May 3rd: I am the proud owner of three hermit crabs!! I already had two (Becky and Bob) in a very small, purple tank. Saturday May 3rd, Jordan bought two and I bought one more (Boris) hermit crab. Jordan let me use his 10 gallon tank for my three hermit crabs. I helped him set up his enormous tank for his enormous crabs!! Throughout the month he has purchased four large hermit crabs of his own and they live in a 55 gallon aquarium that he had received as a gift about ten years ago. Once we move in together we will probably have to keep the large hermit crabs separate from the smaller ones because the smaller ones would likely get smashed! Feeding these hermits crabs can be tedious and cleaning the aquariums can take some time, but having hermit crabs as a pet is fun! We have started another blog called Hermit Crab Crazy, which will soon contain pictures and information about our crabs when we get the chance to put that all together.
May 4th: Jordan and I went up to the cities and spent the day with my sister and my cousin at the Minnesota Zoo!!!!! We had a great time walking around the zoo. It had been YEARS since I had seen all of it. Jayna and I went there when we were younger but I don't have that much memory of it. I do remember going on the train way up high. The best parts were the dolphin show, the prairie dogs, the farm equipment (Noah's favorite), the wolves, tropical fish and lots more!!
May 8th-11th: This weekend Jordan and I took Friday off of work to go up to Fargo/Moorhead for two days. One of my friends, Meghan was graduating. I had wanted to go up there all year but hadn't had a change to go. Thursday after work we left Rochester. It was a long 5 hour drive (I had forgotten how long it was). We had a great time talking and laughing together the whole car ride up. We stopped at Fergus Falls and got a Culvers ice cream treat to help us stay awake the last hour before we arrived in Moorhead. Thursday night we stayed at Ben and Bill's apartment. We arrived at midnight and Bill was nice enough to have set up the aero-bed mattress on the floor of their living room. We were so tired that we immediately went to bed.
We were awoken the next morning to the wonderful smell of hot cinnamon rolls. That day was filled with graduation celebrations. We attended the graduation ceremony and I learned that it was President Barden's last year as President of MSUM. We took pictures after the ceremony and Meghan's family was nice enough to treat us all to dinner at Bennigan's. We then went back to Meghan and Julie's apartment where we stayed Friday night. Soon after dinner, my old ARC buddy wanted to get together. So Jordan and I picked her up and we all went to a local coffee shop. I had an italian soda which I found out was very very good! We had a great time talking about movies, TV shows, music and life. After we brought Hanna back to her house, it was time to go out to downtown Fargo! We met up with Ben and a few of his friends from the cities and Paul and a bunch of his roommates came a long too! We had a great time socializing. We didn't stay out too long and as we were driving back to Meghan and Julie's--we decided that it's a good thing we weren't in college anymore. We couldn't keep up with this lifestyle of drinking and staying up all night! The next morning we left Fargo/Moorhead semi-early in the pouring rain. Had breakfast at Village Inn then made our way back to the cities in time for the TWINS game!!!
May 17th-18th: This weekend was a lot of fun!! First thing, we finally got to go ring shopping at Arthur's Jewelers! Before we went in, we were like "what are we supposed to do?" and I was a little nervous cause I hadn't done this before. But once we walked in we could see all of the bright and shiny diamond rings. They were beautiful! A woman who worked there immediately came up to us and asked us if we needed help. We said we were looking into engagement rings. She asked me a bunch of questions which I didn't have the faintest idea what she was talking about or how to answer. But she was very friendly and as she was getting our drinks, we had a chance to look around. It took a while to find the perfect one but I found one that I had my heart set on. My first impression was, wow, this ring is a lot like Lynn's ring! But it's a little bit different. We even got the see the diamond and how it would look in the ring, it was gorgeous! After putting the ring on hold and finding the ring of my dreams, the next stop was my grandparents house where all of my family were. Jordan told me not to act too giddy or excited around them.
That same day we watched my cousin perform in the Chang-Mi Korean dance spring performance. Before the show started, we ate Korean food chap-chae and kim-bap. Jordan bought two sets of chopsticks. We sat by my relatives and saved seats for my parents. The best part about the performance was the last dance...the drumming! The dragons on top of the stands were hand-crafted by my dad.
On the way back from the cities, we were hungry and decided to stop at our favorite pizza place- punch pizza in Uptown. Then we headed back to Austin and got back around 11:00pm. It was a fun day!!
The next day we went to the Hormel Nature Center where we took a nature walk in the woods it was a beautiful day! There were bluebells and other wildflowers out and about. Can you see the wildflowers in the background?
May 24th-26th: Since Wednesday, I was in charge of watching my friend Kaia's 5 month old puppy, Chuck. I wanted to come home on Friday night to spend time with Jordan. Jordan has a dog named Lucy so we figured that I could bring Chuck to Rochester and socialize the dogs for the evening. Lucy and Chuck had a great time playing together. Chuck followed me around the house wherever I went, Chuck went too. He was not happy when he was separated from me. We took them to various pet stores around Rochester and bought treats and food. That night, I slept downstairs on Jordan's couch with Chuck in the cage- facing me so he wasn't scared. He whined a few times before settling in.
The next morning I let the dogs out at 7:00am and woke everyone up! Oops! Then we let the dogs play more and we tried to go for a short walk. Puppies are a lot of work!! About halfway through the day, we drove down to Pepin with two dogs in the explorer. I helped Jordan and his family put the boat in and we got to go for a short ride. That day it was VERY windy (felt like we were on the ocean). Chuck had never been on a boat before but I think he had a good time. We gave the dogs two bones, one for each and Lucy was very protective of her bone. Since it was so windy on the boat, we ate dinner at the trailer while the dogs slept. After we got back to Rochester around 9:00 we decided to take Chuck back to Austin. We dropped him off and said goodnight to him and told him we'd check on him in the morning.Memorial Day, we decided to go on a picnic and a hike. Since neither one of us had been to Whitewater State Park since the flood, I wanted to go see how different it was. We ate a picnic lunch there. The swimming pond was no longer there but the picnic grounds looked the same. We decided to drive to Carly, the sister state park of whitewater to go on our nature hike. We saw some wildflowers and walked about a mile maybe. It was fun and it was a beautiful day!!
May 31st-June 1st: This weekend we were going to go to the cities, but I was not feeling well and didn't want to make my grandmother, who is in a temporary nursing home, sick. So we just hung out in Rochester this weekend. I brought my beta fish home for Jordan to look after. We bought a new tank for him which had a bubbler. I needed to give back the original fish tank he was in to Kaia who let me borrow that one. We set that tank up and put him in there. I don't think he liked it very well because the next weekend, he died. My fish hadn't been eating much lately.
In other news, I have an interview in Byron next Thursday. So in the case I get offered the job and work with the Zumbro Education District next year, we decided to go house and apartment hunting. We looked all over the Rochester area for possible rentals. We even looked at a few houses for sale but those were out of our price range. The one place that Jordan liked the best (besides the single family homes) was the Sunset Trail apartments in Rochester. We will keep looking and see how that goes!