Trent takes flight!

This story starts a LONG time ago when Brother Brummett promised to take Trent flying when he got his eagle. Trent DID get his eagle (we seem to have the tradition of boys getting their eagles right before they turn 18) so the BIG day for flying was last Saturday (just got the pics). They flew to Casa Grande and back and even gave Trent a little flying instruction. Trent had a GREAT time (if ya get the chance ask him about his experience especially as the plane did a dip...) Thanks so much Brother Brummett and Brother Hansen!

Saturday surprise...

I know this post is a little late, but I had quite a surprise last Saturday... I was doing the usual Saturday stuff... like going to the grocery store.. and when I got home my bedroom was full of new furniture! We've had so much car expense lately (just ask our new best friend, Scott at MIDAS !) ... I just put the thought of new stuff aside til all the vehicles are up to par. So WHY did we get new furniture you might ask?!!?.... Well.... when we moved the old furniture(Mike's 20 year old bachelor stuff) out to do the remodeling... we knew it was NOT going to be going back in. But in the meantime we've been sleeping on a mattress on the floor and living out of boxes. The last piece is getting delivered tomorrow and the whole set is BEAUTIFUL! Thanks Mike (and Furniture Plus) for the wonderful surprise. You ARE the best!.... now I have to go shopping.... it's time to decorate!

remodeling update...

Our demolition/remodeling/dust storm (DUST is EVERYWHERE) is still going on... but MUCH faster now... thanks to Mike's new handy dandy manly roto hammer! It takes the old tile/grout/cement off like butter... but boy is it noisy! So it won't be much longer til all the demo is finished and then on to the FUN stuff! Thanks Mike!

Brazil/Brasil news...

Here's the latest excerpts from Brazil/Brasil (American spelling/Brasil spelling... my new tidbit of knowledge from Brandon!)

Oí família Here´s the pics of the baptism!!! We had two baptisms and their names are Bruno and he´s 14 and Suelen and she´s his cousin and she´s 14 too. Brother Antônio baptized them. He´s been a member for 17 years and countless missionaries have passed through here and no one has ever asked him if he would like to baptize anyone. So, we gave him the opprotunity and he was so excited. It was hilarious because he was smiling the whole day and he doesn´t have front teeth and it was just funny. We also had investigators at the baptism and we should baptize more next week. Also in one picture is our branch president, Marcos. That was the excitment for the week. Also this week, we came across something pretty cool. We met a guy from Tarragona Spain. He said it´s about 100km from Barcelona. He´s pretty cool, he hasn´t been in brazil for very long and he doesn´t know portuguese so he talked in spanish. My comp knows spanish so we taugt the first lesson in portuguese AND spanish. Spanish isn´t really too different from portuguese but the accent is WAY different and if i talked as fast as he does I would get tired. That dude talked insanely fast and it was weird to hear the rolling r sound. .... Congrats to Trent on the grauation. Now mom must feel old that everyone is graduated.jk. The rain was just a curse on trent for not graduating from mesa high and keeping the family blood pure. ...That´s about it for this week, the weather has been great this past week. It´s cooled down a couple degrees and in the morning and in the evening the weather is PERFECT and is really refreshing. Well, see you all later. Any questions, just ask.....tchau. Elder Lewis

more about graduation...

Trent has had his OWN way of following the normal family traditions... Everyone was born the usual way... He wanted to be born feet first... we had to convince him it doesn't work that way! Everyone went to preschool... he didn't want to, no way, not even when it was at his house! All the siblings were baptized on their birthday... right before he was to be baptized the Church changed back to Stake baptism days. Everyone went to science camp... the year he WAS to go, the budget was cut. The siblings are 6 feet tall and under... he had to beat that by an inch... AND there are 5 Mesa High graduates who graduated in sunshine.... Now we have a Highland graduate that graduated in the rain! On his way to graduation
He's jumping for joy... not very high.. but definitely a jump for joy!

Those dark clouds just wouldn't leave and we enjoyed a nice rain all evening.

We came prepared...

and didn't get TOO wet!

The festivities went on without a hitch

Afterwards... the happy graduate

we made it through the rain!

Everyone is so happy...... AND cool!

Uncle Trent

The proof!

