Iowa - The Hawkeye State

Brandon and I recently took a trip to Iowa. Brandon was raised in the Davenport area of Iowa. I was very excited. First, I love traveling and going places I've never been before. Second, who doesn't like vacation? Third, did I mention I LOVE traveling and not working? Anyway we left St. George mid morning and drove to the Las Vegas airport to catch our Allegient flight to Moline, IL. We made it to our gate in plenty of time, and as luck would have it our plane was late. Brandon requested our seats so we had the extra leg room of sitting in the emergency exists. I will have you know that I had just recently watched the last episode of Grey's Atomony season 8. Yes that is the season where they were in the plane crash.....so I did have a few freaky thoughts throughout the flight. I have never flown Allegient and I will say it is not my favorite airline. The plane is very loud and not nearly as comfortable as other airlines I have flown on. However they did get us to and from our destination without stopping and closer to our destination than larger airlines can. We landed in Moline a little after 9 pm. Immediately Brandon said he wanted Whitey's ice cream, however he had to wait until after we had a family dinner with Jason (his dad who picked us up at the airport), Amy (Jason's wife), Grandpa Roth, Jordan (brother), and Camille (Jordan's wife). After dinner we did go to Whitey's. Brandon has been talking about this place ever since we met, and even more so since we booked our flight. It was delicious, but he definitely liked it more than me.

The next day we went to a farmers market and to a little festival in downtown Davenport. Below is a picture of the Mississippi river. 

A skywalk that apparently changes different light colors at night. I only say it during the day. 

Potatoes on a stick....I thought it looked awesome.

Brandon's dad is a firefighter and they had a water fight activity on one the main streets. Its two teams of two that try spraying the bucket with the fire hose to the opposite side of the line. It was interesting, but we were all freezing due to the unusually cooler weather so we didn't stay long. 

Instead we went to Rock Island Arsenal. If you've never heard of it.....you should look it up. 

Sunday while waiting to see a family Brandon and Jordan grew up with we stopped by a place called pioneer park. At one point in time it was a stagecoach stop and people actually lived there. We also came on the right weekend when there were actually people there dressed up and acting out pioneer stuff.  Later that afternoon we went sailing on the Mississippi. It was amazing! Jordan and Camille have pictures of that, but I forgot the camera, hence no pictures. 

Jordan and Camille

Monday Brandon rented a car and took me to Nauvoo. I was so excited! I have wanted to visit this place since I was a little girl!!! We say the Mansion House (shown below), homestead, and the Nauvoo House (I think that is what it was called.) All of these are owned by the Community of Christ  church so I was unable to take pictures of the inside. But I was able to get pictures at the blacksmith, brickmaker, John Taylor, Willford Woodruff, Brigham Young, and the printing shop!

Nauvoo Temple!

Tuesday afternoon we went to Chicago. After checking in to our hotel we went to dinner, walked around a little, and then went on an architectural boat tour of Chicago. It was pretty awesome I thought. 

Jason and Amy

Brandon and I

Trump Tower in Chicago

Chicago skyline from Lake Michigan. 

Our view the next morning. 

We went to the Shedd Aquarium the next day. Here are a few of the good pictures. 

Creepy eel

"Say Cheese!"-blowfish

Sea Horse

Nemo land

This is a popular Catholic church in downtown Chicago....I thought it was beautiful. 

The backyard of Jason and Amy's home. In the morning we'd sit outside and eat breakfast and enjoy the beautiful weather....except in this picture. It as raining that day so we stayed inside. 

All too soon we had to leave and return home. I could have easily spent another two days in Chicago and probably another day or two in Davenport. It was so wonderful!

Here is a picture of St. George from our airplane window.

Once back home it was once again getting ready for the next week. However I had the weekend off! I was able to attend my home ward for the first time since February! Also I started my new job at Premier Adoption Agency this last Monday. So far I'm loving it. I still have a lot to learn, but I think I'll pick it up fairly quickly. Until then I can't wait until I'm busy doing work, instead of reading policies and manuals :)

Until next time! Ciao!

Past Happenings

Okay so I haven't posted for a while so I will try to briefly summarize the past several months.

First Brandon scheduled to have surgery on his ankle. With my job and Wyndham he finally had health Insurance and went to get his ankle looked at, and they found that he had a dislocating ankle tendon that needed to be fixed. So he had surgery May 17th to fix the tendon, create a groove in his ankle bone, attache the tendon and while in there they also found a tear in the tendon and fixed it. He had to be in a boot for a few weeks and crutches, but he is doing a lot better now, not complete healed but working on it.

 Here's a picture of his nasty foot after the bandages came off.

I also went to the doctors to see what was going on with me. Come to find out I had sludge in my gallbladder. My surgeon suggested removing it because first it wasn't working very well. Second, stomach/gallbladder issues run in my family. Third, if I planned on having kids it was better to remove now than when I'm 7 months pregnant and have gall stones. So I agreed and had surgery June 4th.

