QUICK trip...

Mike and I made a QUICK trip to Kentucky...

We got up early Friday morning and flew to Nashville... rented a car and drove to Kentucky!

We went cuz this good lookin guy is heading to Afghanistan AGAIN!!!  and of course MOM needed to give him a HUG before he went.

Because our trip was short we mainly just chit chated and ATE FOOD!!! When Mike and I landed in Nashville we had some BarBQue for lunch... THEN after we went to Kentucky we all went to MY favorite place, The Woodshed! I had one of my most favorite meals there... fried catfish and hush puppies! I topped off my meal with pecan pie... sorry no pic of that... I ate it too fast!

Saturday morning we just talked and relaxed some more ... we had yummy bacon and eggs for breakfast and we had to top that off with my very MOST favorite donuts EVER...

Whistle Stop Donuts!

OH MY GOODNESS!!! They are so FRESH and GOOD... I wish I had another one right now!

The weather was beautiful there but it was COLD... Luckily I dressed warm and wore my gloves to bed and I was just fine!

Saturday afternoon we had to say goodbye to this cute family...

then get into our lovely green rental car... and then stop for lunch at a buffet...

and then hit the road again back to the airport... while were on a stop in Houston we had even MORE food... we had the best Strombolis we've ever eaten... well they were the ONLY Strombolis we've ever eaten... but they were SO good!

I can't believe we even ate a bunch of airplane snacks!

It's always fun to go somewhere and it's always fun to be with family... it was even fun to get up early Sunday morning for 8 O'CLOCK church AND give a talk in Sacrament meeting! WOW... life is just GOOD!

mole story continues...

I think that moles... whether in the ground or on your body... are NOT good things! Trent went to the doctor yesterday, got some stitches out, got some more news, has to get another re incision, but not as big this time, then... he had to go back to the doctor a couple hours later cuz one of his incisions popped open! OUCH!!! We ARE going to overcome these moles... they will NOT get us down!!!

AND... by the way... is everyone getting their moles checked?!?!?

More from Brazil...

Here's the latest from Brazil... This is the first time he mentioned he was sick so I immediately googled dangue which is actually dengue fever which is contracted in the tropics and sounds really YUK! I hope he is completely healed and of course I will ask him more about it next week!

Hello everyone,
This week was a good week because we had a baptism and what else is better than that. This week was transfers but elder wride and i stayed the same. Elders who come to this area usually stay here for a while. This week we were contacting all of the less active members and we came across this sweet statue. Most of the people have moved away though. This week i also got a little sick, but i´m better now. I got dangue but we got it all taken care of. I also gave a talk on sunday with nothing prepared but it wasn´t too bad, i talked for 12 minutes about missionary work and following the spirit. I don´t like giving talks but in this branch the missionaries talk at least one time a month. Last time mom gave a talk was way before my mission so good luck to her this sunday. The pics of trent shooting were really cool, i can´t wait to go shooting again. That´s about it for this week. We´ll have a baptism next week and another on the 7th. We found a member who has a son that hasn´t been baptized yet and he´ll be baptized on the 7th. My reponsability in the branch mostly is to take care of the tithing. But we also have to organize all the meetings that haven´t been happening so that we can have a little more organization here. We still eat with the members like normal missionaries. Any other questions? See you all later.

We had a baptism this week!!! Wanderson has been waiting 4 years to be baptized and president finally let him get baptized this month. We also found a huge statue of some catholic dude. This thing is like twice the size of the christ on top of the mountain! Elder Wride passed his 6 month aniversary this week so we ate pizza to celebrate. The girl in the pizza pic is gonna to be baptized this week. She has also been waiting a long time to be baptized. She met the missionaries when she was almost 14 but her mom never let her baptize, she turned 18 this week and now she can make her own decisions.

Lots of pics from Brazil...

We got a few words and a LOT of pics from Brazil this week. Here are a few:


I´m 2nd counselor in the branch presidency! And my comp is the young mens leader in the branch. There are about 40 active members in our branch. But the ward list has about 500 members, i pretty sure a lot move away though.

This was our hiking adventure we hiked up the stairs to christ and down the mountain by the waterfalls. This is why all the missionaries want to come here. This is also why this is a tourist town. We hiked up with some youth from the branch some investigators and the branch president and his wife.

The hike was really fun. Climbing the stairs was the hardest part. the stairs were REALLY steep and this was the first time i used actual energy in one year and three months.

 

That´s about it, i´ll send some more pics next week. This week we´ll have a baptism and carnival ended so it will be easier to teach. President tobias wants us to teach the rich people who live by the church and tommorrow we have like 8 appointments with the rich people. We´ll see how it goes, the rich people are nice almost the same as the poor people.

Rambos?

