2011.........year in review

Ok, so I am bad at updating this thing! Here is a recap for 2011, then I will get caught up on 2012 and hopefully be MUCH better at staying on top of this!

Early 2011 started out with snow.......and lots of it! This is the Tennessee Aquarium plaza........several staff members stayed in hotels downtown so they could get to work, and then they shoveled pathways to each building! It was 3-4 inches everywhere, maybe even more! I walked to work and you could not tell where the curb was or see any difference between the road and the sidewalk!

Logan and I also discovered this great new miniature golf place downtown! (PS - Miniature Golf was invented by the man who opened Rock City in the 1920's-1930's......originally called Tom Thumb golf because of the fairy tale theme of Rock City-Chattanooga started mini golf folks!) It is one of our favorites, and we usually win a free round or a complimentary soda when we play! For my birthday we played mini golf and ate at our favorite breakfast place, Aretha Frankenstein's, known for their "monster" biscuits!



Scenic City Mini Golf





mmmm.........biscuit!





Spring 2011 brought a trip to Nashville to celebrate A's birthday, and also a trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky to visit O at her graduate school. We toured the Corvette Museum and had a blast! Keely also graduated from RBHS and I got to bike down from the Aquarium to watch her walk-go Keely!





Congrats Keely, from Ranger Rick!



Remember when we took our Corvette to the beach?!






Summer 2011-What a blast! Logan and I kicked our summer into gear with a bicycle ride the the dam and back, that's 14 miles round trip! Not a huge trek, but it is always tiring and so much fun! We always stop and admire scenery, and this time we saw a HUGE common snapping turtle! We got as close as we dared, but she was so big! We also did our annual trip to the Chattanooga Lookouts baseball game with Kirby and Elijah. They love hanging out with Logan and me, but sometimes I worry they talk his ear off! There was a visit to the Incline, a trip to Dollywood with Logan's family, E's birthday on July 4th, and the highlight of the summer, CHICAGO!!! Yes, O, E, Logan, and I took a road trip to Chicago to visit Ryan and we did so much sightseeing in just 3 days! It was hot but I had never been in such a big, bustling city, and seeing the Shedd Aquarium, the "Married with Children" fountain, the Museum of Science and Industry, and being right on the Great Lakes was so much fun! I want to go back!!!


Big mama snapping turtle!



Screamin' Demon and Blue Thunder at the dam



The boys at the Lookouts game



My new favorite attraction at Dollywood!





Incline Railway, Lookout Mountain, TN



Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, IL



Very close to Ryan's apartment-so cool!



Chicago 2011...the whole gang!



The Bean...........very unique art



In the Willis (formerly the Sears) Tower-standing in a glass window with nothing below us!! AH!

Finally Fall and Winter 2011 was filled with Logan's birthday, some fabulous mini golf at Grand Ole Golf, a visit from my great friend Tia (although it wasn't an easy trip with car trouble and a sick child), Thanksgiving, a Creative Discovery Museum play that Kirby and Eli worked on, a trip to Rock City's Enchanted Garden of Lights, and lots of fun!!!

Kicking some serious booty at Grand Ole Golf



Emilia, Tia, Everett, and Me!




Ha! Gobblers!



All in all, a great year!

Catching up! Part 1:The chick

Well, it's been a while, deal with it!
I have had an incredibly busy summer, and this fall seems slower paced, something I welcome. I spent the summer raising a Gentoo penguin chick. Well, not entirely by myself, but between the chick's mom, myself, and the keepers who filled in on my days off. The father was a little clueless this year on his role, so Biscuit was a single mom. Every few days she needed some time off, but overall she was a fantastic mom! Each day I would carefully weigh the chick, sometimes more than once a day, and make sure he/she was getting enough to eat. Some days the chick would lose weight, and we would have to feed it more food, in addition to what mom was feeding. The first few times we did that was tricky, because the chick was so tiny it had to be fed by a tube. That was scary, because the risk of the formula going into the chick's lungs is pretty high, and we were afraid it would choke. Thankfully, all went fine, and the chick didn't need any other assisted feedings until it was old enough to swallow chunks of fish. That was easier, but messier! The chunks of herring were dipped in formula and then fed to the chick, who swallowed and would then sling his head so that formula went flying everywhere!


