Working Hard or Hardly Working?

The answer: working hard, with a good amount of hardly working. Consulting projects are well underway and very time consuming. Coaching is picking up as we head out to dance camp, and choreography and workshops start popping up this month. But first, a little bit of play time. :)

My family upheld the tradition of staying in my grandfather's condo on the beach over the 4th of July. A beautiful view from the condo. We had a ton of time together as a family and got to spend more time than usual with my grandparents and aunt.

My mom and I love these little shops near the condo. We always find some cool stuff. This time we found a gift for my dad...

...yep, that is a fully functioning vintage traffic light. Why you ask? Well my dad loves everything having to do with cars and road signs. My parents' garage walls are covered with vintage oil signs, oil jars, and old license plates from his "toy cars" that he collected and sold over the years. Pretty cool, huh?

That next week, my brother and I got to experience a concert by Kenny Chesney with performances by Kasey Musgraves and Zac Brown Band at Target Field in Minneapolis, MN. 

Aww, sibling love. :) 

Outdoor concerts are absolutely amazing. And this one was no exception. It was an awesome July night in downtown Minneapolis, country music in the air, and cowboy hats and cowboy boots everywhere. (Pardon the rhyming..) 

Truth be told, I enjoyed Zac Brown Band the most out of all the acts. The next person who finds me ZBB tickets to purchase will be my new best friend. I've been listening to them nonstop since that concert. The Zac Brown Band station on Pandora is phenomenal. Just saying :)

Like I said, there was some "work" that went along with the "play"...if you want to call it work. I had the opportunity to spend time with the wonderful Karl Mundt a few times this summer. I assisted him with dance workshops across the country and even helped him choreograph a few routines! 

Another "first" of this summer was my first visit to Portland, OR with Shelby, Courtney, and Karl. Yep, we were on a rooftop restaurant...pretty sweet! Portland was a beautiful city, and I loved being able to teach dance to high school and college students in the same week with some amazing coworkers. I'm not sure that I'm cut out to live on the west coast, but I'd definitely visit again. (Spoiler alert! I may or may not have visited again in October to choreograph the University of Oregon's nationals routine for 2014! Videos to follow, post-nationals of course!)

I've been so blessed to have all of these opportunities, and I'm so thankful for each and every experience I've had this summer.

Skydiving and Camping

This summer was one for the books. About a couple weeks after returning from Italy, I threw myself into 4 part time jobs: 2 consulting projects, coaching dance team, and choreographing dance routines across the country. But man, was it awesome! In all the spare moments (that I had to fight for) this summer, I found a couple petty awesome things to do.

Three of my good friends surprised me with a weekend in Duluth, MN--I've never really been to Duluth, so I was pretty excited to get away for the weekend. We left on a Friday night and spent the night in Superior and went out on the town. In the morning, all three of them were acting really weird and wouldn't tell me what was going on, except that we had to be at WalMart by noon on Saturday. Which was odd, considering one of the friends on the trip detests WalMart, and I mean really detests WalMart. Sure enough, we didn't go to WalMart at noon. We wound up at Skydive Superior!! Yep, first timer here.

That's right! We jumped out of this plane that had only 1 seat: for the pilot...

My spiffy 1980's, yet "Zeenon Girl of the 21st Century" skydiving suit...I just had to document it. 

Once all of us had our adrenaline rush, my friends informed me that we were going camping--I've also never camped in my life. The best part? I'm the planner in my group of friends, so they had not reserved a plot, nor did they pack bring sleeping bags or tents. Off to WalMart we went...despite James' disgust (sorry for outing you, Briggs!)

Once we had all of our gear, we headed to Gooseberry falls to find a spot to camp, and what do you know...all full. But a woman told us about a camping spot that was a free for all off a dirt road. As long as we could find a spot to camp, the space was ours and we could stay for the night. The catch was that we had to hike "a mile or so" to the designated areas. Us city slickers were pretty excited when we arrived. Nobody had camped in the woods before. They had always found a natural park...or what ever you call those places...where you can pay for a camping space.

The "mile or so" turned into what felt like 5...all uphill. And not to sound like everyone's grandmother with the "when I was little I walked 20 miles to school in the snow uphill both ways!"...but it kind of felt like that. Nobody knew where we were going, but we just followed the path for 2 hours until we came to the camp site.

I like to think of myself as a female handyman (would I be a handywoman?...I digress) so I volunteered to build the tents. 

Not too shabby for a first timer huh? 

We had about 2 hours of sunlight left when we arrived so we scrambled for firewood. We were the only group out in the woods that night, and we didn't buy firewood to bring with us since the woman at Gooseberry Falls swore that we could find wood laying along the trail. There was plenty laying around, except it rained the night before...wet firewood=smoky mess.

We got creative using tortilla chips for kindling but that only lasted us so long. With the sun rapidly setting and almost no firewood, we resorted to using our iPhones as flashlights...which drained our batteries quickly. Kelsey and I started getting scared at the thought of something bad happening to us and not having cell phones to call for help if we needed it. 

I think that was the earliest we've ever gone to sleep on a Saturday night, and it was purely out of fear. I'm terrified of the dark, and I've seen way too many horror movies that involve college age kids camping in the wilderness. I was NOT having it. 

We woke up in the morning and visited the Split Rock Lighthouse...

...and the harbor 

All in all, it was an awesome weekend with some awesome people. I got to explore the beautiful city of Duluth, MN and experience a lot of "firsts" with some of my best friends.