bipolar november

after days of rain and strong winds i was sure the beauty of autumn had left us (because as you can see above it left my favorite harvard square tree).

natalie and i decided to go back to our garden cemetery to assess the damage and were very surprised 

to see that THE GIFT OF AUTUMN STILL LIVED. 

please see below for real cam not iphone cam proof:

we both needed the gift of autumn that day so i'm very grateful some of it was still there to be received. 

 the weather warmed up so john and i walked around beacon hill one saturday to see any left over halloween decor. look at those great baby pumpkins!! 

snow fest then happened two days later
..which i was mad about until i got outside and remembered that snowy boston is a wonderful sight 

then that weekend it warmed up again just in time for christine to visit! we had a laid back weekend full of chatting, eating, leaf collecting, brick stealing, templing,  service auctioning, walking, and bike riding around boston. it was a fun few days and we are always happy to have her come to town. 

the next weekend i went down with some people from my stake to help with hurricane sandy cleanup. 

we went to rockaway, queens and actually met the missionaries and mission president that are in this video  which was neat. the worst was already over for most people but the damage still needing attention was overwhelming. we helped some of the sweetest people, my heart just broke for them and their loss. 

you can't really see it but that is the new york skyline behind me and the picture below is the basement of that house. we gutted the entire thing and found all of these really old newspapers that had been used for insulation. i felt sad throwing them away. that basement below was part day care part man cave. the man who lived there had just moved his piano and extensive criminology book collection to the basement along with a bunch of furniture. he lost it all along with his wife's hundreds of childrens books. he was actually in his basement when it began to flood and as he described it to us it sounded like something that happens in movies but not in real life. he heard a huge bang and looked up to see water rushing towards him. he ran up the stairs and watched his basement flood to the very top of the ceiling in just seconds. by some miracle their main floor didn't have too much damage and he was able to get up the stairs but others in the neighborhood weren't as fortunate. the missionaries told us about a woman they helped whose husband went downstairs and never came back up, she just sat in the top floor of their house completely helpless as he drowned. i can't imagine anything more awful. 

 the second person we helped just needed his floors out since they were starting to mold so we ripped up everything. it wasn't sad ripping up the floor in the picture above but it got sad when we had to do the beautiful wood in their dining room that was laid over 100 years ago. he held back tears as he told us about how long the home had been in his family and how hard it was for him to have to tear everything out. apparently other helping hands volunteers had come to his house a week earlier and he wasn't mentally prepared to do physical labor on the house yet so they just helped him do light cleaning and listened to his stories. he said that he will always be grateful for their companionship in such a lonely time. the entire day i felt so grateful to be a part of a church that cares for others and making serving/helping others in need a top priority. it was a neat experience. 

the next day i felt grateful to spend some time with john (the picture above would be us standing in the corner of the room for a baptism because there were no seats left) because we didn't get to see each other very much in november. he started working in boston again (he was working in ny from june to october) but got put on an even busier client so i saw him less than i did when he was in new york which was funny/sad. something else that is funny/sad was finding this great fox thin sweatshirt thing and then having to take it back because it went way too high on the sides and looked awful. 

and then the rest of november was spent in utah but that will be another post since my laundry is done and i need to now fold it.  at the rate i'm going thanksgiving utah post will be coming up by spring time! but only if we are lucky.