Elder Don

Just thought I'd give you all a glimpse of where my brother Don is currently serving. It's called the Madeira Island, off the coast of Portugal, and he is in the area Camara de Lobos.
It makes me want to go on a long vacation. Too bad it's not a vacation at all for Don. But really, what better place to serve the Lord than this?





It's gorgeous! Here is a little of what he has to say about it.
"I'm really enjoying my time here on the Madeira...there are so many cool little things that you get to see as a resident on a tropical island. One of my favorite things is that it seems as though I skipped out on winter and rain. The weather is seriously perfect. I wear a short sleeve shirt everyday and we're going down to the beach today with the district for beach volleyball! The island is something to see. We have a bus pass and we ride often so I've actually seen about have of the island. Riding on the bus is one of my favorite things to do because the buses just wind
fast up and down the cliff's edges...it's fun because they FLY!"
Can't you just picture the busses flying?! They really are cliffs like Don describes.
More on the work.
"The work here is completely different and I think it is because the people are nicer and will listen to our message. It's really different in my area too beacause it's a new area. The people in Camara de Lobos have never seen the Elders before...that's not normal in Portugal. This past week was great. We had a family come to church then after we taught them a lesson in which we invited them to be baptized. They accepted and we're pumped!!! It will be camara de lobos' first baptism."
What an amazing experience! We are so proud of Don and the great work that he is a part of. It's already been almost 15 months, it's amazing how time flies. We love him and miss him but couldn't be more grateful for the blessing he is to our family and to the Lord. He is doing great and seems to be loving every minute!
If anyone wants to email him to say hi, comment and I'll send you his email address. I know he'd love to hear from everyone.

Blog Makeover

What do you think? Before or after? I thought it would be a refreshing change.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

I just finished reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" and I just wanted to let you all know how much I loved it. It is the story of a doctor and his wife who is pregnant with twins. At birth a son is born perfectly normal and a daughter is born with down syndrome. The doctor, not wanting to burden his wife with the emotional pain of raising her, gives her to the nurse and tells her to take her to a care facility. The nurse, Caroline, cannot bring herself to leave her there and disappears with her to raise her as her own.
It follows both families lives and shows what that one split-second decision did to change so many lives drastically. I highly recommend it. Let me know if any of you decide to read it.
Also, what should my next book be?

The Blessings Have Been Poured Out...

Leaving Utah was hard because we had to leave behind our beloved Cafe Rio. If we didn't feel like going to busy Cafe Rio, we could always go up the street to Costa Vida, Cafe Rio's clone, with the same menu and divine taste.
Last night, as we ventured out of normal territory to go to the movies, we saw....

I couldn't accept at first that it would be the same Costa Vida as in Utah, so when we got home we looked it up online and it is!!!! The sweet pork salad is on the menu. We are so excited and are going to eat there today. When I called my mom to tell her about it she said, "I knew I had a good feeling about Roseville." If you didn't have an excuse to visit us before, you do now.

We're Finally Done!

On December 29th we finished packing up our little one bedroom apartment in West Sac and moved to an almost identical little one bedroom in Roseville. My parents, Brad, Chris, Anna, Kayden, and Aaron's dad, Jim, all came to help.
Here is Kayden hanging out. He was such a good boy the whole day!

We saved the packing of the kitchen until my mom came. She is professional at it!

And, this is what it looked like when we got to Roseville!!

It was quite overwhelming and since we both had to go back to work Monday, we just finished today. It is such a relief to be done!
Here is Aaron, faithfully measuring to hang our pictures.

This is our living room.


Our little office

Dining Room (with the flowers Aaron surprised me with today :)


Kitchen


Our Bedroom-We finally got some curtains that we feel matches well with our colors. They're dark brown from Ikea and we thought since we can't paint the walls we can't get a light color, and since it would be impossible to match the green from our bed, brown would be the best. We like it. Also, notice we now have a TV in our room since we bought a new one for the living room. More on that to come...



And, of course, the bathroom, which looks exactly the same as in our old apartment.

So far so good in Roseville. It is starting to feel more and more like home, especially now that we are completely unpacked!

Christmas

This year we were able to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with the Carter's and then we went to the Coons on Christmas day. Here are a few pictures.
Stockings on Christmas Morning

Aaron got me the 30 minute meals cookbook because he knows how much I want to make meals in 30 minutes!

The Whole Carter Fam (next to Hillary is Tatiana, their foreign exchange student from Brazil-we love her!)

Uncle Aaron and Landon

Grandma helping Landon open presents. He loved the paper and string!

We got Lani measuring cups and spoons from Williams Sonoma and we were thrilled with her reaction.

We saw the craziet/funniest license plate on the drive from Manteca to Alamo. Can you believe someone drives around with this?!

Lyndsey came up with a winning idea for a present for my mom and dad. Rather than getting the same old, we decided to get them tickets to Wicked in LA (they are going down to visit Matt and Lyns anyway at the end of Jan). This will give them something out of the ordinary to do. I think we're all jealous.

Dad asked for a RED wheelbarrow for Christmas. My mom had to search everywhere for it, but finally found it. Dad wore the Santa hat throughout the day.

Look at this big smile!

Grandpa holding a sleeping Kayden. Isn't he precious?

We had a great Christmas with our families, but were sad it passed so quickly. A late Merry Christmas to all!

Hypocrite

As I check everyone's blogs faithfully, multiple times a day, I find myself thinking, "Why haven't you posted?". Now, some of you have but there are others that haven't and then I realized, I am one of you. How can I blame you for not posting when I haven't posted anything about Christmas, New Year's or moving to Roseville? Please forgive me for being such a hypocrite. A new blog is in the works and I hope you'll all be more patient with me than I am with you.