Colored Photo Shoots and Water.

Happy Memorial Day everyone!
I had a great Monday because I didn't have to go to school today. I didn't have work either so I had the entire day to do whatever I wanted. This morning I met my work friend Jamalva at AMC at 11:30 and we went over to a parking garage across the street from our work and took pictures there. She's been anxious to do a photo shoot with me for a while. I told her I would love to do one so we planned it for today and the weather turned out great! The parking garage we hiked around all day had stair wells with colored walls, each floor was a different color. It had a stair case with viney leave walls and a pond with swans. This business's parking garage was freaking awesome! We had been so stumped on a good location to take pictures at in Schaumburg but in the end I suggested this parking garage. We eventually went there and ended up spending our whole afternoon there shooting pictures.
Later on I met up with my friends Celia and her sister Carol. It was so mega hot today we just had to cool off. We searched the Internet forever looking for an open pool to go to but we didn't have much luck. By the time we looked all the pools would have been closing soon. We ended up coming over to my house and playing with squirt guns and dumping buckets of hose water on each other. It was very refreshing but extremely freezing cold after a while.
I did so much stuff today, it was a very great day off. I feel very accomplished today because I did stuff all day and I didn't just sit at home.

Flooded on Vacation

My parents are out of town in Minocqua Wisconsin with some friends for Memorial day weekend. My sister and her boyfriend went up as well on Friday and are also spending the weekend up there. Grandma went up to Aunt Laurel and Uncle Larry's lake house for the weekend so she is gone as well.
I couldnt request off work this weekend because it was opening weekend for hangover and I have class on Saturday mornings anyways so I had to stay home. I'm not complaining though because its been great having the house to myself for a while. Today the entire basement flooded though. I went down there earlier to check on everything during the storm and sure enough we had water. I get down there and theres a huge puddle coming out of the water softener closet. The next closet over which holds all our camping gear and boxes of random stuff is full of water also. The basement bathroom also flooded and I have no idea how. There is water everywhere downstairs! On top of all the flooding mess in the basement our cat wont come back. The cats hadn't been outside all night so they were really wild and crazy this morning running around the house. They had so much energy so I let them outside early this morning. It was just cloudy then but later on the storm came through and I was calling them for ever. Harry eventually came running inside but its about an hour later and George still hasn't come inside. Is he just hiding or maybe something happened to him? I'm kind of freaking out about it right now but I'm trying to think positive that he'll come back later and I'm trying to worry about the basement issue. I've talked to my parents multiple times, laying towels out isn't doing anything and I cant even mop it all up. John suggested using the shop vac that we have in our garage. I don't even know what a shop vac is let alone how to go about using it.
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aunt Laurel and Uncle Larry are supposed to be around sometime this afternoon dropping grandma off so I'm hoping they can help me. My dad said I'm just going to have to leave it until they get home on Monday otherwise. Theres not really anything else I can do. I hope we don't get anymore water down there. I also hope George comes back because I have work later. Theres no way I can leave for work knowing George is still outside in this weather.

22

Yesterday at officially 5:35 pm I turned 22 years old. I meant to blog about my spectacular day yesterday but I was so busy and then my computer's battery died on me.
Besides the weather my day started out great yesterday. I baked cheesecake all morning so I could bring it to work later on. In the afternoon before work my friend Olivia took me out to lunch at portillo's. I did have to work at 5:15 pm on my birthday but it wasn't so bad. We all had a good time anyways, we made it fun! I brought oreo cookie cheesecake and my good friend Pedro brought a bunch of colorful cupcakes. We partied hard all night until about 11:00 pm when we got slammed with all the midnight showing hangover crowd. After that terrible hour of rush I was ready to go home and sleep. I got home about 1:00 am and I was going to post my birthday blog and sleep but my computer wouldn't turn on. Apparently my computers battery had gone completely dead and so I had to go get a new one this morning for $75.00. There goes all my birthday money...
On Tuesday the day before my birthday the family all celebrated my birthday at TGI Fridays since I had to work on my official birthday on Wednesday. My parents, Kristi, her boyfriend Frankie and John all came along.
For my birthday I got a 750 GB hard drive from John. Everyone probably thinks I'm a nerd for thinking that's the most exciting gift I could have ever gotten. However, they just don't know what its like being a person who shoots 50 billion photo's and video tapes everything. That space will be used fast!
My sister got me a necklace and a new bag for my birthday. The bag is kind of like a purse but its longer and goes over your shoulder. It is really cute and I needed a new bag because my purse is pretty shot. It's very old and very dirty. I call it my Mary Poppins purse because I have so much stuff in there its like an endless black hole of junk. Thus, getting a new bag was good for me because I was able to clean all the garbage and junk out of my old purse and retire it for a while. My parents just gave me a card with a postet note inside saying they owe me a shopping trip for my brithday. Its to hard to shop for us girls anymore really, usually they just take us shopping for new clothes.
I had a wonderful birthday, thank you for all the happy birthday wishes everyone!

Mothers Day Monday with Meatloaf

Today at the Mickow house hold we're celebrating our mothers day late because my parents were in Wisconsin this weekend so they were gone yesterday. They drove up to Minocqua on Thursday night and arrived back this afternoon. They went up to open the lake house for the summer already. I'm real excited to go down for fourth of July.
Anywho, today we celebrate our one day late mothers day by cleaning house, doing homework, mowing the lawn and making meatloaf for dinner. This is the worst one day late mothers day I've ever had.
As soon as my parents got home and unloaded the car they started doing work. My mother started cleaning up the house and making meatloaf. My dad mowed the lawn and rototilled the garden. I have been working on hours of homework all day and I have school at 6:00.
Happy Mothers Day....
=[

I love my mother but I hate her meatloaf. I've hated meatloaf all my life and that will never change no matter how many times she makes me eat it.

