous and Sarah looked amazing!



I have to add this in here - the bus we took to the ceremony was an old tour bus, but not any tour bus...it was the tour bus of Pam Tillis! I find this funny because I can remember back to when I was a little girl when my dad took me to a Pam Tillis concert at the Lincoln county fair in Merrill! Anyway...back to our weekend.

They had a 55 passenger coach bus, which was full, for in between the ceremony and the reception. We all got on the bus after the ceremony, along with some beverages, and proceeded to drive around to different places for the wedding party to take pictures.



The last stop the bus made was at a Winery, which was awesome, and the wine was really good - even Jeremy liked it!





After the Winery, the bus took everyone back to the church where the reception was held downstairs. We had a great night having fun with friends that we haven't seen in a while! We got to see Lee & Jana who live in Indy, Chris & Emily from New York, Caleb & Lexi from Arkansas and Travis &Holly who also live in Missouri. It was so great to see them all and it makes me wish everyone was still in Owatonna!

The last couple weeks

So it's been a little while since I've had time to update my blog! Not only have I been busy at work, but we've been busy almost every night of the week!

We've been playing kickball on Monday nights, yes, Owatonna has an adult kickball league, and our team rocks! We won the league last year, so the pressure is on this year! We've only lost 1 game so far and there are only a couple weeks left, so I'll let you know how we end up! On Tuesday nights we've been playing in a fall softball league which consists of double headers every week! Our team is 500 right now, so we're not doing too bad, but there is only 1 more week of regular play and then the following week is a 1 night single elimination tournament, so it's coming to an end!

I also started a new workout routine which I love so far! 1 week down and a ton more to go! It's a 90-day workout routine called Chalene Extreme that focuses on lifting heavy weights slowly to build muscle 3 days a week and a cardio routine 2 days a week. We'll see how it goes!!

As for the past couple of weekends, the 12-13th was opening bow hunting so we headed back to WI so Jeremy and Maple could go hunting and I went to Merrill to visit family and get my bridesmaid dress ordered for my cousin Alyssa's wedding!! Jeremy got a doe at 7:30 on opening morning, so that was great!

Last weekend, we had a softball tournament on Saturday as well as our friends Al & Danica's wedding in St James, MN! It was great because we got to see friends of ours from out of town - Sarah & Nick came up from MO and Jeff flew in from VA. For anyone who doesn't know, I work with people across the whole country, and when I started at Federated, I started with 30 other people all around the same age as me, but from all over the country! Everyone was in Owatonna for 6-9 months, depending on their function at Fed, and then they went back home or wherever they got hired to work out of. So that's how we now have quite a few friends all over the place!

Next weekend we have Nick & Sarah's wedding in MO and will get to see quite a few more people from our class that are traveling to it! I can't wait!

This weekend we're just hanging out at home and going to the Vikings/49er's game tomorrow - go Vikes!