A red-letter day, with black ink.

About a week ago, Steph and I received a letter from McGladrey & Pullen's Dallas office. In this magical letter, a generous salary figure was included, benefits were outlined, and a start date (18 months from now) was included. After prayer and some deliberation (okay, not too much deliberation), we have decided to accept this offer. Yay!

We are both very excited about this opportunity. We spent the first few months of our marriage in Dallas and had a great experience. Housing is very affordable, the people were very friendly, and I really liked the people I worked with. We also had a lot of missionary experiences in Dallas. One of the nice things is that people in Dallas are still very religious and religion isn't considered "uncool."

While we are sad that this takes us away from family and might make seeing them more difficult, we have high hopes that our more northernly relatives will come come to visit us during our warmer winter months. The golf courses looked pretty nice. We considered Las Vegas and it's convenient location, but feel better about Dallas and the career opportunities I will have there, plus our ability to raise children in a good environment.

All in all, we feel very blessed.

The Strip

Living in Las Vegas means living with the gambling and the Strip. While neither Steph or I gamble, we did want to go down and see some of the more interesting parts of the strip. Becky was staying with us before we took her up to SUU and so we made a trip of it. We did a ton of walking, but saw some pretty interesting things.

Here we have Becky with Nicolas Cage. Don't worry Dad, he's made of wax and is standing outside of Madame Turnaud's House of Wax.


Aside from exotic wax celebrities, we also found a some exotic vehicles. Gotta love a Lamborghini.

The best part of the Strip has to be the Bellagio. Every 15 minutes, they have a water show out in front of the casino that employs water jets and is choreographed to the music. Steph and Becky sure liked it.

Inside the Venetian, they have some really cool (and expensive) shops. The one Steph is posing in front of has Renaissance outfits and masks (for a ball masque) made in Italy. Pretty incredible.

Below is another shot of the Venetian. It is themed to have canals, a sky painted ceiling, and Italian theming. It is beautiful. You can even take a ride on a gondola in the canal and have the operator serenade you. They keep the gambling on another floor, so you can really enjoy the upper levels of the casino.

Aside from the pictures above, we saw things like a small Eiffel tower, Cesar's Place, and a lot of lights. I was surprised at how much it is nothing like Hollywood would have you believe. The place is pretty over the top, but still has a few interesting things to do and has a lot of shopping.

Moving to Las Vegas

As exciting as new experiences are, moving has never been my favorite activity. For whatever reason, it usually involves a great deal of stress, lack of sleep, and a number of unanticipated difficulties. This move was no different.

Since Steph needs to student teach in Las Vegas and I have an internship there, we found an apartment, rented a Budget Moving truck, and headed for Las Vegas. We were very grateful that gas prices dropped and that we found a great deal on a moving truck. With gas at $4.00 a gallon, we had anticipated spending a great deal of money moving.

Moving was especially fun because of the cleaning we had to do and the weather. In order to stay until the 17th, I had to cut a deal with our landlady to do a deep cleaning of the apartment. Things always take longer than expected and we only got about 4 hours of sleep. We then had to drive a 16 ft. moving truck through the snowstorm that hit southern Utah. It was a bit hair raising to say the least. Despite the bad weather, we were blessed and made it to Mesquite for the night.

The most comic events of our move happened when we reached Las Vegas and started moving in. We had unloaded most of the truck and were left with the couches. We were able to maneuver the love seat through the twisty, narrow entry, but there was no way our couch would fit. We ended up taking it in over the patio railing and through the sliding glass door! We must had looked so funny, especially when we got momentarily stuck! My hat goes off to Steph for being a trooper and helping me get the couch over the patio railing. Good times.

Here is the moving truck (partially unpacked). We got a larger truck so we didn't have to stack things too high.

Here is the moving truck in front of our old apartment in Rexburg.

Graduation

On December 12th, Steph and I were able to attend commencement and convocation. We were very happy to have both sets of parents there for the occasion. Although Steph still needs to student teach before officially graduating, she was allowed to walk. Despite this fact, it was a quite very interesting to reflect on what it took to get there. Quite truthfully, it doesn't feel like I'm done. Perhaps this is because I still have Grad School ahead of me.

