I have always felt I needed to listen to General Conference out of duty. This past weekend however, I was actually very excited to listen to the leaders the Lord has chosen to direct us! What a difference a change in attitude makes. I feel uplifted and ready to face another 6 months of uncertainty with faith and gratitude for all the blessings in my life!
We spent Saturday getting the house ready for the market (it's still not there yet, but we will proceed anyway!). We took breaks to sit and listen to conference. Sunday we went to the Bowerman's. A tradition since we moved here. Oh, how we will miss them! We love listening to conference with them and enjoying the delicious buffet throughout the day! Rich make the best tri tip in the whole world (only Jon got to enjoy it this time, he went over on Saturday between sessions to help mow their lawn). After being filled to the brim both spiritually and physically, it is hard leaving...
Now I am rambling again, so I will end this, and try to get my room clean before the realtor shows up in an hour!

A tropical storm... in Illinois!

Behind our home is a quaint little creek called "Deer Creek". It runs about 3 inches deep and a foot wide between ours and our neighbors fence.

During heavy rain storms, we have seen it swell to the bottom of the fence line! Watching the crrek rise during storms has been one of our family past times!

Then came Ike. On Sunday, September 14, 2008, Ike came rolling through Edwardsville, IL as a tropical storm!

In less then 3 hours it dumped over 5.5 inches of water on our little community. Our little creek turned into a raging river; swelling to over 25 feet deep! It was impressive to watch, until it came up to the bottom of our little 4 foot retaining wall. We started thinking we might be in trouble... In less then 5 minutes, the water had crested our wall and was pouring into our home. We were scrambling to get things upstairs as fast as the six of us could. Darlene made a quick call to Lisa (our Relief Society President) to let her know she wouldn't be in church. Minutes later, we had several members from our Ward wading in water and helping carry things up. They even grabbed the camera and started taking pictures for us. The water reached about 18 inches in the house befroe it began to receed. It was all very overwhelming... the storm and the flooding, yes... but mostly the love, compassion, and service of so many.

A deeply sincere thank you goes out to all those who helped. We could not have "weathered this storm" without the places to stay, meals, cleaning crew, handymen, and prayers on our behalf. We feel very blessed.

Extensive damage was done to our home. It's still a little tough to deal with so the details will have to wait until another time. Here are some photos...

as the water receeded, the carpet was floating...

If you look close you can see the outside water line a good foot above the inside water line. When this photo was taken the water was still rising... That's one of our leather chairs to the left and a quilt from one of the beds (in a different room) floating around...

This is the hallway leading to the boys bathroom and bedrooms...

after the water had gone down,

this was what was left to pump out.

The Very Bad Beginning

OK... I give! Everyone has started this blog thing and has been bugging me to do one too! Since we live so far from each other, I decided it was a pretty good way to stay in touch. So here goes...

Last week, Alec graduated from seminary! He has spent this past year as seminary president. I know I'm going to have a hard time when he graduates from High School in a couple of weeks, but had no idea how hard his seminary graduation would be. I cried. Seeing my oldest sitting on the stand, knowing he has spent four years getting up early, reading his scriptures, praying, and actually paying attention, made me swell with true joy! He has sacrificed so much in the world to do things the Lord's way. It showed brilliantly in his countenance as he accepted his certificate (signed by the prophet). His boss had "Congratulations Alec, seminary graduate" scrolling across the marquis for a couple of days! It was pretty cool!