American I-DULL

Okay, my love for American Idol is over!! Yes! The tears are rolling down my face. For all of you that know me, I'm addicted to that show. I'm a huge David Cook fan and even went to the Royals game to watch him sing take me out to the ballgame during the 7th inning stretch. Mathew and I got our tickets in the nose bleed section, brought our cameras, and were waiting for David to make his appearance on the pitchers mound. It was his hometown visit during the show, and he used to serve nachos and hot dogs at the stadium during high school so they brought him to the game.

Yesterday, Scott, Bill, and I were sitting in the staff room during break and I made the comment about American Idol being on tonight. Bill goes read this article. The headline in the St. Joe Newspress read American I-DULL. I couldn't believe it! No way! It's such a great show.

I haven't seen American Idol the last two weeks due to travelling, so I had to get caught up last night. I still have my favorites of Lee Dewzye (sometimes) and Crystal Bowersox. Crystal is awesome and can either rock it in tall black army boots or stilettos, but everyone else needs to stick to the late night karaoke machine at the local bar.

The talk is that Simon is going to leave after this season. But, if I was Simon I would claim Crystal as this years winner and get up and walk away. Why, sit through the embarrassment of the show. Also, how can he stand sitting next to Kara...she's an idiot and just likes to hear herself talk.

I'm pretty disappointed in the show, and I can't believe that out of that many people who audition this is what they come down to. Really, is the best that was out there? I would rather hear Pants on the Ground then a 16 year old girl sing a song that a 65 year old lady should be singing.

I guess I will not plan my schedule around Tuesday and Wednesday nights anymore. American Idol is not worth sitting there and wasting my precious time.

Bubble Tape

Do you remember growing up and getting gum that came in a roll like tape? You know, the one you had to open it up, and then you shut the lid and it cut the gum like scotch tape? Well, Alexys found some of this at the store the other day so I let her get a pack. She asked me if I wanted a piece on the way home, and I was like sure why not. So, I put the gum in my mouth and about choked. It was horrible!! I wanted to spit it back out, but just grinned and tried to chew it. I don't know how I ever chewed that stuff as a kid. It was dry, had no flavor and tasted like I was eating notebook paper. I think that is the worst gum I have tasted in my life!! There must be a reason I switched to buying orbit gum.

So, just remember we may have been 'cool' carrying around a pack of bubble tape when we were young, but we had NO idea how bad the gum really tastes!!

I don't recommend you going out and getting a package today!

Youth Beef Industry Congress

This past weekend, the junior board and I headed to the twin cities for the YBIC. YBIC, is a group of 20 youth beef organizations who put on this conference every two years for our youth to attend. I helped plan in 2008, so I only played the role as treasurer this year (the funds are housed in my office).

All in all the weekend was successful. I think the Angus junior board realized how lucky they have it, when they were eating danishes for breakfast and had to ride in school buses not motor coaches.

This is all of the attendees. I believe there was somewhere around 130 of us.

This is me with the 'snack pack'. I knew they would be starving, so I loaded up my backpack with snacks. They were dissing on the backpack, but then thought it was the coolest thing ever after they were starving. This isn't my first leadership conference!!

Also, I'm sporting the plastic booties! I was bio secure!


Here is the Angus group.

Dying Easter Eggs

I haven't seen Alexys for almost three weeks due to her being sick and my travel schedule so yesterday when I got home from Minnesota I headed straight to Savannah to pick her up for an afternoon of fun. Only having a few ideas in my head to do for the afternoon such as bake cookies, make supper, play board games, or make a craft project I gave her the option to select the afternoons activity. After giving her the choices, she decided that we would go to Michael's and pick out an Easter craft project. I was envisioning us decorating an Easter basket for her to hunt eggs with or make an Easter bunny decoration. But, when we walked into the store we had a better idea...dying Easter eggs. She picked out glitter eggs and egg paint packets and we were off to Target to get 2 dozen eggs.

I haven't died eggs in a long time and I loved doing it as a kid, so I was up for the challenge. However, I didn't remember how to boil eggs or how messy this project can get. I gave Alexys an old shirt, and let her do most of the mixing of the die and putting the paint packets in the little paint container so we had die everywhere. Luckily, the paint and die was easy to clean up.

The eggs were ready and so we were with the decorating. We both decorated eggs, but her favorite part was the glitter eggs. Not wanting to follow the directions, I let her put the whole packet of glitter in the 'glitter shaker' so we had eggs with a THICK coat of glitter. She thought they were beautiful!!

The decorating went pretty fast, and we were both a little upset that we didn't have more eggs to decorate. So, we let them dry and ate supper and played outside.

After they were dry, I let her pick out a basket to put her eggs in to take home. For some reason, she thought the basket smelled like a forest (it must have been the green color). She was so excited to take it home to show her mom and brother and was hoping that they would hide them for her so she could hunt them.

During this time, it was also great to share with her the story of Easter eggs, and that prior to plastic eggs they hunted real eggs. She was in total shock!!

Junior Board Member Featured in Grass and Grain

Check out the Grass and Grain website to see the recent copy of their newspaper. NJAA's own Clinton Laflin is featured on the front page. What a great article!! Kudos to Clinton and the Grass and Grain staff!!

http://www.grassandgrain.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=510

How did we ever live without mobile phones!

