Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Besides dealing with the flooding and sandbags we managed to fit in some Christmas stuff for the kids.

We made a gingerbread house (Rather, Cooper helped make the gingerbread house, Leila licked frosting, and Marshall threw Cheerios off the table. I don't see the scenario changing much for next year):
We also visited the nativity at the temple. When it was time to go Leila screeched at Jesse: "I wanna see the temple, I wanna see JESUS!!" Thanks Leila... for putting the "Jesus" in Christmas for us.

Cooper (the one in the brown striped shirt and headdress) dressed up as a shepherd and sang with the primary kids at the ward Christmas party. His favorite song this season seemed to be "Picture a Christmas" and he seemed to know most of the words:

We also visited Santa: Even though we only saw him a few days before Christmas he miraculously had his elves build exactly what Cooper and Leila asked for in record time! Santa, you amaze me. They sure must have been good because Cooper got the exact train set he asked for and Leila got a doll house. Marshall didn't like the idea of sitting on Santa's lap but that's ok because Santa said all babies are on his "good" list. Maybe he should have double checked in Marshall's case!

Flood 2010

I had a million things to do on Tuesday and none of them included preparing for a flood. The river rose about 6 ft. overnight and was about a 2 feet from coming up over the embankment behind our house:
Turns out we had more danger of flooding from the front than the back because the drainage pipe that went from the road in front of our house down to the river had completely backed up and was filling the road with water. Jesse came home from work around noon and immediately started sandbagging the neighbor's yards that were in immediate peril. Then, he headed down the road to where the river was much closer to homes and helped heap up the embankment and stack sandbags:

Later that night he sandbagged around our house (just in case) and we took the kids over to my mom's for the night (she said she would sleep better knowing they were there). Fastforward to Friday morning and this is all that was left of the river:

Keep in mind that the water was nearly brimming over those rocks and that was all that was keeping it away from our house and many others alongside ours. I can only attribute our safety to many, many prayers that were said on our behalf. I can't believe how many people either called our came personally to offer help!

Jesse and his dad spent all morning Friday emptying out all the sandbags (they estimated between 100 and 200) and Marshall and momma took a walk up the river:

It was nice to know that we had so many people to depend on for help and it turned out even nicer that it didn't flood!

Little Angel turns 3!

Three candles, and 3 princesses for our 3 year old Angel! Leila has been the sweetest, purest thing I've ever known in my life. I can't believe she came to us on a cold, rainy night 3 years ago!