Just a little soggy!

Congrats Trent! thanks for being who you are, doing things your way and being an example to us! We love ya!

Graduation...

My computer was temporarily down for a couple days... but we got it fixed and now I have to catch up! on to .... GRADUATION!!!

First of all I have to talk about the LAST box...

Here's a picture of Trent's graduation box.

This was a tradition I started in (deep breath...) 95, when Erin graduated from Mesa High. I didn't have hardly any money and I wanted to make something memorable with the little bit I saved up.... Soooo.... I came up with the idea of giving her 95 things... since she was the class of 95... and Kristin 96 things... you get the idea. I bought some nice little things and filled in with silly things and candy...... BUT... I didn't think ahead cuz the next one graduated in the year 2000.... THEN came the controversy... Dustin wanted 2000 things in his box. The BOX was now a tradition... there was NO way I thought I could do 2000 things... but to keep up with tradition I DID and Dustin received his box with 2000 things... Teresa, 2003 things and Brandon 2007 things...

So here is Trent with his box of 2009 things....

There was all kinds of goodies packed in there... a little bit of everything... I didn't want to put a ton of candy in it so I went to the bank and got lots of change... The lady at the bank asked if I was having a garage sale and I started laughing... so she wondered if it was a joke... so I HAD to explain the BOX story to her.
When Trent gets to the bottom of his box he might have to go to a COINSTAR machine!

Time to celebrate! Graduation is almost here!

Brazil update...

Here's the latest from Brandon...

Oí famíliaThe pics look great! The pic with krislin and the pizza was a good one. That picture made me miss real pizza, the pizza here is nasty. We bought a pizza a few days ago and the two brazilians in our house ordered the pizza, and it was a strange pizza. It had raisans, green olives and bacon for the topping. The cheese was cream cheese, the pizza´s here don´t have sauce and it was soggy, the crust was barley cooked. Congrats to trent for the seminary graduation, it´s good to hear that his teachers didn´t kick him out before the end of the year. ... Our building will be getting a remodel pretty soon and we will have some real classrooms after it is all done. We were taling with the workers when they came to check it out and one of them is muslim from saudi arabia and we don´t think he likes the fact that he will be working on a lds church so we will be doing random bomb checks in the future. To tell the truth, i don´t think any of the workers like the fact that they will be working on our building. I also gave a talk this past sunday and i also gave a talk last last sunday too. There was a little confusion and i ended up giving talks two weeks in a row. This past week we had an activity and we played ping pong, not many people came agian but we will be baptizing at least 3 of them. 2 of them their parents are asking us to baptize their kids and the other one is a friend of the other 2 and we will be baptizing her too this sunday. And hopefully we will baptize the boyfriend of one of the members this saturday because he always comes to church he knows all the lessons but the member girl is just scared. This week i also drank the juice of a sugar cane. It was really good, i recomend it if you guys come accross it. And if you find guaraná at the store you should buy it. It´s pop and we a ton of it here and it´s pretty dang good. I don´t think i have any stories from this week but we rearranged our house so the pictures are what the house used to look like. We moved two desks into the front room and moved the couch to the other wall and the ironing board downstairs. My desk is the one on the bottom right, i´m pretty sure you can see the boxes i got, and it is on the far wall now. I haven´t recieved any other boxes yet. Thanks for the recipies but i have yet to see peanut butter in the stores for the no bake cookies. I would´nt mind if anyone sent some and how do you make pancake sryup? I can´t make pancakes and eat them without sryup. The brazilians ALWAYS ask for sryup from america but i think there´re crazy because no one eats pancakes here. We also ate a big bobs agian and it was oh so delicious.That´s about it for this week, next week ill be talking about our baptisms.Tchau, tchau. Elder Lewis

Graduation dinner...

Last night the fam got together to have a graduation dinner for Trent.

We went to his favorite restuarant... Chilis

Everyone was happy

Waiting for food...still waiting...

Jadon is ready to eat!

Yay! lots of yummy food!

Mmmmmmm

Talking to Dustin on the phone

Paying our bill....

We had a great time eating and talkin and having fun!

this weekend... Trent's graduation week starts...

