Band Day 2

Well we've come full circle folks.  We've experienced our second Band Day here in Williston.  It was last Saturday but I'm finally having a moment to write about it.  Tanner and I had a lot of fun last year and even though it really isn't the most awesome parade in all of history, it's still a pretty big part of Williston history and it's definitely something fun to get out and do.  This year was especially fun because we actually know people now after living here a year and we saw people we knew in the parade and we sat by some of our fav's from our ward. 

There's quite a few people that come out for this.  I was rather impressed.  There are bands from all over ND and the surrounding areas.  Even Canada.  This year they had a band from Florida that was on America's Got Talent.  Williston's going big time!  They were the first band...

...and they were really good.  I think they played at the park some after but we didn't hang around for all the stuff at the park later.

Apparently it wasn't all just marching bands, either.  Also they had several bands that were just little tiny kids.  It was impressive.  The floats weren't much to speak of.  This one was probably the fanciest...

And then there were a bunch of other random things going down the road.  Some made sense.  Some didn't at all.  Lots of "miss" something or other.  Really random stuff too.  I didn't take too many pictures of those.  But I'm sure it was fun for all the girls to dress up and get the spotlight for a day :)

Precious

Our friend's the McBride's and the LaPierre's had girls in a dance class and they got to ride in the parade.  That's them in the front corner closest to us.

These guys were jamming out pretty good.  Tanner appreciated the stache on the guy in the middle.

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I thought this dog looked so funny just hanging out over the side.  Just another truck driving in the parade because it can I guess.

And like that special "float" above...there were a bunch of HUGE semi's driving in the parade and big oil equipment trucks, etc.  Only in Williston.

I missed the a pic of the biggest red oil something.  Aren't you so disappointed you don't get to see it?
It was fun sitting by our friends with kids - watching them all scramble for all the candy that gets thrown out.  Parades are ALWAYS better when there's massive amounts of candy being thrown out.  Alex figured out early that the more you wave the better your chances are.  And Edison refused to look at me but I still love this picture!

So yeah.  Band Day.   Every year with Band Day, they have an old car show.  Last year we didn't go but this year two guys from Tanner's work had cars in it so he wanted to go support them.  So we wandered around there for a bit and then Tanner hung out there for a while with his work buds because I had to go play the piano at a baptism.

After that we went up to the golf course and Tanner helped teach me some stuff while we practiced at the driving range and practice green.  It was fun.  My new Mother's Day clubs came this week and I'm hoping it doesn't rain today so we'll get to go use them.  Anyway...after that we got to babysit for our parade friends - both getting out to celebrate anniversary's and such.  We rocked the watching 6 little kids like pro's :)

And that about sums it up.  Here's to another successful Band Day in Williston. Till next year...

Paddlefish

The sport of paddlefish fishing is apparently pretty big here in North Dakota.  The first time I ever heard about them was Saturday when one of my friends from work mentioned that we should go check out the people doing it.  The season is only open for a month, starting May 1st.  It can end sooner if they catch 1000 before the end of May.  This is all stuff I've learned in like the last 2 days.  Apparently you can eat the fish but the big thing is the roe is used for caviar.  Fancy pants expensive caviar coming from Williston.  Pretty impressive, huh?

After church yesterday we decided to take the dogs for a drive out to the Missouri and Yellowstone river confluence (about 40 minutes or so from our house).  I don't think there were as many people as there could be there, but there were still about 20 people lined up along the bank of the river with their special fishing rods and weights and hooks.

There's a weight at the end of the line and then about 2 feet up there's the "snagger" (I just made that up) that has 4 hooks on it.  They cast out pretty far and then reel in a bit, slide it upstream, reel in some more, slide it upstream again, etc etc - the goal being to snag a paddlefish with the hook.  The fish don't actually bite the hook - there's no bait- it just gets snagged anywhere along its body but the monster hook.  Kind of interesting.  We scored because like 5 minutes after we got there someone caught one.  We hung around a little longer after that and didn't see any more snags so we were pretty happy about that. 

