Bix Video

Here is the video of the Palmer Spine I promised you. This one isn't the footage from our local news station. It's Palmer's own video that they shot, which is actually probably better. We are towards the second half if you want to fast forward a little bit. Enjoy!

Sweet New Ride!

Since we're pretty sure we're never gonna see this again:
(Photo taken September '06 in Davenport)

Brett & I decided it was time to ditch the gas hogging SUV for a newer, more economical car.

So Ta-Da! Here it is:





Our brand new 2009 Toyota Corolla in Capri Sea Metallic. We LOVE it!

Hello, World!

Wow. Blog readership on my humble little blog has gone global this past month. I have received 193 visits from 23 countries! I am not sure what has sparked this international interest in Adventures in Iowa, but welcome, and happy reading!

Palmer Spine

Once again this year we participated in the Palmer Spine for the Bix 7 race. We walk the "Quick Bix" which is a 2 mile walking race dressed up as a spine to raise public awareness about chiropractic and the Palmer Clinics. This picture is compliments of our local news station, Brett & I are the 3rd and 4th segments:

Here is the spine posing with the Elvi. They do the race every year too:
Here we are with some of our friends before the race:

The whole group after the race. We came in dead last for the Quick Bix, but we won 1st place in the costume competition!!

C3 & C4 at the finish line!

Our local news station has footage on their website of the race, including a portion with the Palmer Spine doing a little dance that we put together. I am working on getting just that portion of the 2 hour broadcast uploaded to my blog. When I do I will let you know. If you are feeling really ambitious, you can check out the footage yourself at KWQC's website.

100 Posts!

HOORAY! This is my 100th post. It only took me over a year and a half of blogging. Hopefully I can get the next hundred posted a little sooner. Thanks for reading. :-)

Golf Tournament

Today everyone from the office (except for Dr. Paustian) went to play some golf for the Durant Chamber of Commerce golf outing. Even though we mostly sucked (especially me) we all had a really great time.


I'm pretty sure I completely missed this one:

Wordle

Something to waste your time with: www.wordle.net

You can enter any text you would like, or enter a URL and Wordle will randomize all of the words on that page like this:

Pretty cool, huh?

'Maters

The container gardening didn't really work out for us last year, but we decided to give it another go this year since we actually have a yard that we can plant in. We have a couple of tomato plants that have really taken off in the past few weeks. It is such a novelty to me to have fresh vegetables growing right in my own backyard, especially since nothing really grows in that hard-packed San Diego soil.

Yummy cherry tomatoes (above) have made for delicious summer snacking. These ones (below) look like they're about ready to go. That's a snow pea in the foreground.



This plant (a.k.a "The Beast") may very well take over our entire back yard soon:

The Only Bacon You Will Ever See Me Eat

Compliments of my co-worker Amanda: strawberry-flavored Gummy-Bacon! Now, the back-story: There is this restaurant called Gramma's Kitchen just across the road from the I-80 (World's Largest!) Truckstop. My only complaint about Gramma's Kitchen is the fact that they put bacon in pretty much everything. So, Amanda and I have a bit of a running joke about bacon. What makes this whole thing even more ironic is the fact that this candy bacon came from Gramma's Kitchen!!!! So, just for you Amanda, I eat bacon:


Thanks Amanda!

Fulton/Galena

Brett's Mom came to town this weekend and we had a really great time just hanging out and catching up. For our one "road trip" day we headed up to Galena, which I have previously blogged about and we also stopped in Fulton, IL to tour this cool windmill they have there.

First, the windmill: Originally the people of Fulton wanted to purchase an old windmill from Holland and have it shipped to America, but Holland does not allow their old windmills to leave the country, so that was a no-go. Instead, they decided to have a windmill assembled in Holland, and then shipped to America. The whole thing weighs a whopping 74 tons and does not have a single nail holding it together. They built it the good old-fashioned way using only wooden pegs.

The windmill is one of only a handful of working windmills in the United States. At the Fulton windmill on windy days they grind their own 100% natural completely organic flour, which I think is really cool.

Next we headed up to Galena where we once again tasted some really amazing wine at Galena Cellars (love them!), ate lunch at Johnathan's, and browsed all of the fun little shops along the way.

Dean & Michelle

Quite possibly the cutest couple ever:


More pictures to come...possibly in the form of a cool photo slideshow from this software I am trying out. I will hopefully have more to blog about this weekend after Brett's mom comes to town. :-)

Canoe Trip!

For the Fourth of July weekend we went on an AWESOME canoe trip with Dean & Michelle.

We all drove up to Sauk City, Wisconsin and camped on a beach on the Wisconsin River the first night. We set up camp, cooked some dinner, and then set off fireworks (which, by the way are totally legal in Wisconsin-in case you were wondering). It was the perfect way to spend the Fourth of July. We were able to see lots of fireworks from our location, plus we had our own!

The next day we canoed down the river for a few hours. We stopped on a beach for lunch and some swimming, and then canoed some more before we found a place to set up camp for the night. We camped overnight again on an island in the middle of the river, and then canoed downstream some more to the pick up point where The Canoe Lady picked us up and took us back to our car.

All in all, we had a really great time. It was a weekend full of firsts for me: first time camping, first time canoing, first time in Wisconsin, first time swimming in a river, first time lighting fireworks...I'm sure there's more. If you would like to check out more pictures from our trip, click here.