Ano Novo!!!

Well Howdy Family,

That sure was great to talk to you all on Christmas. Technology is so advanced these days we surely are blessed. It is so nuts how advanced things are, but it sure was a treat for Elder Brewer and I. His family enjoyed it as well I am glad all of you were able to participate and enjoyed it. But time to go back to work ha
And work we did, we had a baptism yesterday, Mateus. He is 11, Which hmmm if I´m not mistaken someone turns 11 today.....Happy Birthday Braydon!! Love you buddy, oh ps mom and dad Happy anniversary sorry I didn't tell you until like a week after...ha hope it was a good one, 35 years? Congrats!! But anyway the baptism was great, we had his mom and brother there and all of cris´s family. plus a few other families in the ward so it was a good turn out. We will get him confirmed next week, and we are working on getting his 17 year old brother in the water this week, and help their mom stop smoking so she can get baptized. Things are really looking well for this area I am really hoping I stay here for one more, but always at will to do the lords will. But we have one more week together here in Cidade jardim and will work hard. There was 60 people in church yesterday, and a lot of people were missing, a lot.... It was really hard to get people to church with everyone partying with their families so next week will be better....maybe, we do have the new year this week, another excuse to drink and party, but we will do our best. I dono what we will do for New years eve....Kinda crazy ... this year I don't really care, ha another day I guess.... I dono how I feel about staying up late....WE will see what happens. But things are good, so I dono if I told you but we had a competition within our mission, based on baptisms and clean houses, we got so many points for sending pictures of our clean houses and so many points for a baptism, the key was you got 250 points if your dupla, or companionship baptized 2, and we had 4 of our 6 duplas baptize 2, and we just found out that we won!! The prize..... President coming Thursday to take us and get rodizio grilled pizza and .....Toy Story 3 ha so That got everyone way excited.... I have already seen it ha but all the other elders are freaking out. So we are just getting spoiled here in Mission Ribeirão Preto this time of the year. But don't worry we are still working hard ha. Mom I will let you know asap when I get the package don´t worry it will come. Well Not much else to report on that happened in the last day so I will talk to you all next week, have a great new years, a great week, and Never let go of that Rod!!

Elder Brower

P.s. Sorry for all the ´´Ha´s and Britt I did put in a few ´ for you ok? Ha hopefully it passes spell check... I doubt it.
Pictures of the baptism and us .... after we ate a cow at the churrasco..... The christms eve party, cool metallic bug, and I Helped teach an English class with Elder Whitaker in Lins last week. Also Elder Hunsaker and I and Elder Thronley and I, and other pictures from the conference, I would have some pictures of me singing, and video, but I asked Elder Hunsaker to do it and well we will just say I came back and he forgot to do it.... ha o well enjoy!!

Dinner with the Prophet

It's not every day you get to have dinner with the President of the LDS Church. Last night, we were fortunate enough to have that experience along with over 1200 other members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Organization. I was invited as a member of the Bells on Temple Square. One of the perks about last night is that we went with my Mom and Dad, since my mom sings first alto in the choir. Here are a few pictures from our amazing evening.
Check out this salad. It not only looked amazing, but it was delicious!!! I could have eaten three more of these.

It was an evening I won't soon forget! President Monson was there and spoke to us and reminded us that one of the best gifts we can give our Savior is our heart. I am so grateful to be a part of such an amazing organization and I hope that this will be the first of many fun evenings and events with the Bells. Thanks again A TON to Jen for being willing to watch Carson & Kaylee so we could attend. You are the best!

Thanksgiving 2010 in Dayton NV

This year the family made the long trip to Dayton Nevada which is where Aaron and Tiff live at this time. It was great to have everyone there, well except we were missing Matt's family and Chris but Chris is currently in Brazil so he is excused! The kids, it seemed, had a great time playing with each other. I enjoyed hosting Thanksgiving this year but am in no hurry to do it again, it takes a lot of energy.

This is the actual Thanksgiving dinner-kids table

This is the adult table, plus two little ones!

Just getting ready to pray!

What a cute Kaylee

 On Friday we all went to the movies and some of us saw Harry Potter 7 and some of us saw Tangled in 3D these are the glasses from the 3D movie, the kids love these things!

 No clue what they are doing in either of these pictures!

It was a great weekend and I can't wait to get together again with the whole family!

Thanksgiving 2010

After shoveling a little bit of snow, we headed out to my sister Tiffany's house in Reno (Dayton) on Wednesday morning to spend Thanksgiving Dinner with the Brower side of the family. We had to stop about every 2 hours but eventually made it to Reno Wednesday evening in time for dinner, stir fry! Yum! Carson and Kaylee were so excited to see their cousins! It didn't take them long to start playing together!
Marisa and Kenzie.

The kids enjoyed playing Blokus with each other. Austin, Kenzie, and Carson.

We took it pretty easy Wednesday night and just enjoyed hanging out. We new Thursday would be a big day!

Mayci and Kaylee enjoyed the evening playing with Grandpa!

We got up early Thursday morning and made pies, put together casseroles, made rolls, and got the turkey in the oven.

While we got dinner ready, the kids enjoyed playing. Austin was so cute with Carson. They played Army most of the time we were in Reno. Carson thought it was pretty awesome!

And again, Grandpa was a great entertainer for the kids!

But he and Justin still found time to relax while us girls finished up dinner!

Finally, after all that prep work, it was time to EAT!!!!

It didn't take us long to eat all the yummy food and get ready for pie.....and more rolls!

And of course, there was the clean up! With every ones help, we had it cleaned up in no time and I even got a nap in before we ate dessert!

I wasn't the only one who got a nap in that afternoon. Besides some other adults, Kaylee got a good nap in on daddy's lap.

The dessert.......YUM!!!!!

Here are the kids....we missed Tiff & Arron's kids and Hallie!!!And here are some of the adults.....they were in the middle of planning their shopping excursion for the next day (or should I say night).

These four are crazy!!! They left Tiff's house in Dayton at 11:3o Thursday night to make it to Walmart in Carson City by midnight for some specials they were offering. Then they got some hot chocolate and watched a movie in the van while they waited for Kohl's to open at 3 AM. Then off to Target after that and then JC Penney and a few other stores. They didn't get home until 9 AM Friday morning. I was going to go with them, but decided I couldn't survive staying up all night, so Nick and I ventured out Friday morning and afternoon and did some shopping with Kaylee.

Friday afternoon, while Gma & Gpa went and visited Aunt Nancy and Uncle Rod in California, we all headed to Carson City and watched a movie. The older kids, Tiff, Aaron, Justin and Ris watched Harry Potter. Nick and I took Madison, Kenzie, and our two kids to see Tangeled. Which was SUPER cute!!!! We made it home in time to have Turkey Noodles soup for dinner. We also enjoyed hanging out and playing games.

We got up early Saturday morning, had breakfast, and got loaded up to get on the roads before it started snowing.

We had an enjoyable time spending Thanksgiving with our family. We really missed Matt, Natalie and Hallie, but Natalie had to work. And of course we thought of Uncle Chris in Brazil, and knew that he was were he needed to be, but we still missed him. We also missed Tiff and Aaron's kids. But we still had fun and we are so grateful to have such a great family to belong to and for the safety we had traveling.