 

We don't know any of these people but I wasn't shy about crashing their picture party.  Dude - it was our first time seeing a paddlefish - can you blame me?  And look at em go.  They're crazy looking!  They don't have teeth.  They just have these filter things and they swim keeping their mouths open getting their food.  Their "rostrums" (long noses) can sense weak electrical fields made by their food.  Pretty cool I say.    They can live up to 60 years.  They come to the confluence each year to lay their little eggs.  If you're dying to have more info on them, this site was pretty cool: http://gf.nd.gov/fishing/paddlefish-questions-and-answers#2

It was probably more torture for the dogs.  Especially Samson.  Oh man he wanted to get in the water soooo bad.  Didn't really care to have him snagged up by the many fisherman so we kept them both away - much to their dismay.  But it was a fun little excursion and cool to experience something totally Williston.  Maybe we'll get a little more up close and personal next year now that we actually know about this.  Thanks Jami for the heads up :)

One Year...

Exactly one year ago today, Tanner and I were driving across the country to start off on a wild and crazy new adventure together in North Dakota.  I repeat my sentiments of last year that if anyone had asked me where I might see myself living in the future 5 or 10 years ago...North Dakota never, EVER would have even made the list.  But here we are.  One year later.  And my how the time has flown.  And guess what...we still like it here.  In honor of this momentous holiday, we thought we'd jot down a few of the things we have really come to like and appreciate about Williston. 

• We think the people here are great.  The lady we bought our sweet mobile home from had dinner in the oven for us and some other things stocked in the fridge when we drove into town late evening.  Another person from work we hardly knew let us borrow a tv for a week or so before our moving truck got here.  It was a great beginning and  we really have not been disappointed since with the great people that we've met from here.  
• We've also met a TON of great people not from here.  We really love our ward.  We have made some excellent friends and feel so grateful to be surrounded by people who believe the same as we do.  I was kind of expecting we'd have to drive really far to get to church and the congregation would be small, but our church is a 15 minute walk from our house.  And there are two ward right here in Williston.  
• Along with those lines we are grateful for the opportunities to serve and share the gospel in a place where it is pretty new and lots of people here who have never heard of us "Mormons" :)  Granted we aren't the best at that but we're working on it!
• We LOVE our jobs.  Tanner really likes the people he works with and he has an awesome boss that really likes him too (I don't blame him).  He likes what he does and he's learning a lot and it's interesting stuff and he's already got a promotion (technically you aren't supposed to be able to move up or change jobs till a year...but he's awesome like that).  We feel so blessed that he got this job and has great hours and benefits and hardly ever has to work weekends, etc.  That's been great.  And I've almost been at mine a whole year too (May 7th is officially a year at Mercy).  And I have met lots of cool people - love the nurses I work with, love (most of) the docs, and my other mid-level peeps too!  I really enjoy meeting all the people that come through there.  Sometimes it makes me so grateful my life is the way it is because there are a lot of crazy, sad people out there.  And other times it's so fun to have conversations with folks because there's so many interesting stories and how people came to be here and what they do, etc etc.  And I have learned sooo much!  I still feel incredibly inadequate a lot of the time but I am noticing a lot more comfort in managing a lot of things.  That's a lot of a lots.  Anyway - point is it's fun to see progress.  It's fun to keep learning and it's fun to constantly be challenged.  Couldn't be happier with this career.  Working in the ER is awesome and I really can't picture myself ever doing anything else.  (watch it - I've said those words before...refer to above - so ya never know).
• I love that everything is so close.  I only drive 5 minutes to and from work and fill my car up maybe once every two months on average.  Awesome.
• Golf course.  Now it's not the nicest course ever - but it's a golf course.  And it keeps Tanner happy for a good chunk of the year.  We even got family passes this year.  I've spent the majority of my life being a golf hater - since being married to Tanner that has slowly been changing.  And I even went golfing with him for the first time.  And by with him I mean I actually golfed.  And I had fun.  And didn't do too terrible.  Who woulda thought I'd be a golfer?  Again...not me.  Isn't life funny like that?  I think so.  
• I love that we are right on the border of mountain time zone, so in the summer - the days are extra long.  It's fun being outside at 10 or even 11 o'clock for part of the summer and it still being light enough to shoot hoops, etc. 
• Love that we have a self serve frozen yogurt place here now :) 
• As much as winter sucks and is long - I must say that I kind of like feeling tough that I've survived a ND winter.  And posting when it's negative 50 and making everyone feel sorry for me.  Haha.  Just kidding.  But I do feel like we've earned some sort of street cred by living here through a winter.  
• And as much as we miss our family - Tanner and I have really grown a lot together by being up here away from everyone.  We've just got each other - and it's been fun having so much time to spend just with each other.  And experiencing this crazy together.  And having to survive this craziness together :)  
• Love love love the sunrises and sunsets.  Seems like there's always lots of good ones.
• It's fun to search out beauty and learn to see beauty in things that we wouldn't normally attribute as beautiful.  God made North Dakota too and he obviously see's beauty here so we are learning to as well.
• It's been fun having to use our creativity to think of things to do.  I love eating out but honestly, it's been kind of nice not always eating out.  We've played lots of games and are picking up new hobbies that we probably never would have.  Cross country skiing (hopefully we'll have a lot more chances this year to go), we just got fly fishing stuff, got an aquarium and are sure learning a lot about that.  I think it's been good to realize and learn to make your own happy.  It's hard to be away from things we have grown up with - family and mountains especially.  And yeah it's a little hard to have limited opportunities to do things.  But really - you can be happy anywhere you are and even though I'm not perfect at that - Williston is sure giving me lots of opportunities to learn and grow and develop those kind so skills.  And I'm grateful to be living here for that.  

