Oh happy day!

Gas is finally below $3.00! It's delightful.... haven't bought any at that price yet, but it's there to be bought. Hooray!

My new favorite thing about Iowa

We woke up this morning at 5:45am, no not on purpose, to an awesome thunder and lightning storm! I LOVE thunder storms!!!! It was soooo loud and sooooo bright and no one here had anything to say about it, so I'm thinking that it only gets better. Hooray for Iowa!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

It's my big brother Ryan's birthday... he's turning 31!!! Wow... old, old man! Ryan is a GREAT brother, he's always been life of the party... things are just more fun when he's around. He's a peacemaker... we always get along better when he's around. And he's a great dad... I love watching him with his kids.

Love you tons big bro!

Goin on a chair hunt

I learned something new about my husband today... he's just like my darling mother! He loves yard sales (as does my mom) and he hates doing the drive by (just like my mom). We were looking for chairs to complete our dining room (a couple weeks ago we got a table for $10 that I painted, but no chairs and today we had the missionaries over for dinner and figured we should have more than 1 chair) and he had found some options yesterday. So we went to check them out and several other sales... and since I felt that all we were looking for were chair I felt justified in just driving by. But he didn't like that... and wanted to look at everything "you never know what cool things you might find... like a $10 accordian or a digital shower radio." Oh... and we didn't find any chairs. We had the elders sit on buckets :)

Stuck in Nauvoo!

Paul and I spent an eventful weekend stuck in Nauvoo, IL. It all started late Saturday morning as Paul and I left Davenport in his car to go to the Nauvoo LDS Temple. Everything seemed fine till we went up one of the few hills in Illinois and the heat guage (don't know what that's really called) started heading to the "H". It went back down and seemed fine till we started over a long drawbridge over the Mississippi after waiting in line for 10 minutes, then the needle hit the "H" and didn't go back down. But we were on the bridge with no where to go... so we made it to the end and pulled over. We then turned off the engine, put the hood up and proceeded to start calling AAA for a tow to.... somewhere, not a lot out there in W. Illinois, E. Iowa. A few minutes into the call a pickup pulled over and the nice gentleman inside called out "Do you need some help? It's my birthday and I promised to do something nice for someone today." After getting out of the truck he asks, "Are you LDS (Latter Day Saints)? Heading to the temple?" He was tipped off by the out of state plates and church clothes in the back of the car. He then checked the car out, etc, etc.... long story short, he (Gary) followed us into town, dropped our car off at the only car repair shop in Nauvoo, and took us home to his lovely cabin on the river to stay the weekend with him and his wife (Kathy).

He insisted that we make our temple session, so he gave us the keys to his wife's car to drive, and he made the arrangements for the car while we were at the temple. The temple was BEAUTIFUL! It's so big, everything is amazingly intricate... it just amazes me that the Mormon pioneers (pre-pioneers I guess) were able to build it.

We spent Saturday night at Gary and Kathy's in one of their spare bedrooms. The next morning they took us on a driven tour of Nauvoo... including the modern day tour (this is where Dr. so and so lives, etc.) and the olden day (Joseph Smith's house, burial site, original temple quarry) and other fun things (like where the film Legacy was filmed). We then went to sacrament meeting with them, their ward was amazingly nice, at least 8 or 9 people greeted us before the meeting. Then we skipped out on the rest of church to do a tour of historic Nauvoo. I think I'll try to figure out how to make a slideshow of my pics of that.

When we got back to the cabin, Gary had found out that the problem with the car was a bad water pump and it the part would hopefully come in on Monday and be fixed shortly thereafter, so we spent another night with Gary and Kathy. They are truly wonderful, fun and smart people. We were SO blessed that he listened to the spirit that told him to stop and that we were people he could trust. He gave us all sorts of financial tips, he's a bank president, which we are very grateful for. And we heard all sorts of fun stories about their family; one son works for Dreamworks and worked on movies like Shrek and I Robot; one son that's a Navy Seal; and another son who's a lawyer with a cute little red head daughter. Woke up in the morning... got to put on the SAME clothes for a 3rd day in a row :). And got dropped off at the car place (Gary and Kathy had to go back to their 1st home for the work week). We then found out that the part didn't come in and we got to spend another day in Nauvoo! Hooray! We watched the movies at the visitors center, did more touring and spent the night at the Hotel Nauvoo.

The next day, Tuesday, found out that the car also needed a new radiator on top of the new water pump... but all got fixed for a mere $100 thanks to the extended warrantee on Paul's car. Then we got off... at 1:30pm... 72 hours after we stopped on the side of the road.

3 down... 47 to go

I passed my Illinois law exam! So I am now officially a licensed pharmacist in Washington, Iowa and Illinois. Hooray!

First week of work

Had my first day of work at HyVee pharmacy on Tuesday at the Moline, IL store. I'm not officially licensed in Illinois yet, so I get to be babysat like an intern again. Fun times! Apparently Illinois is the slowest state in the union at getting things like that done. Anyway, work is good, although I miss my old store, Platters, in Spokane. I miss the people and the fact that my pharmacy technicians did the hard stuff ie. computer entry and dealing with insurance companies etc... now I have to do all that. All the techs here do is cashier and count pills. Odd! But everyone is really nice and not too many grouchy customers yet. :)

Mount Rushmore

Our long trip across the U.S. let us make a fun stop at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota... it was good to have a stop like that before the rest of South Dakota, because let me tell you the rest of that state is a whole lot of NOTHING! Just miles and miles of prairie. Not much to say about Mount Rushmore itself, I did learn that Pres Lincoln was orignally supposed to be on the LEFT of Pres Washington, but the rock was too unstable and he kept falling apart. AND the artist that designed the monument was LDS, like me. :)

Our other South Dakota stop was in Wall, the direct result of a deluge of media. Starting about 30 miles before Wall, SD there were little billboards every mile or so reading: Fresh Pie; Homemade Ice Cream; Free Ice Water; 5 cent Coffee; etc. all at Wall Drug. The media did it's job and we made a fun stop at Wall Drug... where there was not a single Pharmacist on duty, just one big tourist trap. Got to ride a jackelope and a bucking bronco though.

Weekend in Wenatchee