This week was the last week before school starts. Emilee has piano lessons on Monday mornings. So we went to that and when we were driving home we were talking about what we should do for the day. We didn’t have anything planned for the rest of the day and we decided to do something fun. We came up with going to Worlds of Fun. It has been a little bit since we have been there. We asked a few friends if they could go with us last minute and Ethan was available. We picked him up and had a fun day at the amusement park. It was hot and a Monday so it wasn’t to crowded, we went on our favorite rides twice.
Emilee was able to squeeze a few more fun things in for the last week before school started. She went to a swim party with most of her friends from school at Rachel’s house. We binged watched a lot of The Office, went out to dinner together. Her and Harriet went swimming together one afternoon. We got a few school supplies. We went to back to school night at her school and out for ice cream with friends afterwards. She is all set to start 8th grade on Monday!
After the fourth of July Emilee had girls camp. The FSY camp she went to ended up not being that fun, but she had a fun time at girls camp. She really enjoys the young women leaders, especially one named Sister Wickham. They are goofy together. Someone sent me a picture of Emilee being silly during a hair braiding session one night.
While she was at camp Ryan and I went to Arkansas for Vanitta Turnbull’s 90th birthday party. She is Ryan’s biological grandma. She is a sweet lady. It was a nice lunch at a park for a few hours, so it was short but a nice party. We also saw Bill Bertleson while we were there. That is Vanitta’s brother, so Ryan’s great uncle. Before Ryan knew who his biological family was, we met Bill through my family at a Christmas dinner in Sioux Falls South Dakota in 2002. It was 20 years later before we found out he was actually part of Ryan’s biological family. Bill’s memory isn’t great now so he doesn’t remember meeting us back then, but he remembers my family. This was the first time we had seen him since we found out they were actually related.
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Grandma and Grandpa Jones came to visit us the week after girls camp. They haven’t been here for a few years so it was nice to see them. We relaxed together for the week, they went to visit a friend in Nebraska one day, we watched a few of my moms favorite shows. One of the days I was at work Emilee convinced them to take her to Chick-fil-A. It was nice to spend time with them for a week. They had been in Idaho with Sherri and Kenny then went to Oklahoma for Aidan’s baptism then our house to visit. My dad just retired a few months ago and they moved to Lehi Utah and live by DeAnna now. It was there first trip since they retired to visit all their kids.
I saw this joke the other day. This is a perfect joke. It has layers.
I got a picture of my cute helper when we were doing mowing the lawn the other day.
And then I got a picture of my cute cat being weird and staring at the corner of the couch.
After Ryan has dogged on country music for the last 25 years I have known him, he decided he likes it. He has been listening to a song by Zach Bryan called Burn, Burn Burn and wanted to sing it at karaoke. I like the song and he can sing it pretty good but it is a little slow and more of a niche country song that not everyone would know so I didn’t think it would be a good karaoke song. Here is a Ryan singing Burn, Burn, Burn at karaoke.😂😂
Matthew was in Ibura for 18 weeks. He had three different companions while he was there including his first training companion Elder Carrera. His new mission president moved almost everyone around to a new area on the last transfer. Matthew and Elder Carrera both moved together to Pesqueira. It is about 5 hours inland from Ibura. Matthew likes the interior area of his mission a lot so he was excited to go. It has been a pretty nice place so far. He said it is one of the nicest apartments in his whole mission. He gave us a tour and it is pretty cool. It is on the top of the building and has a big outdoor porch area with a really cool view of the city. They are living with two other missionaries which Matthew also really likes. It is nice to have more people to socialize with in the evenings after their days. One down side is the bedroom they are in has a bunch of roosters that live just outside it so he had to get used to sleeping through roosters crowing at random times in the middle of the night. So he is liking his area and is doing really well still. We are super proud of him. He hit his one year mark on his mission this week. August 11th. He has dedicated the last year of his life to teaching people about the Savior. He has grown and learned a lot. We miss him A LOT but we are very proud of him.