How do you make formula you ask? Well..........it's a combination of yeast, water, vitamins (penguin's and infant's), krill, herring filets (no bones-not easy to do!), and vitamin e drops.........blend in the blender and chill overnight. Not too complicated, but it only keeps for 24 hours, so we had to make it every day, because we never knew if we needed to feed him/her the next day or not! Plus, we had to make sure mom was eating enough too, so we kept track of her daily intake of fish and how many times we observed her feeding the chick, and whether or not it was a successful feeding. Regurgitated fish fed from a penguin is gross...and the poo from the chick is the foulest smell around!









ANYWHO............the chick is now 100 days old, and is swimming on his/her own! I was a nervous wreck the week we started introducing him to the other birds and the water. He/she had lived with the protection of an acrylic playpen surrounding the nest his entire life, so I was stressed. This animal I spent so much time caring for was about to be turned loose with the older, tougher birds. However, the chick is doing fantastic among the other birds!

In December we will take blood and send it off for determining the sex of the chick, so around the first of the year we will know. I say it's a male, but I said that last year and Pepper proved me wrong. This was only one of my many adventures this summer, but it'll take a while to get caught up. More on my summer, in the next entry! Look at chick on his/her own! ->

I'm Back!

Alright...it's been a while...a long while...here's a quick up to date...

Christmas was fun-Nathan came in for the holidays, and that was great to see him. Logan and I celebrated on a different day, because we each went to our families for Christmas day. We walked around downtown Chattanooga and looked at the lights, and that was so much fun! We got New Year's Eve together, complete with sparkling white grape juice and the NYC countdown.

February brought Valentine's Day and my 25th birthday. This was also the month that I returned to the stage after a 8 month break! I starred as "Elaine Harper" in the play "Arsenic and Old Lace". It was a blast, and almost all of Logan's family came down to see it! I share a birthday with the other girl cast as "Elaine" (we split the run of the show, she got closing weekend, I got opening weekend) and in between shows on our birthdays, almost the entire cast went out to lunch. The waiters brought us sombreros and dessert, and they sang to us-then Taylor (the other birthday girl) and I snuck out of the restaurant with the sombreros..........only to later find out that we actually got to keep them! The idea of being bandits on our birthdays seems cooler, so we are sticking with that story!

March brought a trip to Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina. I had never been there, and myself and a herpetologist from the aquarium went to see their collection and network with other keepers. Very cool-although the rain was not so much fun. March was also a tourist trip to Nashville for me and Logan, who was a great tour guide! We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame, looked around the Wildhorse Saloon, and walked down second avenue and all of the typical Nashville sights. We were going to tour the Ryman, but Kenny Chesney and the Steve Miller Band were recording a CMT Crossroads episode that night, and they were rehearsing in there. Security was tight, so we could hear them, but not go in. Bummer! We also went to the Nashville Zoo (a lot of animals were inside because it was so cold) but it was fun-especially the meerkats! We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe (Logan's first time to eat there) and we took tons of photographs!

April was the month of Logan's award-winning play! He wrote a play called "Life Without Tom", and it won a staged reading at the Chattanooga Theatre Center-very exciting! His family came in, and it was awesome to sit next to the writer of this piece that had everyone laughing and thinking. HE DID THAT! That's talent folks!

April also brought my debut as a mini-golfer, let's just say I need a lot of practice! Also, Logan helped me pick out a cruiser bike that would make any normal person insanely jealous.............and he helped me fit it inside my 4door Volvo! That was an award-winning performance, if i say so myself! Twenty minutes or so after we bought it, we had the front passenger seat rolled back as far as it went, the passenger window down, with the handlebars sticking out, and the driver's seat was rolled as far forward as it could go-with me still being able to fit in there to drive! Logan was in the backseat, straddling the seat rest from the front seat and I was laying on the steering wheel driving like a little old lady! Guess where the camera was. Not with us! We got the bike to my apartment without getting pulled over by the cops, and at the end of April, we took our bikes on a 14 mile round trip ride to the dam and back-that was so fun.......the start of summer!

What has May brought so far? Well, the one year marker from our first date, and what an amazing year. There will be plenty of other great moments this month and this year, and I can't wait to make them memorable! Here's to a great summer!

Ok, I will post something finally!

  I guess the first thing that happened since my last post was Logan's 27th birthday! It was fantastic, because one day while he was at work, I decorated his apartment with streamers and balloons and a homemade cookie cake (his fave). That afternoon I even dropped him off after work, and when I got two blocks away, I got a call from him thanking me-he really had no idea! What fun-I love surprising others with good things like that. (Pictures to come!)

