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Christmas week.  I hope everything is going your way for you and your families.  We stopped by one of the sites we hadn't stopped at yet.  It is the quarry where they got all of the original stone from for the original Nauvoo temple.  Since the river was dammed up in 1912, the river is now considerably wider so the quarry in now flooded.  It's not quite what it looked like back then but, at least, it is something to stare into.

The quarry site overlook.  It was a very windy day, as most days recently.  Arlene is heading up to the lookout.  A bit chilly, also.

Scene from the overlook.  You can see where the stone was taken from on the sides.  The rest of it is underwater.  During the end of the summer the water level was way down and this is where the temple gets it's water from for watering the temple lawn.  We actually ran out of water in September/October.  Now we have plenty of water as we are at flood stage with all of the heavy rains we're getting.  Go figure...

So, most mornings I go for a jog just to keep up appearances as to some level of fitness.  It was 18 the other morning so this is my morning attire.  Works OK.  Can't wait till it gets down to 0 or less.  Hafta rethink this morning jog thing, I guess....

We had a Christmas program at the Stake Center last night.  They removed the first three rows of seats in the chapel and went whole hog to bring in the community with lots of non-member involvement.  Had a children's choir, a small orchestra, a conductor and lots of other things going on.  A lot of our missionaries participated.  We were encouraged to applauded and take pictures.  I took some video but most of it is way to big to upload here so you' need to be satisfied with this one picture I managed to hang onto.

It was well attended and we got to meet a couple of our new missionaries at the temple that just arrived.  They will be here for a year.  They had that look of being lost so we were trying to clue them in a bit.  They are excited to get started Tuesday.

We're ready for Christmas

I did a computer job for a neighbor and he made this up for me.  It's all hand made from nails then welded together.  Pretty nifty.

The tree is up, awaiting the arrival of Saint Nic but, alas, no chimney for him to come down.  I'm figuring he'll hafta use the back door.  Heck, the vent to the stove doesn't even go outside.  Maybe I'll get that Tesla I've been thinking about?  Probably not...got all the stuff from discards leftover from the missionaries that bailed back in November and are all gone now.  Just like we'll do when we leave late next year.  Less than a year to go.  Halfway through our mission at this point.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas.  Best wishes to all your families.  More picts to follow as we have a few activities over the next few days and we get to speak to Elder Kevin on Christmas day.  Looking forward to that.  He has less than a year left on his mission.  Only Tues/Wed/Sat to work this week.  Kinda seems like a vacation!  Same goes for next week!  Yippee!