Flooding

Winter is finally here. We have hardly had any rain and we are supposed to get about 80 inches per year and it is generally between November and April. We have only had 2 storms so far until this one came. There has been a lot of flooding, especially up where we live. We live up Hunter Creek and it is prone to flooding. I debated going to work today but I had Chris drive me in the truck. It just kept getting worse and we got reports of it being over the bridge and so me and the other girl that live up there went home at lunch so we aren't stuck in town. Luckily we live way up on the hill so we will be totally fine. We just could get stuck at our house. We are going on a cruise and have to get to Medford by tomorrow night (3.5 hrs through river canyons that are prone to land slides). We may have to take some detours but there aren't really any good options. I think we will be taking the truck instead of our sportwagen along with a chain saw and shovels. Here are some pictures of hunter creek on the drive home from work today.

This is the road ahead. Yes completely covered in a few feet of water. We are about half way through it at this point. The road was completely covered for over a 1/4 mile. At one point it was at least to our bumper and we drive a dodge ram with a lift.

Here is the beginning of the bad part.

This is one of the homes along the creek. Totally sucks to be them.

This is a home that is basically across the street from our property. They usually have the most gorgeous yard in immaculate condition. On the right you can see a little duck statue. That is normally a cement wall where the creek is and it is usually about 6 or so feet below that.

This is another neighbors house. There is usually no water here. The creek is actually behind all the trees in the background.

This is us driving through several feet of water.
So it was a fun day at work. Don't know if I will be able to get to work tomorrow or not.

It's Already December

December just started out with a bang. I found out I was pregnant in early November but my first ultrasound wasn't looking so great. I had another ultrasound December 3 and it wasn't good. I didn't even develop beyond about 5.5 weeks just like every other time. So we had to get a D&C scheduled. My ultrasound was in Eugene on the morning of the 3rd and I had an orchestra concert that night in Gold Beach (only 4.5 hrs away). I had 2 other orchestra concerts on the 4th and 5th also. I almost had to go back to Eugene on the 6th for the D&C but they found someone to do it in Coos Bay (only 2 hrs away). So I had the surgery on the 6th and we are getting the tissue sent for genetic testing this time (this is miscarriage #4). I felt horrible yesterday after the surgery but felt much better today. I spent most of the day on the couch, but we did go get a Christmas tree today. We just drive up the road about 10 miles and cut one down. So back to work tomorrow!

So they aren't the biggest most full trees around but at least it's close to home and only cost $5.

At least this year the trunk is bigger than 1 inch around. Maybe even 4 or 5! By the way--this is me recovering from surgery yesterday!

Here I am at my orchestra concert in Gold Beach. I think we did pretty good this year.

Thankgiving

We got to go back to Utah to visit for Thanksgiving. We spent about 10 days there. Other than catching up on our going out to eat we mostly just hung out with everyone. I did get to go to the Messiah Sing Along at the Utah Symphony which I loved.

Chris did hydrogen peroxide a few too many times on his hair and this was the result. Shon Feller had fun styling it for him one night. He looked pretty creepy if you ask me.

On our way home from the Medford airport at 2 AM we came across a downed tree on the 197 highway. Luckily Chris and some other guys that pulled up were able to clear it enough to get around it. It would have been a very long detour if we had to turn around.

Chris wanted his hair platinum blond so we had Jess bleach it for him. It had a very bright glow to it after that.

Checking out all the Black Friday adds after dinner.

Here is a niece and nephew playing dress ups. Yes I did say nephew- his daddy is so proud.

Here's what we have been doing for the past couple months. First of all I got brave and decided to recover my dining room chairs that were hideous! I tried it first with some scrap fabric and had to try it about 3 different ways before it looked okay. So I finally got some fabric and just did it. I am very proud of myself.

Here is the before picture. Pretty ugly!

Here are the after pictures. I think it turned out pretty good.

Chris has been assistant coaching a youth soccer league. I finally went to one of the games and it was actually quite entertaining. They have like 20 kids on the team.

This is a kid from Cardston Canada. He came to church a few weeks ago while biking down the west coast. He needed a place to stay for the night so we had him come for dinner and stay the night. Our Branch Pres didn't want him getting stuck around Crescent City and having to camp there so he had Chris drive him down to Klamath. He was a very cool kid. Small world he knew our friends Shon and Vinnie that live in Woods Cross.

We got a new car in September. We wanted to get something with a little more cargo space and better gas mileage. We were deciding between a Prius and the Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen. Well we ended up with the sportwagen. We love it. It gets about 40mpg and has plenty of room. We had a long drive to Eugene the other day for me to get my back injected and I put my memory foam in the back and could lay completely straight. It was quite comfortable and one of the shortest 4 hr drives I have ever done. It's a 2012 manual with leather and a panoramic sunroof. The sunroof extends over the back seats- its awesome. Needless to say I love my car!

Plenty of room with the seats folded flat. The Camry was definitely smaller as far as cargo space.

Catching Up On Summer

Here are a bunch of pictures of stuff we did this summer. Sorry some got out of order and I am too lazy to fix them.

This is my sister Jess surfing in San Diego in August. I had a medical conference there and some of the family met us there and we stayed in a beach house.

We got a $100 surfboard from Costco while we were there.

The sterner boys hanging out at the house and at the beach.

Surfing is hard work. Don't I look tired? Below is Logan trying his hand at surfing. He actually did pretty good.

Here I am at Chili's. We got some of our going out to eat done. We don't get much of that in Gold Beach.

After the family left me and Chris stayed in a hotel. We were exhausted. We checked in and 3 PM and both took naps. We were too lazy to go do much of anything. My neck was also killing me so I couldn't go surfing or anything the last couple days.

Me and Chris went camping up Bear Camp Road. This is between Medford and Gold Beach. If you follow the GPS sometimes it tells you to go this way to get to Gold Beach but the road is only clear from snow for a couple of months in the summer. We camped for the night then were going to head to Medford to go to the temple and do some shopping then make it back to the coast to surf. Well we woke up with a flat tire and only discovered it after we spent 30 minutes carefully packing the trunk to make everything fit. By some miracle a van pulled behind us and he happened to have a little pump powered by the cigarette lighter. It at least got us to Medford to get the tire fixed.

Roger, Kiera and Beau came to visit us in August and we went and hiked Indian Sands. That sand was crazy hot.

When we were in Salt Lake in June we went up to my parents new cabin. The whole family was there and they just about all fit in the hot tub.

Because something always has to happen while Chris is out of town- our TV broke. So we searched and searched for a new one and ended up with a 55" Samsung 7000 series. It is way nice and has internet browser, netflix right on it, 3D, bluray player, the works. I love it!

To celebrate pioneer day our stake does a Make a Difference Day. It is a big service project. This year they did it in Brookings (only 30min south of us) and we put new gravel over a trail. I did a lot of shoveling and my back was not happy about it.

We also did some family pictures while we were in Salt Lake in June. It was crazy as usual.