This weekend, the graduation festivities started for Trent! First it was off to Baccalaureate (I have no idea how to spell that and I'm not looking it up right now)Sunday afternoon. Here he is in his black and teal... quite a difference from the siblings Mesa High purple! Then it was over to Seminary graduation. It was a very nice program, but I can't get over the small attendance. In Mesa the Stake Center was always packed like it was Stake conference and if we didn't get there WAY early we wouldn't get a seat. So.... Mike and I got there 45 minutes early... and we were the first parents there... but the soft seats were great! Congrats Trent!

This weekend... me and Mike...

This weekend Mike and I did the usual Saturday morning stuff... he did more demolition and I cleaned, cooked and shopped... I like to go to Superstition Ranch Market and fill up my cart with fruits and veggies (LOVE fruits and veggies a LOT!)... really... I fill up my cart and I usually only spend about $20. They have different stuff all the time...

... like THIS... this was the talk of the store. I love brussell sprouts and this is a brussell sprout stalk. How fresh can you get. BUT... Mike and Trent don't share my love of brussell sprouts and they made fun of me and my great purchase!

While I was finding great stuff like brussell sprout stalks... Mike and Homer were busy tearing out some more tile. "Homer" is a nice orange bucket from Home Depot. I had NO idea that these orange buckets had a name but I think it was kinda cute of Home Depot to give some of their stuff a name. I wonder what they will name next?!?

The reason we have several "Homers" at our house is because Mike has to take out the flooring and haul it away bucket by bucket... The ol HOA won't let us have a bin and our garbage can will only hold so much... so this gives new light to the term "filling our buckets"! Great job Mike!

Mystery flower...

We are always planting stuff in our small garden space... like veggies, plants, flowers... some grow great while others.. well... just don't make it. We have severl pots on the patio that have lovely plants in them. ... and one little skinny planter, that we never got around to replanting... until it decided to grow something on it's own! At first we thought maybe it was just a weed, or a cilantro gone wild... so we just kept watering it and it grew into this really beautiful purple flowered little plant. We have no idea what it is or where it came from, but it sure is cute. It's starting to get some seed pods on it so hopefully we will have more of these in the future. Thank you garden fairy...

from Brazil...

Here's our weekly email from Brazil...

Oí famíliaIt was fun talking to everyone on sunday and elder camargo really liked talking to mom. He still reinacts when he was talking to her. (mom note here: I only talked to him like for a minute and he gave me the phone number to call and I said nice to meet you and complimented his english. I would love to hear his reinactment!) Yesterday we had interviews with the president and it went really good, up until he totally burned us and we all are sinners and we need to repent. He was mad yesterday beause he gave some missionaries some references of people who pretty much are asking to be baptized and the missionaries never went to their house. During the week at the chapel in the center, people go there because there is a program so people can find jobs and stuff. Pretty much everyone is really acceptive of the church and we already have their address and phone number, but the missionaries never contact them. In my interview i got the green light and he told me that the burning was not pointed at our companionship. I already figured that it wasn´t for us because we work faaarrr away from the center and everyone who is asking for a job there. President is a good guy and i respect him alot. He also filmed every companionship teaching a lesson which was kind of nerve racking. Practices are good, but they are way different then going to a persons house and teaching. But all in all yesterday was just fine. ...Did anyone find out where jd is serving in brazil? ... That´s about the highlights of the week so i guess i´ll talk to everyone later.Tchau Elder Lewis... I´m at the crappy computer place again so i can´t send pics this time.

THE Phone call...

I actually kind of had a Mothers' Day weekend... lots of fun... and Sunday was the highlight with the family and yummy food and THE phone call from Brandon! He sounded great in English AND Portuguese and we talked for over an hour! I think we asked him a hundred questions... we were just so excited to hear his voice and hear all about his mission. I'm happy to report he is in a good area, doing great, having fun, has a great companion, eating a LOT of beans and rice, has good living conditions, fluent in the language, healthy and working hard to spread the gospel! Thanks Brandon for the great phone call and for your example of service! Love ya!

A HAPPY little mama

We had the phone on speaker so everyone could hear.

We called Dustin and Aimee on another phone so they could talk to him.

Everyone got to talk!

Just chillin after a great day. Thank you Steve and Teresa for letting us invade your house!