Here's me waiting four hours to go into surgery! I was starving!

This is the damage after the surgery. I was sore for a few days after, and super dizzy the day after, but other than that I healed quickly and I now can enjoy any and all the food I want!

Three days after my surgery we decided to go to Vegas since it was the last time I'd have a weekend off for awhile. Our friends Hannah and Jon came with us. 

We stayed at the Hilton Vacations Suites near the Las Vegas convention center. The room was large, clean, and had an AMAZING king size bed and jacuzzi tub. 

That night we went to the Vegas Strip to show Brandon around since he had never been. He and I were both a little slow since we were both recovering from surgeries. We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in the Caesar Shops. The food was really good and we both had never been so it was a fun experience. 

We are horrible at getting good pictures together. 

Our friends Jon and Hannah.......so cute.

The following day we had plans to go to the Bodies Exhibit at the Luxor. After breakfast and quick stop and REI we were pulling into the parking lot when Brandon started having excruciating pain in the left side of his abdomen. I have never seen Brandon get emotional, at all, but he was to the point of almost crying and told us to take him to an emergency room. Jon climbed into the drivers seat (since I was high on pain meds....not a lot but a few) and drove us to the nearest emergency room which happened to be Las Vegas Medical Center. Word of advice NEVER GO TO THIS PLACE!!!! First of all they were super unorganized and it was just crazy. After checking in they took Brandon's vital in a hallway to wait to get his blood drawn.  I was left to wait in the hallway! Then we waited in a smaller hallway for the doctor, once the doctor saw him they sent him back to the waiting room. Soon they called us back into the hallway to wait to have his blood drawn. While waiting they came to get him for a CT-scan. Right after they called his name for his blood. I told the nurse that they had just taken him to get a scan. She said to let her know the minute he came back. About 20 minutes later I get a call from Brandon saying he was back waiting in the waiting room! So I went and got him and took him to get his blood drawn. After that took his vitals and sent us back to the waiting room. There we waited, and waited, and waited. It was miserable. We'd sent Jon and Hannah with the car so they were not stuck in the waiting room, so all we could do was wait. Finally just before we finally gave up and considered going they called us into an exam room. This room reminded me of a prison cell. It had an old exam table that was wood with paper. A small sink with a small cupboard and one extra chair. It was freezing cold and we waited FOREVER (said in a deep slow voice)! Finally after hearing voices and people walking back and forth on the other side of the door the doctor came to tell us that there was nothing wrong. The he possibly passed a stone (he has kidney stones but the were all still attached to the wall of his kidney) and was feeling the after pain. They gave us a prescription and told us good luck. Jon and Hannah picked us up, we grabbed some food (I was starving I'd used my little remaining change to buy some nutter butters out of the vending machine and while trying to open them the bag burst apart scattering my nutter butters across the exam room. I almost cried, in fact I started laughing/crying.) and started home. Just outside of Mesquite Brandon started throwing up and he didn't stop. We got home and he continued to throw up, finally I was so freaked out that we went to the IHC Emergency room to get him some help. There after wonderful service, clean triage's and a private exam room with no waiting in a crowded filthy waiting room we found out he had a kidney infection. They discovered this from a simply urine and blood test. They gave him a potent dose of antibiotics and he was feeling better within an hour. I was livid at the other hospital. In fact I'm still angry about it and it's been almost two months. Either way he is feeling better now and we are both recovering with no more visits to the hospital. 

Remember in my last post I bragged about our beautiful flowers, well the grasshoppers killed 80% of them and then the heat finished what was left. So I stopped by Star Nursery after work one day and bought a ton of cacti and succulents. Also while there I discovered some herbs that were on sale for .98 cents!!! 

One pot of cacti

Our beautiful herbs. From left to right: garlic chives, lavender, Thai basil, chamomile, and we just planted some regular basil two weeks ago. All the plants are alive and well. We've used the basil and chives in meals!

My favorite collection of succulents!

Our colorful cacti selection

I also become the proud owner of the doTERRA Family Physician Kit. I've enjoyed using most of the oils already! The Frankincense and DeepBlue helped a lot with my lingering soreness after surgery (soreness such as searing hot pain when I sneezed, coughed, or laughed).

The darling receiving blankets (the two pink ones) I made for my friend Kindi and her beautiful new baby girl!

The baby quilt I made for our friend Tricia and her new baby boy Wesley.

My first time rock climbing after surgery (it was about a month and a half when I went).

Brandon wanted to go do the Snow Canyon Overlook trail and one night finally did the whole 4.4 miles. 

The beautiful view from the overlook.

This is what we had to hike up and then hike down, it was great exercise!

Well that is pretty much a short summary of what has happened the last few months. My next post will be about our trip to Iowa and a little about my new job!!!!