News from Illinois

Tom is still busy with research and will soon be publishing his first paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Everyone look out for that one because I know you read that journal all the time!! Get your subscriptions now. Or, I can just send everyone a pdf in a month or so and you can open it and look at the pretty pictures. That's about all I understand of it, too, so don't worry. OK, that's not true, but pretty much all my work for the last 8 months has gone into experiments to allow us to make one picture for this paper. Crazy.

Becca is participating in a 3 year program for High School Chemistry teachers here at the University. It is focused on using technology in the chemistry classroom in rural high schools. Right now she is in a 2 week intensive program, and is enjoying learning new programs to use in her lesson plans. She also enjoys meeting all the other teachers (60 of them!) and getting ideas and networking. She gets graduate credit and a $2,000 stipend, so Europe, here we come!!!

We are going to Vienna and Prague over New Years, and we are so excited!!! Becca brought all her German books back so we can learn situational German. And Czech. But we won't be learning Czech from the German books, just in case you were wondering (she also has some Czech books, not to be confused with checkbooks).

We also have new callings in addition to being ward missionaries. Tom is now one of 2 gospel doctrine teachers, which is good because he has been wanting to study the epistles for quite some time. Becca is jealous, but it's OK because she will teach when Tom can't.

Becca is now the 2nd counselor in the YW presidency which means she works with the Beehives which is quite exciting, even if there are only 3 of them. But she is excited to work with the youth because teenagers are funny! And not as scary as primary children, who just cry all the time. But she did her time in primary, don't you worry!

That's all our news!!! Life is busy but really great! We'd love to hear from anyone reading this blog. So write us a stinkin' email!!

Our June travel adventures

We went to Idaho during the first part of June to go to Alex Parent's and Katie Gammon's wedding. They got married in Idaho Falls, so we flew to Boise and then drove over to I.F. the next day for the wedding. It was really neat to see one of our best friends get married. The ceremony was nice, and the sealer was a trip!! He told this huge long story about how one of the sealer's in the I.F. temple once had a bride say "No" at the altar. Everyone in the room was like, "Why is he telling this story?" It was hilarious and everyone was hoping that Katie would not say, "No" also. Of course, she didn't and they are now married.

The Chemistry Couples (Tom and Becca met in Chem 351, Alex and Katie met in Chem 455 when Alex was her TA!!)

Becca's brother Jared and his wife Natalie live in Idaho Falls, so we stayed with them that night. It was Jared's birthday, so we had a lot of food that day between the wedding luncheon, going to dinner with Jared and Natalie, and the reception and the birthday cake!! We had fun celebrating with Jared and Natalie, and the next day we drove over to Yellowstone. It was tons of fun, and we got a lot of good pictures and videos of buffalo, or bison, or whatever.....I can't tell the difference. Well, we got pictures of other stuff, too, but we have a lot of pictures of buffalo. And Old Faithful. And a video of Old Faithful blowing his top. We didn't get any pictures of Old Faithful, just video. Here's the Old Faithful Video:

Here's my best bison photo.

Tom,Becca, Jared, and Natalie at the Continental Divide. Tom set the camera to take the picture automatically and we didn't know how much time we had, so Tom was running and at the last second just grabbed Becca!

This is the Excelsior Geyser. It is huge and up until 1890 would go off in 300 foot high eruptions at fairly regular intervals. The last time it went off was in 1985, but it was only 30 feet. It's thought that the big eruptions damaged the waterways so it won't go off like that again. It's basically a big crater with a bubbling hot spring now.

Also of import on this trip was that Tom added another state to list of states he has visited, Montana -- making in total 39 states that he has visited! Admittedly, we were only in Montana for like 10 minutes, but we got a picture of Tom by the sign anyway.

Tom in front of the Montana sign.

After driving through Yellowstone we also drove through the Teton National Park, and got some good pictures. The Tetons are probably the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen. The great thing about the entire day was that you could see spectacular views just by driving through the parks.

The Tetons

Another Teton shot

At one of the scenic turnouts.

Tom came back to Champaign the following day, but Becca stayed in ID for two more weeks, which was hard because we're newlyweds and we've never been apart (yeah, that was cheesy!). However, it gave Tom a chance to grow out his beard (picture forthcoming....). Oh, yeah, and he also got a lot of stuff done around the house and yard, which made Becca ecstatic, because Tom is usually really lazy. OK, not really. We're both usually really lazy!

Becca went to her 10 year high school reunion (Yeah, she robbed the cradle, cuz Tom's 10 year isn't until NEXT summer!!). Becca got to see all her best friends from High School, which was really fun, and they had lots of girl time together. She had to drive to Utah to see Jennifer because Jennifer couldn't come to ID for the reunion, so she had a fun little jaunt down I-15 to Spanish Fork. On the way she got to see two of our FAVORITE professors from BYU, Dr. Wood and Dr. Fleming (aka Doc). Of which Tom was really jealous. Becca also got to play a lot with our nephew Sean who is adorable and hilarious and has a laugh that Becca adores. He even does it on demand because he knows Becca loves it so much!

Becca had a great time with her family in Boise, and she's really sad to be back in Illinois with Tom. OK, not sad to be with Tom, but the beard kind of scares her!!

Here's a few more pictures of Yellowstone for your perusal:

A river near Excelsior geyser

A river shot taken along the side of the road

Another pool near Exelsior geyser

Another river photo taken from the side of the road.