Even better than Rambo!  Trent (Trentbo) and Quentin (Qbo) went shooting. Here are their manly pics!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to my wonderful hubby Mike and to all my kids and grandkids and friends. LOVE YA!
Mike and I did our Valentine's dinner on Thursday since we had lots to do on the weekend and because we don't like crowds! (AND since we both had Friday off I told Mike that Thursday night was the start of Valentine's weekend... silly Mike... he thought Valentine's was only ONE day!) So we had a yummy prime rib dinner at Black Angus... YUM! We had a great weekend working on the house some MORE and today we had to get up early today for a 6AM meeting so there wasn't time for a cute breakfast... but we had a yummy steak and shrimp dinner and cookies AND chocolate covered strawberries!

I hope everyone had a GREAT Valentine's day/week/weekend ... now it's on to President's day!

Surgery and Syrup...

First of all... a little update on the MOLE story... Trent had a surgery on one of the BAD moles on Friday... This one went better than the first one I think. He definitely didn't have as much pain and the scar will be smaller. So YAY for that! Thanks to everyone's thoughts and prayers!

WARNING!!! Graphic picture of scar and bandage and Trent's back!

You can see the BIG scar on his shoulder from the first surgery, a litle scar,  and the bandage from yesterday. Mike and I watched the procedure while the surgeon told us stories about Dante, purgatory and the hot fiery place (but he used the real word) and about how we should NOT visit Naples Italy! Very interesting... we just smiled and nodded and then just busted out laughing when we got in the car! Very nice surgeon... crazy conversation!

NEXT... here is my new breakfast discovery!... It pays to watch the food channel sometimes. We watched Throw Down with Bobby Flay and he was at a restaurant that made blueberry pancakes and MAPLE BUTTER SYRUP!!!! That syrup looked SOOOOOOOO good ... even better than the pancakes... that I had to look it up on the internet. It's SOOOO easy and SOOOOOOO yummy! WANT the recipe?!?!?! Do ya?!?!? Here it is:

1 cup maple syrup (I just used what I had on hand, not any fancy kind, just Aunt Jemimah)
4 Tablespoons REAL butter ... it has to be REAL butter!

Heat together in a pan and stir or whisk til it's thick and gooey. That's it... very easy...Pour on your pancakes while it's warm! I tell ya it's SO good I could drink it!

Busy in Brazil...

Here is the latest from Brazil. Sounds like Brandon is keeping busy! He is a man of few words but we can feel his excitement in his email!

Oi Família,There´s big news this week. President Tobias was here with his family to pay us a visit this week. It was cool, we ate dinner with them friday night and we also ate lunch with them on saturday at a fancy resturante. He came by to do some re-organizing in the branch. He didn´t move much around. He and sister gave a training sat. night to give the branch excitment. We didn´t get to listen because we had to watch over the kids. Afterward we all ate pizza and we didn´t get home until 10:40 at night. I felt like mom because i was soo tired at 11 at night. Then he did a baptism interview for us at 7 in the morning on sunday and we´ll be baptizing Wanderson on the 20th!!! He´s been an investigator for 4 years!! And when president drove us home sunday morning he told us that i will be the new 2nd counslor and elder wride the young mens president. Since then we have been WAY busy. Carnival is this week and we have just about nothing planned for an activity. Carnival is like Mari Gras, and this city is a huge tourist city because of the river and the waterfalls so there will be parties non-stop from this friday night till tuesday. And there is no valentine´s day for anyone that doesn´t know. That´s about it. It was also really wierd to see president and sister tobias in normal clothes. I almost forgot, Today we founf out who will be our new mission pesident at the end of june. His name is Ramon Cesar Catherini Prieto and his wife´s Elza Mari Gurres Prieto. We´re assuming they´re brazilians but their names are a bit strange. That´s it see you all later.


here´s some pics of some huge hills, i don´t know if it shows in the pics but we had to climb some major hills this week. A pic of part of the city, you have to zoom in to see the bridges and we live right next to the one on the left. The left side of the river is Goiás and the right side is mato grosso, two different states, our area consist of 3 cities and 2 states. And the other pic is some parrots eating, there´s a bunch of these things that fly around here.

4 more...

Poor Trent... he had 4 more moles cut out today. We're gearing up for the surgery on Friday. Another big cut like the first one. YUK... I hope everyone has gotten their moles checked!

Superbowl!

Today was our annual Superbowl party hosted by Erin! We had LOTS of food and fun. I wasn't too impressed by the commercials and The Who looked REALLY old and I didn't watch too much of the game but I know the Saints won... but I had a LOT of fun playing with the kids eating YUM food and just being with the fam. Dustin even called before the game to remind me he was here last year! Here are some highlights:                                                                

Always fun times when we get together. I hope everyone had a great Superbowl day!

the last game...

Well... tonight was the last game of young men's basketball for our family... we'll have to wait a few more years for the second generation basketball players. BUT... tonight was the CHAMPIONSHIP game and we WON second place... OK OK... that's just a nice way to say we lost, but our team did awesome so I still say we won second place! Here are a few Trent highlights:

Some of the fam

Ty with a WAY sweaty Trent

I was a little nervous (OK a LOT nervous) during the game... but Trent played great and didn't get injured too badly (remember all the cuts and surgery and stitches? I'm sure the doctors would not have approved) and I only panicked a couple times.

Great game Monterey Ward!