So yeah.  Williston really isn't so bad.  We're looking forward to this upcoming year and whatever excitement, challenges and fun it might bring. 

Mini Vaca

Living in Williston means that any departure from here, even a short timed and short distanced one, turns into a little vacation.  What I've also realized, is not having kids or dogs with us means most of the excitement of little things like this ends up without pictures.  No one really cares to see me or Tanner eating or walking.  Unfortunately we just aren't that cute.  But last weekend we did get to steal away Friday after Tanner got off of work.  We spent the whole weekend with our good friends Sara and Joe Lawson.  Some of the things that were awesome were...

-Eating at Buffalo Wild Wings
-Cold Stone.  I'm pretty sure that might be my favorite restaurant. 
-Music (Joe likes a lot of the same stuff that I do, but that Tanner does not :) so it was fun (more for me) to jam out to good tunes the whole way down and back!)
-Temple in Bismarck
-Shopping at the mall - pretzels and golf shirt sales.
-Outback Steakhouse.  Oh man I love those rolls. 
-We got back to Minot and Tanner and I decided we still wanted to see 42 so we left Joe and Sara and went to the theater - only to be disappointed with a sold out show.  Nuts.  So we went to Target instead and shopped more, which was pretty fun in and of itself.  Oh the wonders of the big city :)

So yep - that was it.  Doesn't seem like much but I had a ton of fun.  Joe even showed us some cool fly fishing videos.  Tanner and I are both getting quite excited for our trip in a few months.  Now it's back to work for me for a week.  And in other big news - Tanner got a new job!  He's now a gauger for Enbridge.  He got a bit of a raise and he's excited about learning new things and having new challenges.  This is also a better position for future upward motility too, so that's all good news.  His boss really likes him and he's doing an awesome job and likes the people he works for a lot and the company is just great in general, so we feel pretty blessed!

A boring and (mostly) pictureless update...

