almost done with interviews

The most recent trip was to the midwest.  The upside is that omaha actually is pretty cool.  Lots of concerts, cool zoo with almost everything indoors, tons of restaurants, great cost of living, and of course, duck hunting.  The downside was that Omaha was cold... like -20 with the wind chill.  It was so cold that when we would walk outside, my nose hairs froze and I couldn't breath through my nose.  I liked the program a lot in Omaha, I also liked that one of the intern years offered there had a night float system which means that you don't have to take overnight call every few nights like everwhere else.  We then went down to Wichita Kansas, not much to say about wichita, not bad.  While in omaha we went to check out winter quarters- it was actually pretty cool.  

Me outside winter quarters.

Kev inside the jungle at omaha zoo.

Me outside the hospital in Kansas.

Pour some sugar on meeee!

Not exactly a G-rated song but we weren't in a G-rated place. New Orleans is by far the filthiest city i have ever been to.. in every sense or the word. Nonetheless, we had an amazing time. Kev and I never plan anything, but we went with planners and it was a blast because we got to do so much cool stuff. First on the cool list was our tour of the swamp where we saw red ear turtles, snakes, beaver things, heron, egrets, and drum roll please... TWO alligators. They have these "camps" all along the rivers that are like shacks that they go hang out at and drink. Examples are pictured here in Sheryl Crow's 2007 "Love is free" video. It still looks like that with stuff floating in the rivers and capsized boats etc.

After the swamp tour we went into town and spent new years eve on Bourbon street. That was pretty fun. But a little crazy. There were a million people and I was not properly attired (I had on way too much clothing to fit in). Even my underwear would have been seen as too much clothes. However, Kev managaed to get beads thrown down from balconies at him (which he graciously gave to me). Jen and I did flash on a balcony as pictured below. Okay, psuedoflash. We lifted our shirts to the point of... nothing showing still. Being endowed as I am I was able to lift the shirt shockingly high without any fear of immodesty. Alas. At any rate, the pictures are fun and now I can say I lifted my shirt for beads on bourbon street. 

We went to an awesome local place for dinner and had file gumbo, jambalaya, shrimp, catfish, and fried oysters (my favorite). The evening capped off with fireworks being shot over the mississippi.

The next day was fun, we went to the garden district the upppity part of town with amazing houses and huge gorgeous trees. We went to the pep rally (Craziness). And headed home.

Then it was game day! Had breakfast at Brennans (a little spendy but delicious). Then went to the WWII museum and off to the game. The game was tons of fun and we had phenomenal seats (thanks Jen's mom). We're glad we went, glad we won, and glad to be home.

Palmyra

Since we were in Rochester we decided to also check out a few church history sites before Christmas.  It was tons of fun.  The Joseph Smith Family Farm was really pretty cool.  We even saw the fireplace where they hid the plates.  Then, since it was the middle of winter and no one else was there, we went tromping out into the sacred grove alone.  It was an amazing experience to be standing in such a sacred place.  It really helped put is in the Christmas spirit.  Then we climbed the hill Cumorah in a blizzard.  This was also a great experience but a little less fun because of the fear of frostbite.  The next day we went to the place where The Book of Mormon was printed.  Actually a really fun place to go see and understand better the amount of work it took to print it.  Wow!  Anyway, I was kinda like "you want to go to the printing press place TOO, seriously?"  but it was one of my favorite stops.  I highly reccommend the trip.