BYU-Idaho has meant a great deal to both of us. There is a special spirit on that campus and it has made a significant impact on both our lives. We have also had wonderful experiences with many people, both students and professors. We are very grateful to have attended there and for all those who made that possible.

On to the next!

Yellowstone in Fall

In September, Steph and I took a trip to Yellowstone National Park. While I had visited the park a number of times, it was Steph's first time to the park and she had a really good time. Part of our motivation for going was my free pass to the park that was about to expire on National Public Lands Day. As we pulled up to the gate and pulled out the free admission (I was of course stoked - free entry), we were surprised to learn that we didn't need the voucher because everyone was admitted into the park free on National Public Lands Day. So much for my thrifty moment. At least we got in free.


Since we only had one day to spend in the park, we rushed around all over trying to give Steph a great experience. In truth, the park is huge and you could spend at least a week enjoying the scenery and the wonderful peculiarities of a dormant volcanic basin. We managed to get around the park and saw Mammoth Hot Springs, Old Faithful, the Yellowstone Grand Canyon, the mud pots, the Norris Geyser Basin, and some flatulent deer (who knew?)! We were a little disappointed with Mammoth Hot Springs since they were mostly dried up, but really enjoyed the mud pots and the Norris Geyser Basin.


For me, the neatest experience was the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. I had my first experience on the south side of the canyon as we climbed down 328 stairs to stand at the bottom of the canyon right in front of the lower falls. It was magnificent, even though the climb back up was a hike. Steph said that I had way too much energy as I tried to get some good exercise and jog up the stairs. Some lady sitting at the halfway point even accused me of showing off.


Our night ended rushing to see Old Faithful, which we managed to see just before dark. We then took some time to visit the old Yellowstone Lodge, a multi-story hotel/restaurant made entirely of logs. It was a neat experience and a wonderful day.


On the way home, we stopped in West Yellowstone and had a late dinner. We ate at a little hole in the wall, but they had the best barbeque. Even Steph loved it. Anyway, below are some pictures we took of our excursion.

The riverbed under me is green and red due to the mineral deposits and the bacteria that grows in the hot water leaving the geyser.

A flatulant deer.

Steph at a lookout over the majestic view of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon.



Steph: answering the call of nature.

Steph at a boiling pot of mud. The sulfur was something to smell.

Steph at stair 252 or so.

A Flea Circus (Jon's idea)

As my family knows, I'm terrified of bugs, especially spiders. In Dallas, we discovered that I'm also afraid of cockroaches. I want everyone to know (especially my dad) that I ate a meal worm and held a cockroach on my own little hand. I know what you're thinking...surprising. Hard to believe? I knew you'd think that, so I stole a lab camera and got some photographic proof. Voila! Me eating a meal worm (fried). It still had its little legs attached. I'm also holding a 3 inch Madagascar Hissing Cockroach (no, not at the same time).

Oops, I'm crooked, but still holding a fried meal worm. It tasted like a French Fry.






Frying the live meal worms



The nastiest cockroach anyone has ever seen

The hissing freaked me out

Is this supposed to be fun?

I found out today that I havea love/strong dislike relationship with blogging, heavy on the strong dislike. This was my first time blogging, and whoever said beginners have luck obviously never blogged before. I got online to do my homework and of course wound up on the blog. That's when things got ugly. I couldn't figure out how to change the silly background. I couldn't figure out how to change anything for that matter. After 20 mintues of searching through help articles (not to mention pulling hair), the thought occured to me that perhaps the reason I couldn't find the layout tab was that I didn't have admin privileges. Sure enough, when I logged on under Jon's name that layout tab was sitting there as innocent as could be. I never thought it possible for a tab to smirk, but I swear it did.

"Terrible," you're thinking. "How awful! That poor girl being picked on by her insidious blog." Now imagine poor little me trying to post this story when the insidious blog decides it's time for an error. What could I do against the powers of error bX-ihe8cp? Nothing. I crumpled in submission, logged back in, and rewrote my story. Needless to say, I won't be posting on this blog until at least next week. Or until I don't want to do my homework, so probably tomorrow!