Let's see.  There's been a few blog worthy things that have happened in the last week. Or at least some things I care to remember. I just have very limited pictures to show for it.

Work has still been going good.  We had an interesting weekend a bit ago.  Four gunshots in 3 days.  One was actually a murder outside the strip club.  There was a lot of chaos right after it happened (shocking, huh?) and so the ambulance just grabbed the victim quick and brought him to the ER, but he was already gone.  Then there was a suicide that came in - he made it about halfway to Minot.  He passed away on the plane.  Those two obviously a little more dramatic, sad, pathetic - whatever you want to call it.  Another one was a guy that accidentally shot himself in the foot.  And last but not least, an older guy at the shooting range was trying to teach his sister how to shoot and as he was handing a hand gun over to her, it went off and shot him in the Peter.  Nothing but the finest up here.

Also in work updates - even though my mom might be the only one that cares - we hired a new PA and so now my schedule has changed.  I'll be working 10-10 now instead of 11-11.  Which is glorious.  And I'll work WThFS, off Sunday, work MTW, then off for 6 days.  Then the cycle starts again.  I may pick up another Saturday here or there, but somehow - things are working out that I don't think I'll hardly ever have to work Sundays - which is an incredible blessing that I am so grateful for!  Anyway - it's confusing maybe but it's awesome and mostly I'm excited about a 6 day off stretch.  Although I have been toying the idea around of getting a job with a traveling company that covers some clinics and ERs in some closer towns to fill in some of those days.  Figure while I've got the opportunity, time and energy to work hard - I might as well.  We'll see...

Speaking of Sundays and such - last weekend was general conference.  I love those two weekends a year so much.  Conference is awesome in general, but I love not having to get up and ready for church and to be able to snack all day :)  We had some friends, Sara and Joe come over Saturday.  They used to be in our ward but recently moved to Minot and so we don't get to see them as much anymore.  So they came and we ate dinner and watched conference and hung out.  Sara and I did a puzzle and then when the boys went to the priesthood session, we went for a walk.  We followed it up with frozen yogurt at My Swirl.  We thought how if that frozen yogurt place was in Utah - it would have been JAM packed with men in suits right after priesthood got out, or packed with girls while it was going on.  It was pretty quiet when we went. A tad bit different up here.

The next day I was left to my own puzzling devices.

Rozzi kept coming up to the table and her mouth was just the right height.  She'd set her face up on the table and when she'd take a step back, there'd be 4-5 pieces stuck in her slobbery jowls.  Nice.  Obviously I didn't get them all back...

It was fun to have the whole weekend off with Tanner.  I even had a couple days off at the beginning of the week.  We made our first trip to the racquetball courts in town.  It made my heart happy.  I think he even had fun...maybe we'll go some more.  I'm looking so forward to our new gym - due next Spring - where we can do anything and everything we want all under one roof and one monthly payment.  Now we have to work out, swim and play racquetball at 3 different buildings.

Oh - and it's snowing today.  And by snowing I mean winter storm warning/blizzard in April type snowing.  Not cool.  Oh well.  Life is still good and we have lots to be grateful for.  Hopefully we'll have some better excitement in the next week :)

Antelope Island and other Easter festivities

The way Easter fell on the weekend between months, Tanner would be able to take 3 days off without using his regular stash of PTO, so we decided we'd take a quick trip to Utah.  We left early afternoon Wednesday as soon as Tanner got off work and drove the whole 13 hrs to Layton.  Thursday we had a lot of time to ourselves while everyone in his family was working.  I went for an amazing run with shorts and t-shirt.  Tanner took a little drive with his dad.  Then he and I went to the golf course across the street and he got to use his new clubs he got for Christmas for the first time.  It was basically love at first swing.  He was a happy boy!

