That Weekend Clint and I went to Little Rock

 Now that we are at the end of residency Clint has been applying and interviewing at several VA's around the country. Over the past many months we have turned down many offers and been turned down by many others. And now that it is late March we finally have a solid job offer from the VA at Las Vegas. We are SO relieved, thankful, excited to finally have a good job offer. However, we also had a set interview at the VA in Little Rock, Arkansas so we were hoping to make a good impression there that way we might have options. On Thursday after I taught we pulled Lizzy out of school and drove the 4 hours up to Monroe where we dropped off the 3 kids with Clint's mom and grandmother. Then we drove 3 more hours up to Little Rock. We got there around 8:00 at night so we didn't see much. What we did notice was the Museum of Discovery across the street.

In the morning we had an overpriced breakfast at the hotel and then went outside to look around downtown. It was lovely. Clint told me that he read somewhere that Little Rock is the 2nd cleanest city in America. I don't know how people make a list like that. "Atlanta had 47 pieces of old gum on a block of sidewalk so that ranks it as.... 23rd." And which city is the cleanest? Not New Orleans, I can tell you that much.

Clint left for his interview at 11:30 and I didn't see him again until around 6:00. There was a lot of watching Food Network and reading my book. It rained most of that day. When he came back to the hotel we went out to a joint that boasted Chicago style pizza where we unintentionally ordered a thin and crispy pizza loaded with onions and green peppers (which I hate) and mushrooms (which Clint hates). Don't even ask what we were thinking when we ordered it - I think we both saw the word "feta cheese" in the description and our brains went "yummo let's get that one - no need to read on." Still, it was fun and we had a good time.

Saturday was the first day we got to explore a little bit. We basically drove around from 8:00 until 1:00 and we had a BLAST. We seriously had so much fun. First we drove around the west side of Little Rock around the Chenal Valley neighborhood. Apparently one of the doctors who interviewed Clint lives around there and actually drove him out there to check out the area. It was beautiful. I mean, huge rolling hills, rivers, running paths everywhere, lovely homes, classy shopping centers... I was impressed.

We also drove by the school where this particular doctor's little girl goes to school. It was hunormous and clean and has rave reviews online. I took several pictures.

 Then we headed up 15 miles or so to an area called Maumelle which was also beautiful. Here are some more pictures of the drive. Lots of pictures of trees and hills from my car. And a river thrown in for good measure.

 

Here's the Maumelle area. Note the walkways everywhere.

 And look at these fire hydrants! Every fire hydrant in the town was painted like this! We thought the attention to detail was awesome.

We looked up "Maumelle real estate" on my phone and map quested one of the expensive homes for sale just to find where a really nice neighborhood would be. We found ourselves in this neighborhood:

 And then we found ourselves in front of this house:

 It boasts garage space for 5 cars, a big pool, a separate guest house in the back, and a stream back behind. Yes, we were impressed. And if we had $565,000 to spare we would totally buy that house.

 We drove around some more and loved the views of the rivers and lakes from the top of the hills. (Ignore the port-a-potty. Although Jacob would be excited to see it. He loves the idea of a little house just for a potty. But then again he's 5 and he's never been in one.)

 Then we drove half an hour to a town called Conway. We were not impressed. I won't say much about it. But we did eat at a fabulous place for lunch where I had a dessert called Chocolate Mess that I will be dreaming about for months... 

Anyway, here are some pictures of the drive up and the college campus over there. Meh.

 We looked up the local LDS church and drove by it. Meh.

 We drove by a school. Meh.

 Then back to Little Rock to go back through Chenal and then back to Monroe. I don't know if we'll get a job offer there but if we do I would seriously consider living in Arkansas. I was pleasantly surprised by it!