Missionary Pictures--Narrated by Elder Stephenson

The first one is of me with guaraná Jesus. A really good soda pop. That I like a lot. Which is why  I´m happy. Maybe I´ll send some to you someday.

This is me and Tiago being gangsta, because he´s pretty tough, so I liked to be tough with him.

This is a picture of me with a guy who was awesome. He was kinda crazy, but he laughed all the time, and made me happy. His name was José Carlos. I liked him.

This is me hungry and waiting for lunch at a restaurant. With beer bottles behind me.

Birthday Fun

Michael turned 12 in April! I can't believe my baby is passing the sacrament.

Instead of cake he wanted Rugelach... which in our opinion is 10 times better than cake anyways.

He is such a sweet kid and is always keeping us laughing.

Betsy turned 14 last week!

She decided to have homemade lemon ice-cream instead of cake (we aren't cake people).

Bets is hilarious--always making the silliest faces and strangest noises. We love her a lot.

We Have Another Cougar in the Family!

Sarah just got her acceptance letter to BYU! WooHoo!

We are so proud of her. She is starting this summer!

Missionary Update

This is David and his trainer with one of their first Baptisms.  He is preparing to serve a mission.

David was pretty excited to find Ketchup packets, a rare find in Brazil.

This is the Brazilian equivalent of a laundry mat.  It looks like they really believe in recycling.

Here is David and his current companion ready to work.

Here is a David's study desk.  It looks like he is great at multitasking.

Its Winter!

We finally had our first major snowfall of the year. The kids were so excited they decided to go build something exciting.

They weren't sure what they were going to make but they made lots of snow brick anyways.

Finally it was decided that an "obstacle" for Amelia would be perfect.

She promptly tore it down and commenced to eat all of the snow.

So much for all of that hard work. 

We are so excited its finally starting to look like Christmas around here though.

O Christmas Tree

We thought it would be fun to cut down our own christmas tree. Its something we've never really done before so we didn't know what to expect. We found a christmas tree farm about 20 minutes north of us.

We spent about 30 minutes walking around looking for the perfect tree. We found lots of Charlie Brown trees. We'll just say most of them had their own unique personalities. We finally found this tree. Its about 11 feet tall. The trees were cheaper as they got taller so we were looking for a REALLY tall one.

Actually we found two trees we liked so we got both.

Sarah thought this would make a good tree for next year. It still has a little bit of growing to do.

The next part of our adventure was actually getting little Ophelia (thats what we named it) to stand up straight. Much to our dismay her trunk seemed to have gone a little more crooked after the ride home.

Amelia promptly chewed this branch off of Hamlet (the other tree). Its a Shakespearian themed year. 

Autumn is in the Air

We went to the Autumn Festival at Thanksgiving Point and had a great time!