I was just happy to sit outside and watch.  But I did get to swing at a few leftover balls when he was done and didn't do too shabby.  Maybe I'll actually attempt to learn some stuff this summer.  The rest of the afternoon we spent outside sitting in the sun chatting and relaxing till his family came home.  Then we just hung out with them, got dinner and self serve frozen yogurt (and my yogurt weight was the exact magical weight they had announced for the day and so I got it half off.  It was sweet!).  We went to bed pretty early since we had gotten in so late.

The next morning I dropped off the dogs at the "spa".  Both were getting pretty shaggy looking and needed a good grooming.  Tanner went golfing with his brother and I drove home to my parents.  My dad and I went for a long run with my mom riding along on her bike.  Then the rest of the day was spent outside playing volleyball, playing ping pong in the garage, eating pizza and playing games.  My brother and sister-in-law came over with their little girl and new Bernese puppy.  He was so adorable and just looked like a little stuffed animal alive.

Saturday was the Great Stoddard Easter Egg Hunt.  We've had this tradition for the past 9 or so years, and it continues to evolve.  My dad is crazy creative and puts so much time and effort into the planning and preparing of it.  It's a tradition for him and my mom to go around the day before and hide all the eggs together.  It's probably my most favorite family tradition so I was so happy we didn't have to miss it this year.  Basically this year went something like this.  We had these tools to work with:

We got a clue to find our first egg  hidden somewhere at our house. Then when we found that, we had instructions for each couple, with the tools they would need, to find our couple's egg.  Tanner and I had to use the tape measure and compass for our first one.  Then, in each couple's egg, were a couple pieces to a real puzzle and a couple paper pieces.  The actually puzzle pieces went into a bag (needed later) and we had to put the paper puzzle pieces together which gave us a GPS location to drive to, and then walk precisely to that location, where we all searched for one large egg that had instructions for each couple to find their eggs...and so on and so forth.

That first egg led us to Antelope Island, where we spent the rest of the whole afternoon.  The weather was glorious, the dogs were in heaven and I couldn't be happier!

Ben, Julie and Adi

The whole crew, minus my mom the photographer.

My youngest sisters, Kathryn (R) and Laura (L)

Tanner verifying our distance with the range finder

Rozzi doesn't ever hold still...

Heather, Shane and Austin

My parents - the masterminds behind this awesomeness.

 Lunch break!  Delicious hogie sandwiches, homemade sugar cookies, fruit and chips. 

 This is the second to last spot.  Our instructions had 3 parts - a compass degree and certain footage we used the long tape measure for.  From there, another compass degree and footage, and one final time.  Lots of room for error, and we ended up out in the middle of a big field.  With a little encouragement we found both our eggs tucked in some field fluff. 

 This also was the spot where we had all the actual puzzle pieces collected (NO eggs had gone unfound in all of this process...pretty amazing).  We did this little Avenger/hologram puzzle out in the field, which gave us the final coordinates. 

We didn't get a bunch of pictures at the last place.  But we got to the coordinate and then all the eggs were just hidden around that spot.  In each egg was a little strip of paper saying to find the easter bunny and exchange that ticket for a prize.  All the "big kids" got gift cards to Scheels.

This is my super cute niece loving her stuffed bunny she got.  She loves stuffed animals!  Oh man - it was such a fun day!  After that we drove back home and had a barbecue and a little birthday party for my brother and sister who were having birthday's the next week.

Sunday was our last day and we got to spend it with the Niederhauser's.  Everyone was there and Mimi and Papa had done a fun little Easter egg hunt for the nieces and nephews.  That was fun running around outside watching and helping them.  It was 70 degrees that day and was so beautiful!  We had a delicious dinner and just spent the rest of the evening basking in the warmth and soaking up as much of that and as much family fun as we could before having to hit the sack for a very early departure back to Williston.

 Family is seriously the best.  We both feel so grateful to have such wonderful families and in-laws!  It was a perfect way to spend a holiday celebrating the event that makes it possible to be with them forever!