Still there?

Good! Thanks for not giving up on me..... I had no clue it had been this long since I visited! I'm having a blast, just no time to breathe.... I broke down, and cancelled doing tours at the castle for the month of April, so I can concentrate on my exam piece. YES it has been that long! The first part of school is already over with, and I have to have my exam piece turned in by April 30th. After that, back to the books, with the first class being scheduled for May 14th, and final exam on July 9th..... After that, I'm SO going to spend a day at the zoo!

There has been some fun stuff going on here as well. I won a hotair balloon ride! I did my research, and it is the going consensus that if you are able to enjoy an airplane ride, you will have absolutely no problem riding in a balloon.... So, scared of heights or not...... I absolutely loved being up in the air in a cessna  airplane, and I decided that I'm going to thoroughly enjoy the scenery! There is no date set yet, I guess they want to make sure that there's no high winds, and no chance of thunderstorms before they put us in a basket a couple of hundred feet in the air...... I think I like that idea. My sister said that if I know in time, she'll come take pictures! So cool. I'll need proof that I actually went up, but if I have Mike take pictures of the me in the basket, I will have no camera while I'm in the air.... Sister to the rescue! LOL.

And I went away with my sister for a couple of days after the last class. Last years birthday present and we finally managed to synchronize dayrunners.  Actually her smartphone and my dayrunner. LOL. Saturday Mike dropped me off after class, Sunday I made a plan of attack and did a little prework and Monday morning, we left for the National Park De Hoge Veluwe. We saw elk, bighorn sheep en lots of trees LOL. We had a ball. The next day we went to the hunting palace of the Royal Family Het Loo. We had a tour, that was supposed to last 1 hour, but we spend a little more than 2. There was so much to see,  and once the lady figured out I did tours as well, she REALLY told us everything she could think of... but by the time we were done with the tour there was no time to go back around and look at everything at leisure, so we'll have to go back, and do that some other time. It really is nice to get the inside information, because you notice things you might have missed, but than there is also a lot you see, but don't have time to really look at..... If I can talk Mike into going away for a day, or maybe even 2, the second half of December, they'll have the house decorated like they did Brucemore in Cedar Rapids.... It will be so impressive! (and I'll have so many ideas on how to do things around the house, it will drive Mike nuts..... which will be not so good) But it will have my Christmas Spirit recharged for a couple of years, for sure :-) Wednesday before we had to go home, we visited Ouwehand Zoo. IT WAS SO COOL!!! They have a polarbear tank where you can be at eye level, and at eyelevel I got!  I was standing right at the window, when I noticed there were heavy waves and I figured one of the bears got in the water.... You can imagine my surprise when at the end of that though I saw a head pop up right at the other side of the glass........ I couldn't believe my eyes!  Lucky for me, my sister saw him coming and made pictures. He did this twice!  After I'm done with school, I will take a week of catching up on the fun stuff and some chores before getting into the business of "getting into business" with writing a business plan, getting a licence to BE in business and all the other good stuff...... but I'm pretty sure you'll see the pictures come by.....

Well, it's eleven o'clock, and the mechanical alarm is set to go off at 5, but more likely the fuzzy alarm will go off around 3, so I best try and get at least a nap in before that happens. I'll try and get in touch in a week or so, but I can't promise I'll make it.

Well, it is "good night" for me. Don't forget to hug that loved one?!
Hugs,
Pauli