Next was Halloween-nothing too dramatic this year, just the party at the aquarium and trick-or-treating that night. Lots of sugar and some sore feet from walking that night. Oh yeah, I was dressed up as a candy corn!

In November I took Leila to see "New Moon". There were lots of moms there and plenty of cheers for "team jacob" and "team edward"..............(sigh)...........I like the books, but the movies are only so-so for me.

Thanksgiving was fun-I got to go to Nashville (Brentwood, actually) and spend Thanksgiving with Logan's family. We ate at the best pizza place in the area, Sir Pizza, and played with wiener dog on Wednesday, then on Thursday, I got up and went for a nice run. Then, Logan and I made green bean casserole, mashed potatoes (completely homemade), and deviled eggs. We watched the Macy's Parade and then headed over to a gorgeous 'Gone with the wind' style house and had our turkey-day meal. There was even time for photos, and boy are there some crazy ones!

After that, to wrap up our day, we played some Mario party, and learned that I do not have the fastest fingers in the South, nor does Logan. That title is now shared by Logan's sister and his brother-in-law. Such fun!

WELL, now the countdown is on 'til Christmas, but there is so much to do in the meantime. Presents to wrap, housesitting and babysitting to do, work, laundry, and normal everyday things to take care of. It's the most wonderful time of the year, and the most exhausting!

I met Bryan White!

Back in the days before Logan and Keith Urban, I had a crush on Bryan White. The local radio station in town was sponsoring a free concert with Bryan and I won tickets! It was a great show, and he sang so many of his greatest hits, as well as a song from his new album. Logan was such a great sport about going with me and staying until the end so I could get photos and an autograph, even though he doesn't listen to country music. What a trooper!

So here's what I have been up to...

I have just been having too much fun to remember to let everyone know about it! I promise I will get better at posting more often-I have so much to write about! Logan and I have been several places this past summer. We shared a trip to Nashville to meet his family and his weiner dog, 2 trips to Dollywood, the chance to see the Kratt brothers from Zaboomafoo, a trip to the Lost Sea, a visit to the Mayfield Dairy, a Bryan White concert, trips to the movies (Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D!), and camping in the middle of nowhere Tennessee! There are some great stories in our adventures, and there will be more on each of them - just check out my other blog, "Memories"!

Blame it on Technology...

It's been too long since I have written anything up here, but the computers I have had access to just aren't working with blogger. It's something weird I am sure I won't understand if it was explained to me, so I will just blame it on technology and get over it.

So, a lot has happened since last post. I have been hanging out with Logan (he is so wonderful, couldn't ever meet anyone as selfless or caring or perfect!). My brothers and sisters are back in school, I attended the "World's Longest Yard Sale" with Logan (a first timer there!), my aunt came to visit, the penguin population at work changed several times, and I got a new phone and went with Verizon. More details, you say? Here goes.
I now have 2 siblings in Elementary, 2 in middle school, and 2 in high school. They like the new year so far, but it's still very early. The yard sale was fun, although all I found was little trinkets from 1980's cartoons, but I was excited. The chaos was cut down from 9 days to only 4 days, but that doesn't mean the crazy people still didn't show up. There were folks from California there!

My aunt let two of my siblings go to Baton Rouge with her, and she dropped them back off on her way to DC, she is moving there, looking for work. Best of luck to her.
The penguins at the Aquarium are so fun to work with, but the last month has brought crazy last-minute trips at night and early morning to feed a little chick. Sadly, that chick didn't make it, and of the 4 chicks that have hatched, 2 are still alive. One is 9 weeks old, only a week away from having adult feathers and going for a swim for the first time. I get to bring him/her (I say him, but we still don't know) in the backup area and play with him twice a day. I think he enjoys it, getting out of his playpen area on exhibit and seeing something new. I also preen him, which means I scratch away old feather shafts as the new feathers grow in, and I also keep his beak clean. These are things that penguins in the wild do for each other as a sign of affection. His parents help him preen, but it is a nice way for him to get used to human touch. The other chick is not even 2 weeks old, so it still has a long way to go-so far things look good for it, though!
Oh, and the phone...I switched to verizon, and I like it so far. My new number is 555-1212. (Yeah, like I would put that up there for the world to see!)

Well, until next time (which I promise won't be too far off)!