Nampa, ID

On August 10 Russell had a paramedic job interview in Nampa, ID so we headed up there on Thursday. Nampa is about an hour outside of Boise, ID and about 10.5 hours from St. George. Originally, Russell was just going to go alone because tax return extensions are due on Sept 15 so it is busy at work, but Thursday morning I decided I could miss one day of work to go with him and I'm glad I did. We left at 12:30 and drove for what seemed like FOREVER!! We did make one pit stop in Orem, UT to get Krispy Kreme doughnuts! This is our tradition. Every time we go up north, we stop at Krispy Kreme's for our doughnuts.

Once we passed the Utah border into Idaho, this is what we saw for 300 miles...nothing but fields! It was definitely a long drive.

We got to our hotel in Nampa at about 11:00 pm. We were glad to get to our room and go to sleep. The next morning, Emily and I took Russell to his interview at 7:30 am and then we headed back to the hotel for breakfast. While we waited for Russell to be done, Emily and I went swimming. When we got to the pool, however, the pool was closed but the hot tub was open. We couldn't go in the hot tub because of the heat so we just put our legs in it and kicked and splashed. This was okay because that is what Emily likes to do anyway and I didn't really want to get completely wet. Afterward, we got cleaned up, packed our stuff in the car and went to get Russell.

Russell said that his interview went well. He had to take a written and practical test in addition to the interview. He said he felt good about everything but the job was not actually what we thought it was. We thought the job was for the ambulance service in Nampa city which has a very large call volume and would offer a lot of experience, but the job was actually for Wieser, ID which is a little town just outside of Nampa. Wieser only has about 6,000 people so the call volume for that ambulance service is only about 1-3 a day. Russell doesn't think he will get very much experience here so we don't know if we will take this job. Russell works for Ivins Fire and Rescue and they have a similar call volume so we think it would be better to stay with Ivins than move close to 700 miles away.

Our trip was not a total waste though, before heading home, we stopped at the Burlington Coat Factory in Nampa because I had never been to a BCF and I had heard they have good deals on clothes. I was so excited to find out that they sold maternity clothes! This is the first store I have been to that had maternity clothes. When I was pregnant with Emily I had to order all of my clothes through catalogs or the Internet or find used clothes at the DI. I tried on so many clothes and got a few new outfits. I was great. As we left the store, we heard this really loud crash. Russell said that was a car wreck and ran to the intersection. When he saw that one car was rolled on its side, he yelled to me to grab his medic bag and hurry. It was so scary. I didn't see what happened but it looked like the car turning left had tried to shoot the gap and was hit on the passenger side by the oncoming car. The car that was hit was on its side and the the other car's whole front end was smashed in and you could see tire marks on the hood. Neither of the drivers had seat belts on but luckily no one was hurt too bad. There were people standing all around trying to help but when Russell said he was a Paramedic, everyone stepped back and let him take charge. He was even able to make the call in to the dispatch and give report to the medics who had just interviewed him for a job!

We headed home at about 1:00 pm. Another 300 miles of nothing but fields... One nice thing about the drive though was that we got to cross over the beautiful Snake River a few times.

Emily had to take a potty break so we just happened to stop off in Twin Falls. This was a good place to stop because it was right by a look out point for the Snake River. I had no idea how big the river was but it is huge and very pretty. One of these day, I am going to go up there and go fishing for the massive sturgeon fish. These fish are as big as boats! Anyway, we stopped at this visitor center and parachuters were getting ready to jump off this bridge. I wish we could have stayed to see them jump but we still had a long trip ahead of us.

When we saw this sign on this truck, we had to take a picture of it. If only it said "Long Road" instead of "Long Load" it would have described our trip perfectly!

We finally got out of Idaho and back into Utah and the trip went a little quicker until we got to Nephi... My sister Lacie called us and asked if we were going to stop by her house in Fillmore. I felt bad but said no because it was already 8:30 pm and we were only in Nephi and still had about 3 hours of driving to go. Cursing us, she jokingly said "Well don't call us if you break down." Well we stopped to get dinner at Subway and when we got back to the car, we realized Russell had locked the keys in the car when he set them down to get Emily out of her car seat. A perfect cherry on top huh! We tried everything to get the door unlocked but nothing was working mostly because we didn't know what we were doing with the hanger. We walked to the nearest gas station to see if we could use their phone book to find a locksmith. Unfortunately, no one would answer their phone so Russell went back out to see if he could get the hanger to work again while Emily and I stayed in the gas station so Emily could eat dinner. Meanwhile, Russell called Lacie and thanked her for cursing us. While he was on the phone, a police car pulled up and he flagged them down. Like an answer to our prayers, the police were able to use some tool to unlock our door. We were so relieved!

Finally, we were back on the road at 10 pm. By the time we got to Beaver we were exhausted. We pulled off in a rest stop just outside of Parawon and took a little nap. We slept for about 15 minutes when Emily woke up crying. I think she was mad to still be in the CAR! So we got back on the road and FINALLY made it home at 1:30 am. We had never been so happy to see our house! Even though the trip was long, we had a fun adventure and were glad to spend time together.