The scarecrow test...

My work is having a fall festival soon and one of the events is a scarecrow contest. I'm not entering it cuz I'm an employee.... but I wanted to make a scarecrow for fun. I thought he turned out cute (Mike started questioning the "scare" part when I added flowers)

I decided to test my scarecrow with a REAL bird... our parrot Kiwi... Kiwi is the green bird on the right.

If Kiwi was scared then I could call my scarecrow a scareparrot.... but as you can see she started warming up to it and her new fake bird friend... and thus ended the scarecrow test. NOT scarey... but CUTE... and I'm OK with that!

One year!!!

WOW... I can't believe Brandon has been on his mission for a whole year! Happy hump day! In honor of the occassion I have posted a few pics of Brandon over the years... Brandon and Trent were the best of buddies growing up... It will be awhile before they see each other again... their missions will overlap a few months.

The boys...

Brandon played ALL kinds of sports and was good at all of them.

One of many school pics.

On their way to the Nationl Jamboree...

I love this pic!

Class of 2007

Packin up for the big day!

November 5, 2008... His Visa wasn't ready for Brazil, so he got the best of both worlds and spent a month in the Provo MTC and a month in the Sao Paulo MTC. What an experience! And what a great experience he is having serving in Brazil.

Happy one year Elder Lewis!

From Brazil...

Here's the latest from Brazil... tomorrow our missionary will be half way through his mission!

Wow! Has it been a year already?!? Time flies by when you´re having fun. This first year has passed by really fast! This week we are going to celebrate my one year aniversery with some investigators and eat pizza. I´ll make sure to take some pics. This week was a good week, nothing really happened. We had stake conference and it was really good. An area seventy spoke and just burned everyone in the room. He wasn´t afraid to talk. We also have 2 baptisms planed for this saturday. One of them is just a golden investigater, erickson. He has known the church for about 2 months and has already read the whole book of mormon. ... I completly forgot about halloween until sunday night. Monday was the day of the dead here. People go and visit the cemetary and stuff like that. And everyone gets the day off work too, it´s ridiculous. The peolpe hardly ever work here. Elder Moraes is still going good. ...That´s about it. I liked everyone´s costumes this year. The fair looked really fun. Everything for a dollar is just about the best deal you can get. See you all later. Elder Lewis


one pic is erickson and his cousin. Erickson is the one without glasses. He bought those clothes the day before because he wants to be like the missionaries. The other is jaca. A fruit the size of a huge watermelon growing on a huge tree. It looks like a ball of fungus but everyone says it´s a sweet fruit, i haven´t eaten it yet.

Halloween...

I love Halloween... just cuz it's stuff I enjoy... decorating, dressing up goofy and eating candy! I get to enjoy the decorations for a little while longer...

Instead of doing our usual family Halloween dinner thing we went to the fair on Friday. So on Saturday we didn't think we would do much , but it turned out to be more fun and excitement than we planned on... some of the grandkids came over to fill some goody bags... Then we had a scarey visitor in our garage...Ohhh... it's just Sharon and Erin!Then I put on my costume... I'm a big fat juicy annoying green bug!Then Mike dressed up as a hunter.... I wonder where he got his costume?!?... and that's JUST a pillow under my shirt... I might have eaten a little bit of Halloween candy but not THAT much!Then we went to the ward trunk or treat...Then on to the Gunnells ... where we saw Woody....and Buzz Lightyear and sat around a fire pit. We ended the evening eating smores!...I got an email with this picture and it looks like Kentucky is VERY generous to their trick or treaters! That's a LOT of candy!

So our Halloween time was fun...Now it's time to gear up for some MORE fun! On to Thanksgiving and MORE yummy things to eat!

Friday, Fair, Fun

Well... Friday morning I woke up not feeling well (NOT happy about that!) and I did NOT want to miss our trip to the fair... so I ran to the doc, got some meds, drug myself to work for a couple hours and then took off to the fair... truly believing that my miracle meds would kick in and I would not miss all the fun. Thank you medical technology... I not only made it, but I downed a goodly amount of fair food without any side effects! The STATE FAIR!!!
It was not very crowded and the weather was great! WOW... that's a mighty big Ferris Wheel in the background!

FIRST off... we just didn't pick this random day to go to the fair... we had a purpose... so we run to get in line...

... to see THIS guy... SPONGEBOB!

Some of the fam with Spongebob... what a moment!

So after that we were off to do our FAVORITE thing (besides getting a pic with Spongebob)and almost the MOST important thing at the fair....

EAT!!! Today the fair had GREAT deals from 12 - 6... we got in for half price and there was $1 food, games and rides....

so before we did anything else we had to eat...

AND eat... Erin got some corn fritters... those things are GOOD!

It's hard to see in this pic, but it's one of my favorite fair foods... funnelcake! We didn't keep track, but between us we ate fry bread, corndogs, chicken and rice, funnel cakes, deep fried veggies, fried oreos, turkey legs, cotton candy, corn fritters, corn on the cob, pizza, lemonade, snow cones, ice cream and kettle corn! AND most of that was the $1 deals. Some of the bizzarre things we did NOT try were the fried bugs and chocolate covered bacon... no way!

We had to walk off all that food so we kind of split up and some people did rides/games and some of us went to see animals!

The animals were pretty tame and let us pet them...

Awww.... hugging a hog!

I wanted to pose with an animal... hmmmm... me and a goat tail...

... but the llama was much more cooperative.

I hadn't been on a fair ride in a LONG time... and it was only a $1... so me Krislin and Erin decided to brave the HUGE ferris wheel. We told Krislin she could NOT rock our seat!

I really wanted to take pics from the top of the Ferris wheel...

woo hoo... an arial shot of the fair!

a photo op...

the big winners...

the Merry go round is still popular

What... eating again?!? you betcha!!

Another photo op...

Well my meds kept me feeling good and got me through the day. Mike couldn't get off work to come, so I brought him home some fry bread, funnel cakes and kettle corn so he could have a little taste of the fair! I'm a little worn out and I'm actually dozing off while I'm trying to type... getting up at 4:30 has a little to do with that... but it's all good, cuz I had a great time! It's ALWAYS fun with fam and friends!

words and pics from Brazil

On Tuesday we got an unexpected envelope from the mission home... in it was this picture below... there wasn't a letter or note or anything so we are gonna assume that this is Brandon (well of COURSE we know it's Brandon) and his mission president and wife. They all look so happy!AND we got our weekly email with pics!:

Hey every one!This week we had a baptism!! Her name is Taís and she is 9. Her parents were inactive and are returning back to the church. Our church building is sweet, the baptisamal font has a heater and it doesn´t take forever to fill up. The baptism went well, her uncle baptized her and a lot of family was at the baptism also. This week we also planted corn. There is a bunch of land next to the building and the ward is starting a garden/farm. Another thing pretty funny is that there is another church right in front of ours. I don´t think itold you guys but in my last area, the neighbor of our church was another church. The pic of tais by the grass you can see the other church. That´s about it, we have stake conference this sunday in goiania. I watched stake conference just a few weeks ago in anapolis but it´s all good. Every one doing good? Anything else? no? well i´ll see you all later. Elder Lewis