One Year Anniversary!

I can't believe it! ONE ENTIRE YEAR IN MONROE, LA! It seems like just yesterday I was packing up and heading South. I have learned so much about myself since I left and realized I truly am stronger than I thought! I am so happy I have taken this journey and excited to see what the next year has to bring.

I decided to go to Dallas this last weekend to hang out with some if my friends from Great Bend. I stopped there on my way to Monroe, so I thought it was pretty fitting. We had a great time with lots of laughs. It is always so fun to talk with people you don't see as often as you used to, and still feel like it was just yesterday you were in school together. 

Friday we were able to just hang out and relax at Colton and Brent's house. Keith got done recruiting much earlier than planned, so he was able to join as well. Saturday, I was able to meet up with my mom who was in town for a PEO convention. We had lunch together and enjoyed catching up. It is always so good to see my family, especially when it's not planned! The rest of the day was devoted to laying around and watching football. Although, most of our teams were all on bye, we found plenty of games to watch and grill out to. I had such a great time being with friends. 

Weekend Tailgates

Football season has arrived again! Which means, lots of food, friends, and fun! I have enjoyed being able to attend so many different kinds of tailgates throughout the years.  In Kansas, we take this stuff very seriously and are always prepared on what/where I will be attending a football game and what/where we will be enjoying all the festivities before and after.  Here in Louisiana it has been a little different.
For ULM, our second game was our opening home game. I was so excited as I prepared for this weekend to come, and then realized, I have a  bunch of friends who are coaches, which means, recruiting season.  I talked with the few who would be available and decided we would just wing it.  I then realized, I do not really know where I am supposed to tailgate. Here at ULM, our tailgating area is called "The Grove", which is actually very cool, if you are a booster and have a spot already lined up.  The open area is for ULM students, and as much as I wish I could still hang with them, I am too old, know very few, and probably wouldn't last long. After we walked around looking for someone, anyone, we knew, we failed and it was time to head into the game.

Weekend two was upon us and it was an away game. I decided that I would have people over and have the game set up on the TV. I cooked a little, mainly cheese dip and chips, grilled some burgers and enjoyed a "low key" day of hanging out and watching  tv.

Weekend three was finally here and I was pumped. I was heading to Waco, TX to watch ULM play Baylor. As this weekend approached, we were making sure everything was in check and went to check on hotel rooms. Well apparently it was Baylor's Parents weekend and anyroom we could find was $160+. Um, no thank you. So again, plans changed and it was a football "tailgate" at home. This time though, I wasnt messing around. We had quite the crew, over 20 lbs of meat grilled, including ribs, boudin, sausage, lil smokies, and hamburger cheese dip.  We had mulitple yard games and lots of fun. Unfortunatly, not many games turned out the way we had hoped, and some were very difficult to watch :(. But all in all, I finally got the "tailgate" that I had been waiting for all season. 

We have another home game this weekend and looking forward to preparing a little better and figuring out what/where I need to be!

Floating into Cajun Country

What a wonderful weekend we encountered for Labor Day. My parents decided to come down and I thought it was a great idea! Keith and I had talked, and we decided since we were going to miss the opening football game of ULM, we wanted to do something neither of us had done before. My dad got an idea about going to South Louisiana and staying with some of his relatives that lived in St. Charles. For those of you that do not know, North and South Louisiana are practically two different states.

The weekend started on Friday when Dad and Mom flew into Monroe. (A much better way to get here if I do say so myself) When we got off work at 11:30, we headed South. We arrived a little before supper and enjoyed talking to everyone.  Pat and Trudy had made an unbelievable dinner for us with Sausage Boudan, Bacon Wrapped Deer, and Stuffed Shrimp and Crawfish Chicken. A true Cajun meal. I have definitely grown in my food choices here and actually tried and ate all of this.

Saturday was an early morning. It was supposed to be earlier, but I put a stop to that, it was my vacation and being up on a boat at 5:30am was not my thinking.  So 7:00 we all awoke and headed to Lake Charles. We headed South immediately and about 20 minutes until we reached the Gulf of Mexico. We immediately started fishing and waited for them to bite.  As I was told numerous times the earlier you arrive the better the fishing, so we were already off a couple hours, but sure enough, Keith felt a tug and started to reel in his fish. This kind of fishing is not just reeling it in though. It is more of a process and luckily we had Pat, an avid fisherman. It took about 10 minutes and Keith finally reeled  in an 8-10 pound Red Tail. We all thought it was very exciting and Keith's weekend had been made. We tried fishing a bit longer, but due to the time and weather, we did not have much more luck. 

We headed back North to some good places to go crabbing. On our way, we got behind some shrimp boats that were luring lots of different birds and dolphins. yes, dolphins! There were multiple of them, all swimming around our boat. We stopped and just enjoyed all of them coming out of the water for us. Of course, actually getting them in pictures was kind of difficult, but we did what we could.

We then arrived to our crabbing destinations. Due to the weather, the crabbing was also kind of difficult. It has been so hot lately that they could feel when they were getting close to the top, they would let go of the chicken legs we had dangling from string. We did catch some though and also realized some of us were better at pulling them in and some were better at actually netting them. I, however, was not very good at either. It still was a great time and I enjoyed every minute of it.





After we had giving up on fishing Pat and Trudy wanted to show us around St. Charles on the boat. We headed all around, grabbed some lunch and headed back to the ramp. It was so much fun getting to do these new things and enjoying some time out on the lake. When we returned back to their house, they had another great supper planned. We grilled the fish Keith had caught, had some great trout topped with a shrimp mixture. We concluded the night with updates from the ULM game, and a of course, we had to watch the LSU vs TCU game.  After a long day, everyone was tired and headed for bed. 

Sunday we headed back to Monroe with a stop on the way. We decided to go back and a little out of the way and headed to Shreveport. They have a very cool Boardwalk and shopping center so we spent a little time there and headed back to Monroe. We enjoyed some grilling by Keith and of course some card playing. 

Monday was our last day but we didn't let that slow us down. We headed to campus, grabbed mom some Starbucks, and took a quick tour around campus. It was hot and humid so we didn't stay long. We then headed out to Duck Commander, a must see for all visitors, and enjoyed my dads enthusiasm for this stop. We ate some lunch, played some more cards and then took them to the airport. 

It was a great weekend! I am so glad they were able to come and enjoy such a fun time!