The NFL Draft and everything else!

One week has passed but it has felt like a year or two has gone by because of all the activity that has happened!

At work, the main consultant, Don, who has been the main driving force of my grant and project, flew up from Nebraska to sit down and spend some time with me. Just for clarification, I work with 7 pre-determined communities in Western North Dakota to help them build capacity and sustainability. Basically these communities are seen as struggling, whether out population or lack of resources. My job is to help them build on their strengths and eliminate their weaknesses. The main catch is that I work only with non-tangibles—youth, leadership, entrepreneurship and charitable assets. So I can’t build a park or a community center but work on creating a leadership summit or an after school girl’s program. Right now I’m working on a grant review to submit to the Bush Foundation, where my funding is from. It was exciting to have Don there and present to piece things together. We have some great project forming right now and I’m excited to start the third year of the grant!

Thursday was the 9th Annual Strom Center, we’ve been planning it at work for the past couple months and it felt great to finish it and have a high caliber of speaker present. On Friday, I took off for the Geographical Center of North America—RUGBY! I (and a co-worker Lenny) attended a Community Engagement Forum that was hosted by UND. It was a great experience, a perfecting networking opportunity and we also took some time to peruse the community. We saw Samsara Cues pool cue customization office. We spent some one-on-one time and they showed us their trademark and their factory. We also ate at a renovated antique parlor/restaurant, Rockin’ Relics. My Aunt Denise would have loved all the Coca-Cola collectibles! The parlor used to be a hardware store and I loved the original ceilings.

While I was in Rugby, Dan made a trip to spend some time with his boys in Bismarck. He spent some time Halo’ing with Korey and caught up with Bryan. I think he is more looking forward to this weekend. The NFL draft—(Trumpets sounding)! He’s spending some time with Bryan lamenting over more Lions mishaps! Once again-I got to give it to him for loyalty. He’s been gearing up and talking about it FOR-e-VER! I guess to a Lion’s fan, it’s the closest thing to the super bowl!! He did find out that he needs a root canal and has it scheduled for April 29. I know he is not looking forward to that…or the idea of paying for that.



The two of them are VeRy cute!!