Family Time, Appearances, and More....
I have had such a wonderful month!
It has been full of so many opportunities. I went home on February 13th
because my town asked me to speak at the Lion’s Club sweetheart event on the 14th.
I was so happy to go home, even though it was only for 25 hours. I haven’t been
home since the first week in January, and it has been hard not being able to
get home to my family. I spent a lot of time with my mom, dad, and two
grandmas. I have been working on a project that tells my mom’s story using a
video and so when I was home I was looking for pictures of her from the time
she was a baby to now. I hope to have it finished soon. I will be very
excited to show everyone! My entire family was invited to the Lion’s Club
to hear me speak, and it was a great time. I spoke to the members and their
families about how I got started in pageants, my experience winning, and I
educated them on my platform and what I am doing this year. After my speech, so
many people came up to me and told me how proud they were of me and the things
that I was doing. It was such an honor to hear them say that, and it really
made me feel great! I am in the process of setting up a date to talk to my
school and I even talked with a woman who is going to help me set up a
fundraising event in my hometown for ALS.
It was such a great feeling knowing that she was willing to help me
raise money for ALS.
On February 17th and 18th,
I had an event at the store MODE in Grand Forks. Mary-Sue, one of the
co-owners and a former Mrs. North Dakota International, is on the ALS Association board and has a best friend with ALS. She
set up this event and I was there helping and hanging out in the store for
those two days. Ten percent of all the money that was made those days was going
to go to the ALS Association. It was a great event to take part of, and it was
a fun time educating people on ALS and what I do.
I am also currently working with
Chelsea Guggisberg, the special events coordinator for the Minnesota, North
Dakota, and South Dakota ALS Association.
I have so many dates set up to speak at some ALS kick-off events and
participate at ALS walks across the state! I am so excited and honored to be a
part of all of them, and I know I will have a great time telling my story.
Along
with all my Miss North Dakota duties, I have had a crazy month with my duties
for school. Nursing school can be very tough sometimes. I wish sometimes there
were more minutes in my day. I just had a 30 page nursing process paper due
earlier this week and I passed my IV practical exam! I can officially insert
IVs now and am very excited. Because of everything that has been going, I
haven’t gotten much sleep. I was having a rough time a couple weeks ago and my
friend had me watch a youtube video about success and I fell in love with it.
One of the quotes that it said is "If you are
going to be successful, you have to be willing to give up sleep…because if you
go to sleep you might miss the opportunity to be successful.” Even though I am
a nursing student and I know how important it is to get sleep, sometimes it
just doesn’t happen. This quote put my life into perspective and made me
realize that if I want everything I have, a lot of sleep just may not be an
option some nights. I am okay with it now; it may be tough some days but
everything will pay off in the end.
Miss North Dakota International
Erica Lemna
