Today in the news...

is me! My second article came out in the Cook News Herald. Not to exciting, but it's fun to see my name in print :o) Although I'm a little miffed because they changed my title from "Bear River Beat" to "Bear River Area News". Boring! Mine was way cuter and had personality.

Work is going well so far. I've been doing a lot of online training though, so that's a little taxing. By the end of the day, my brain feels like mush. We have a really big staff, which is fun! It's like my old Wachovia days. Lots of different people to talk to and get to know. Can't wait to get behind the teller line!

It seems that we're having a bit of a heat wave this week. Highs in the upper 80's for the most part. You may laugh, but when you don't have A/C - that's pretty warm! The weatherman says that it won't last very long though. Ahhh summer, see you next year!

First day of work

Went as well as could be expected. Filled out some paperwork, did an online orientation thing. The usual. I didn't get to meet everyone because they were pretty busy today but I did get an hour lunch. All right! So I ate at a deli down the street that had an outdoor patio and walked around downtown Virginia a bit. They have a lot of bars, a candy store, a used book store, a theater, a teen center, and some other stuff that I didn't really get to check out.

The highlight of my day: finding out that insurance would only cost me $20 per pay check! I was paying $66 when I left Citizens....talk about crazy. Dental is an additional $5, and vision is about that too. Adding Travis would double it, but still - then we're talking about $60 per paycheck for both of us? Still saving $6!!

Also, we went grocery shopping the other day and spent a whopping $75 for a week and 1/2 worth of food. No sales tax! We even bought some junky stuff like chips and beer. It's good that this is all so cheap though, since I'll be making quite a good deal less than before. But I think it will all work out for us in the end.

Having something to actually go and do today has completely wiped me out. Until next time my friends!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Mom's birthday, yay!! She's the most amazing woman I know, so I'm dedicating this post to her. She also bought us rugs for the house, and wanted to see what they looked like. So these are for you Mom!






Our fuzzy, tan runners


















The pretty braided rugs in the living room. The smaller one fills that empty space nicely, in my opinion.













And our mudroom. No rugs were supplied for this room, I just haven't posted pics of it yet. Mom, you'll notice that the bench you bought us for our old apartment fits perfectly in here! It's good for shoe storage, and everyone knows that when they come inside that this is where they leave their shoes.








My Mom and Dad are in the Keys right now, so they won't be able to read this until they get back. Tough life, eh? Happy Birthday!

Into the wild

As you may have guessed by now, we live in the middle of nowhere. Maybe even the capital of nowhere. So there are lots of trees and animals and plants (oh my!) around our house. Since I've been taking a short vacation before I start my new job, I decided to go explore the woods behind our house.

What I discovered - I'm no Christopher Columbus. It was a very short lived expedition trip, since the bugs ran me out of there in about 5 minutes flat. And I have the bite marks to prove it! I decided that I didn't want to get West Nile, or a Minnesota variation of it (North Nile perhaps?) so I stuck to the backyard. It's pretty big, so there was plenty of exploring to do anyway. Take that, nasty bugs! Here are some pictures of my discoveries:

We have lots of pretty flowers. You can also see some of the bugs I had to deal with on the yellow flower. Maybe that's a weed? I don't know so I'll have to find my green thumb soon.

Artsy log in the firepit.

Cool mushroom on a log. This was as far into the woods as I got before heading home with my tail between my legs.











And some ferns. I've been told that normally the blueberry bushes intermingle with the ferns. You can drive down the road any day during the summer, at any time and see someone picking blueberries on the side of the road. I looked in our ferns but didn't see any blueberries. Just more bugs.







And that concludes our lovely field trip into the woods. I start work on Monday, thank goodness!

The Great Outdoors

I'm going to post some of our outside pictures. Hang on to your seats, there's a bunch of them!

Our Garage

The view from our front porch. Yep, we can see the church. God is always watching us!

Travis, showing off his yard skills by raking up the dead grass. Then we boxed it up and fed it to the cows at Dave & Leslie's house.

Here's a view up and down our street. Not a whole lot going on in Bear River!

Our firepit


And the backyard!

Nothing too exciting to report right at the moment. I'm just enjoying my little vacation before I start back to work! Although it would be nicer if it were a tad bit warmer. The temp is 64 degrees now at noon, with a high of 70 and a low tonight of 44. Yowza!

Country living at its finest

In my last update I left you with the cliff hanger that we were about to embark on our trip to the dump. Well I couldn't leave you hanging! I was actually very surprised and impressed at this whole dump business. First you have to buy a card that looks like this:
Please note that this is not legal tender. The card allows you up to five bags of garbage. Lucky me, I went with a local (Travis) and he knew this, so we combined our smaller white bags into large black bags. Sneaky! So anyway, you buy this card at the Side Lake Store, and then you go down the road to the dump. We went to the wrong dump, as they have moved it since Travis lived up here, so our trip was made a little longer. With our trash in the trunk. Lovely.

When you get to the dump, you're greeted by a sign like this:
Our dump is in French Township, part of St. Louis County - ahah! And you thought we really moved far away! Apparently the dump is only open on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. Lucky us again, we went on Sunday and will now know in the future to make this a Sunday chore.

I was pretty impressed with the set up. I was imagining great heaping mounds of trash and a foul odor. Nope! They have bins for all different types of trash, including recyclables, and a huge compactor for general trash. Here's a picture of one:
See? Not so bad. Ahhh, gotta love living in the country!

After our dumpy outing, we went over to Grandma Fran's for lunch. Trav's Uncle Al and Aunt Diane, and their boys Jonathan and Justin are in town for the week so they were there too. We had a great time visiting and laughed a lot as usual. We were discussing a relative that was in the prayer bulletin at church, and has been for quite some time now. Fran said that she's been very sick, and "maybe if they took her out of the bulletin then she'd just die already!" Take it as you will, but Fran is always keeping us on our toes!

Seriously?

I knew I was in for some colder weather, but this is a little ridiculous! Today we had to turn on the heat in the house as it's only 57 degrees. Supposedly it's going to top out at 70, but I don't see that happening. And I've had to dive into all my sweaters and such. Hello August!




We went to church this morning and were one of 15 people there including the Pastor. But it was really nice! The church is super cute, small and comfortable. Show up in jeans and a fleece jacket? Eh, who cares! We're just glad you came! Certainly a nice refresher. Here's a picture of our little Bear River Lutheran Church. This view is from our driveway. I can see the church from my bedroom even!


Today is our first trip to the dump as well. This should be interesting! I think I'm going to take the camera along just to document our country living at its finest. More to come!