Every morning I have the same routine; alarm rings, complain about getting out of bed, pick up the blackberry, and check my emails from the night before. My blackberry is the last thing I look at before I go to bed and the first thing I look at when I wake up. It pretty much controls my life!!

This past weekend while skiing and tumbling down the hill, I smashed my phone and broke it. All I could see was text messages and blackberry messenger messages and had no clue who they were from. My heart sank...no way could I have broken my blackberry. All I could think of was; Who is trying to get in touch with me? What happens if I have car problems? What am I going to do in the airport tomorrow when I'm bored?

Well luckily most of my blackberry came back to life, but I still didn't have any use of the rollerball. So that means its hard to text and email, and no use of the internet! Bummer!!

Luckily, when I got back to the office they were able to order me a new phone...but now I'm just sitting around waiting for its arrival!!

I don't know how I got so addicted to my blackberry. Growing up, I never had a mobile phone until I was a Senior in high school. Prior to that I had to carry around my mom's cell phone and really...who wanted to give out that number?!?!

Head first in the snow!!

At the mini-LEAD conference this past weekend in West Virginia, we went skiing. I've never been skiing before in my life, but I thought I had to try it just once. I also didn't want to be the junior activities director who sat in the lodge taking pictures, so I jumped right in to get my skis!

Everyone thought I was pretty decent for the first time, but I had a problem with stopping!! (yikes!) I took some pretty good tumbles and ate a few mouthfuls of snow. Pam kept trying to get my camera so she could take a picture of me headfirst in the snow with my skis up in the air, but no way was I going to let her take a picture of me looking like that! She thought it was hilarious, and I just informed her that I'm a trooper and I'm going to get this down!! She was pretty impressed!

Most of the time, I would just lay there and laugh for a good 30 seconds and then get back up and go after it again. However, the last time I rolled around in the snow, wondering if I was ever going to walk again. I'm pretty sure my body does not do the splits anymore! Wow, I was a hurting unit on that one.

After trying to get out of bed on Sunday morning, I think my decision of learning how to ski was a foolish one. I'm pretty sure I found muscles that I didn't know I had because they are so sore. My body regrets me learning how to ski, but I enjoyed it and I'm sure everyone else got a kick out of me landing headfirst in the snow!!

My Favorite Part of My Job!!

They say if you love your job, you never go to work. I guess that is true for me, as I'm on a 40 day straight 'extended' work week.

During March, I have the opportunity to put on three different leadership workshops. These are my favorite part of my job, because I enjoy the interaction with the juniors and seeing the friendships they create through our workshops.

This past weekend I packed a suitcase full of games and playdoh and I was off to Virginia. (I love the look the security guys at the airport give me when I tell them that my suitcase is full of playdoh, not 2 oz. expolosives!!)

We had approximately 40 kids at our leadership workshop at the MAJAC show. It was a great group. Its often hard to plan activities for kids ranging in age from 9-21, but we had four great hours of fun.

Playing telephone with marshmallows.

Flipping the tarp without getting off. We had too many people to succeed.

They had to construct a free standing tent out of a USA Today and a roll of masking tape to protect them from the rain in the desert.

4 People: Statue of Liberty

2 People: Piggy Backride

This weekend, I'm headed to Cannaan Valley in Davis, WV to put on another leadership conference. This one is going to be fun as its at a ski resort I'm just crossing my fingers that I don't break a leg. I've never been skiing before.

3 Hour Tour

As we were in DC this weekend to fly in and out for the MAJAC show, we decided to head towards downtown to look at some of the monuments. I never been there so it was great to see everything. Not being a history buff, 3 hours of touring with plenty for me!

I know I will never travel to DC for vacation one day, but I enjoyed getting to see everything. It was really great to see everything at night. We also had some phone photos, but my camera died so I will have to post those later.

Intern Announcement

Sorry, I forgot to give everyone the intern update. It's a great honor to introduce Jordan Paulsrud as my intern for the summer. A past NJAA member, Jordan is going to be a great addition to the junior activities department. Currently, Jordan is a junior in Animal Science at Iowa State University.

I look forward to working with Jordan as she has a passion for cattle, a heart of gold and is very mature beyond her years. Jordan comes from a great family, is a hard worker and also likes to have a little fun!

I'm not sure who is more happier, her or I!

Raising the Bar

Last weekend, I was in Ames, Iowa for a Raising the Bar state officer training. Raising the Bar is our small leadership conference created to build regional relationships and to share ideas among states. Established in 2007, Raising the Bar is our neweset program. We are currenlty building it to make it better, but it has been a great success so far.

Iowa State University was a great location for the event. Juniors were able to experience the life of on campus and to get a feel of different degrees offered at universities. I believe many kids want to go in to agriculture, they just don't know what route (meat science, agribusiness, animal science, agronomy, etc.)

7 states in 24 days...20 days on the road..I love my job!

Tour de United States starts tomorrow!! St. Joe, Ames, Monroe, Harrisonburg, Oklahoma City, Cannaan Valley, Minneapolis.....I'm going to be signing the song I've been everywhere man by March 28.

Watch for photos!!

WIlly Wonka Photos

Here we are on stage after the show. Scott Johnson, one of my co-workers
was the sound tech, so he took us backstage.

Alexys and Violet. This is the girl who chews the gum and gets blue.

Alexys and Willy Wonka. He was so tall!

Alexys pictured here with an oompa loompa.
She couldn't believe they were kids her age.