Pursue your dreams and enjoy the unfamiliar
Since I will not be in San Diego and have already missed the Del Mar Fair (check out all the awesome things I ate last year here), I will be attending a new fair to me and a classic to others! It’s that time of the year! It’s fair time!
It will be the Sioux Empire Fair in Sioux Falls, South Dakota!
It’s summer and it’s hot, and almost everyone loves Chris Pratt. At least I do. In other words, I watched Jurassic World and I LOVED IT!
In lieu of my love for this movie, I want to share an enjoyable summer ride that combines a great relief for the heat and for all those dinosaur lovers out there!
Hello my lovely travelers!
It has been far too long. I’ve been dealing with a lot of crazy life things. It’s been a bit hectic and I’m still trying to catch up and recover.
But I realized something that always helps me get through some tough times and good times is by writing.
I’ve been having a hard time trying to get focused and write out a blog post about my recent trip to western South Dakota. I’ve been a little work preoccupied (hopefully soon I’ll be living out more big dreams of mine!) and so I have focused my attention to that and trying to advance in my career. I’ve also been on an Insanity trip, meaning I have being doing the Insanity workouts with Shaun T and they leave me quite pooped at the end of the day. But to put it into words, I have writers block and I don’t want to just write mediocre blog posts.
Instead of trying to rack my brain and write out a semi-okay post about my super awesome South Dakota trip and not doing it the justice I want. I figured I’ll just give everyone a small preview in photos or as I’d like to call it my South Dakota Roundup.
I’ve been a little busy with life lately. Oh and it’s my one year anniversary since I’ve had lostwithyvonne.com! YAY!
Any who, I have a big trip coming up this weekend that I can’t wait to explore and then share with you! Since I’ve been doing lots of planning and working I haven’t had a whole ton of time to write up a great travel post to share. So instead I decided to just introduce you all to two new members of my family. My Kittens Dottie and Dolly.
I have been obsessively making lots of root beer floats lately. And Alex and I have been quite enjoying it.
As a bonus to my last wine tasting post, since we decided to bow down from all the wine drinking our driver took us Old Town Temecula, California to see the town.
Even though I used to live so close to Old Town Temecula, I surprisingly have not been there. As an extra part of our wine tasting tour, our awesome chauffeur took us to Old Town Root Beer Company to do some root beer tasting.
The store literally had hundreds of different kinds of root beer. It was pretty amazing if I must say so myself.
It had all of your originals and some quite odd pop bottles.
As a group we decided to chip in and just buy a few root beers and have our own root beer taste testing.
With spring in the air and the weather being that perfect breeze and sun shine, what better way to spend a spring day than with wine tasting.
Back home in California there is quite a lot of vineyards to go do some wine tasting. Most know of Napa Valley to do their wine tasting, but in the city of Temecula in the southern part of California they have vineyards upon vineyards in one long row for your wine tasting time.
The Temecula Wine Country has quite a bit of vineyards to do lots wine tasting for all sorts of people.
I’ve gone wine tasting for my sister’s best friend’s bachelorette party (whew that’s a mouthful). My sister booked a wine tour/chauffeur called the Antique Pink Cadillac for the day and it paid for all our wine tasting and drove us around in this cool black London Style car.
We had three tour stops and we could spend as long as we wanted at each one, well until our free wine runs out.
We all realized that our three stops fell into a certain wine category that us girls thought of during the wine tours.
Hello all my awesome friends and fellow travelers, I am still reporting here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and life has been busy and great. I finally have the blogging bug once again. But I’ve been so busy with life that it’s been hard to be consistent with this blog, but now that I have a grasp at my current adjustements of life I will finally post all the awesome places that you should all know about and see!
I will be traveling back to my hometown of San Diego to a mountain town that is an awesome getaway for everyone.
I know it’s been awhile since I’ve done any kind of blogging, or even social media-ing. But I have good reason, promise.
I’m sure as you see from the title there was a big move on my part. From San Diego to South Dakota, this born and raised So-Cal girl made the big move to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Why South Dakota you may ask? (Random is what I get from most people) Well, I got a job opportunity at their local news station in Sioux Falls!
And that is some serious big news, BIG dreamer news.
I graduated college about two years ago and I studied Broadcast Journalism for a solid 3 ½ years. I did everything from interning at news stations in San Diego, wrote for a local newspaper in town, produced my own 30-minute live newscast, and reported on so many amazing news stories.
Instead of pursing my degree right out of college, I decided to take on the full-time office job that could pay my bills and give me more work experience. While my last job gave me such great opportunities and I worked with some amazing people there, I was never fully satisfied.
It was time to face the fears of leaving family and friends and go into the mysterious world of Broadcast news. I took that scary leap and reached out to news stations and I got the job offer for a news station in South Dakota.
I won’t be reporting on camera just yet, but that won’t stop me from one day getting back into what I loved so much when I went to school.
My amazing boyfriend Alex was accepted to South Dakota State University and has made the move along with me and I couldn’t be happier. The transition was made that much smoother.
All I want to say is to honestly never give up on your dreams. I have been out of the broadcast news business for over two years, but that didn’t stop me from pursuing my dreams and making this my time to shine.
I’ve been scared, I’ve been rejected, but it all becomes worth it when you feel your life falling into place and when you feel like your dreams are fully coming true. I’m feeling at home, I feel like I belong. And I couldn’t be happier.
I do miss all my friends and family in California and the wind chill can really knock you down here in the mid-west, but when you are finally seeing that you’re on the right path to greatness everything just feels right.
My dreamer mentality will never fade and I will keep on reaching for the stars. And I hope you all keep dreaming and striving for the best because you can really surprise yourself and you too can make all your dreams come true.
Keep dreaming my family, friends and fellow travelers. Thanks for all the support and love <3
Oh, Amsterdam. People have all sorts of crazy stories from Amsterdam.
Now I won’t sugarcoat anything. Amsterdam was a crazy trip.
It was also a one night trip and we weren’t truly able to experience everything that Amsterdam had to offer us. So we have every intention to go back to this wonderful canal city.
All the stories you have heard about Amsterdam is pretty true. There are “coffee shops” in every corner and there is a red light district with girls dancing around in the window and are quite a liberal city compared to the American conservatives.
And for those that don’t know, “Coffee Shops” are different from Cafe shops in the sense of you won’t really get coffee, but weed instead. So yes, marijuana is legal in Amsterdam and people buy and smoke it freely in Amsterdam. Granted you must stay within the confinement of the Coffee shop to enjoy your Mary Jane, but for all those wanting to legally smoke a joint, you are more than welcome to sit in a coffee shop and enjoy a puff of MaryJ to your pleasing.
Now that that’s out of the bag, on the other sense Amsterdam is truly a beautiful city. We experienced some rain while we were here so there were tons of umbrellas and gray skies. Also the city center, as soon as you got off Amsterdam Centraal is quite busy with construction. But I could still see the all the beauty that Amsterdam has to offer locals and tourist alike.
It can get crowded and bicycles are everywhere so be careful of where you walk and when you walk. They are vicious bicyclers out there. And they are almost as scary as those driving in Europe.
We didn’t really have a lot of time to spend in the city since our hotel was about 45 minutes away from the city town center and we were still recovering from our Paris trip and getting prepared for our next week in Italy. But from what we saw, Amsterdam is beautiful.