Opening Day

Today was opening day at Six Flags Great America. In honor of American Eagles 30th birthday they were selling park tickets online for only $20. I requested the day off of work and my friends Celia, Carla, Carol, and I all went for opening day. So far we've done opening day last year and this year. Its kind of a new tradition we plan on carrying out every year now.
I met them at there house at 7:00 am and we all went and got breakfast at Denny's and then headed to Six Flags. We were there very early but we waited by the gates at the front of the park and watched the show as they celebrated the first day of the season. At 10:00 am they did the official countdown. 5..4..3..2..1 At 1 everyone literally went sprinting into the park as fast as possible to get to the rides first. We headed towards the back of the park and there were no lines. After we hit Vertical Velocity first we went over to American Eagle. We were some of the first few people to get on the ride for the day so we got interviewed by the newspaper. The newspaper was there for the 30th anniversary of American Eagle. They asked us questions about how are ride was, why we liked American Eagle so much, where we were from, how long we've been coming to Six Flags, what our names were and how old we were. They said we'd be in the Lake County newspaper and they took a picture of us while we were being interviewed. It was a pretty exciting start to our day.
The day started out great and turned out spectacular in the end but the middle of our day was a little rough. During the afternoon the weather wasn't being very nice. It pored rain for a while and we were all soaked and freezing but we roughed it out. At 3:00 pm we're starving and trying to get out of the park for lunch but our belongings got trapped in a locker. We were starving and stuck in the rain waiting for an employee to retrieve our gear for us. Finally we got out, ate lunch and got more gear on from the car so we were a bit warmer and after that everything was fine. At around 6:00 pm the weather cleared up and it was actually sunny out and we went on a ton more rides and stayed at the park until close. We finally made it out of the park by 8:30 after having arrived at Six Flags at 9:00 in the morning.
We left the park with lots of gear! Squid hats that we had all won, a super man hat, batman cape and t-shirts. I got sent home with an orange squid hat, I'm not sure what I'll ever use it for again but it is quite funny. White elephant? =]
Anyways, today was the best day ever! Now I will be passing out in my bed after I post this blog. Goodnight!

Group Photo- Holly and Carol (Top) Carla and Celia (Bottom)















Me on American Eagle roller coaster















After crying in line because she was so scared Carol actually did make it through her first time on Raging Bull and loved it. This is a picture of Carol posing after completing Raging Bull.















Sisters- Teacups















Gangstas! Holly and Shaggy.



















Squid Hats















Carla is Super Bat Girl!















Superman Hat- Celia

3 Years

Tonight we all got together at work and celebrated our friend Jessica's birthday. She turns eighteen on May 5th but we celebrated today due to all of our busy schedules. I baked a cake this afternoon and met up with John and we met our friends Olivia and Jessica at work and had cake, ice cream and then watched a movie. Its a great inexpensive way to celebrate a birthday considering we all work at the movie theater. Its a perfect place to hang out.
I cant believe I've been working at AMC for so long. Its a bit late but I received my three year pin this past weekend. My three year anniversary at AMC was officially on April 8th. I was hired and started working at AMC on April 8th of 2008. I cant believe its been so long but its the best first job I could of ever asked for. So many people have come and gone since I was hired but I've made alot of life long friends. We hang out, go places and do things all the time together. Not only have I met some great friends but I met my boyfriend John at AMC. I didn't know him before I started working at AMC but we started talking and things just kind of fell into place. I got to be apart of a beautiful wedding for two good friends of mine that I met through AMC and have worked with for quite a while. I met one of my closest friends Olivia through working at AMC and now we hang out weekly and we go see Hanson in concert every year. I have some best friends outside of work but all my closest friends right now are the people I work with. AMC isn't just a job, everyone there is a family. The company gets together and plays softball on random weekdays. The managers hang out with us outside of work. Things like that aren't normally seen at most jobs but at AMC we're all great friends and even if I start another job in the future I hope I can stay at AMC at least one day a week. I'll probably keep in touch with everyone from AMC for the rest of my life. If I part ways I will always come back and visit.

Happy Birthday Jessica, here's to many more fun work days at AMC!

Jessica













John, Jessica and I.













Jessica and Olivia.













The double chocolate cake I made for the birthday girl.

Banquet Derby

Today was our annual Four Winds Ski and Social club Banquet. The club hosts one every year and there's usually a theme, great food, games and prizes. This year the theme was Kentucky Derby so all the women had to come wearing there formal attire and best derby hat. The guys also dressed in formal wear and had to come in there best derby ties. In honor of the Kentucky Derby they had a delicious southern food buffet and a best derby dessert contest.
Some of the other contests included best derby hat for women and best derby tie for men. My mothers hat won for best derby hat, it was the most creative. She had some white material draped across the hat to look like snow with signs from different ski places and mini little cameras on the hat. It was very tourist like!














After food they usually do awards and they come up with the most creative awards and little prizes for each award. As they say every year "nothing in the club goes un noticed". Something silly or funny you did in one of the trips over the year could come back to haunt you.
They had a DJ playing music all night and I put together a slide show of all the outings and ski trips we did this past year. It contained video's and picture's that everyone from the club emailed to me.
Another fun game we did was a fake horse race. We had three horses on sticks and you would roll the dice and move that many tiles. Everyone placed bets on which horse they wanted to win and that $160 dollars raised from bets went to the American Blind Skiers association. Overall it was a fun night and a great year! I hope to make it to many more ski trips and outings in 2011. What a great club and group of people.

The Girls













Prizes













Hat parade













Scott the DJ who's also in the ski club.













Horse racing.