Here is a compilation of videos that Matthew has shared with us in his new area. There is scorpions and monkeys apparently. They have gone running a few times and a goat decided to try and join them. There is a tower they climbed to see a great view of the city.
This year was a special 4th of July, it was the 250th, fourth of July for the United States! There was a lot of cool celebrations. The FIFA World Cup was also hosted by the United States this year and that was fun to watch. None of us are really big soccer fans but since it was in the United States it was everywhere and lots of news and social media about it. I thought is was cool to see the other countries from all over the world coming and posting their impressions of the United States. They were amazed by the sheer size of Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, Buccee’s and the quantity of food and options available in them. Unlimited “free” refills on drinks. Air conditioning being available everywhere. Kansas City hosted several games. There are some pictures from the Norway game here that show the roads/sidewalks leading to the stadium being completely full of people in orange for the few hours before and after the game. Argentina played here so we got to have the world famous Messi play in Kansas City. Brazil played here too, so Matthew watched a game from Brazil of his home. He was allowed to watch any of the Brazil games with families watching the games there.
We usually host the fourth at our house and have a BBQ and light fireworks off. This year Allison was in Utah doing a therapy program, and Matthew was in Brazil so I wanted to change it up a little bit and not do our usual thing. Emilee went to a For Strength of Youth (FSY) with a friend the week of the fourth. It was in Columbia Missouri at Mizzou. So I dropped her off at that. A few days later Ryan and I went down to the Lake of the Ozarks and spent a few days with some friends/work colleagues. One of them has a nice boat so we got to ride around the lake one of the days. We stayed at a resort called Margaritaville. On the morning of the fourth we drove to Columbia to pick Emilee up at 7am and then came back to our resort. It was a fun place, they had pools, bowling, restaurants, arcades, shopping, mini golf, lots of fun things to do. And there was supposed to be a lot of cool fireworks that night. We had a late breakfast and then checked out the shops and got ice cream and ended up in the arcade for a while. It was really hot and sunny. After we had been in the arcade for a while the power went off. We made our way to the window and there was a random crazy rain storm that was blowing through. It was like a mini hurricane on the lake. It lasted about an hour but it ripped docks out of their anchor, roofs off building, and knocked down trees that left 40,000 people out of power, including our resort. We walked around a little and there wasn’t much that worked without power- except mini golf. We decided to wait a bit and go to dinner and see if the power would come back on. We found a pizza place far enough away that was still open. After dinner the news was saying it would probably be a few days before most people got power back. We decided instead of staying in a room with no air conditioning, lights, or warm water we would head home and catch the end of the firework shows in our own neighborhood and sleep in our beds that night.
Us in the arcade after the lights went out.Fourth of July at Lake of the Ozark’s
We made it home a little before 10pm and there were still lots of fireworks going off for us to have a good show. Our 4th didn’t turn out the way we thought it would but that seems to be the theme for 2026 so we made the most of it. Maybe next year more of us will be together. Matthew called and we realized that after the fourth he has one more of each holiday until he is home. So next 4th will be the last holiday he misses before he comes home!!
The sunset on our drive home was red white and blue. How appropriate!!
We booked it a little last minute but we decided to squeeze a cruise in for our family Summer vacation. It was a little weird to only have three of the five of us but we still had fun. We let Emilee invite her cousin Lizzie too so she wouldn’t get to bored having all of her parents attention all of the time. 😊😁😉😉
We got a LITTLE closer to Matthew then we are in Kansas.
We flew out on Father’s Day. There was a layover in Nashville and everything was delayed and they switched our seats for no reason, Ryan got a notification his tire on our car we parked at the Kansas City airport was flat, and it was a long exhausting day-but we made it to Florida! We stayed in a hotel that night and the next morning we took an Uber to the port. We flew into Ft Lauderdale because it was cheaper but our boat left from Miami. We ALMOST forgot that and went to the wrong port 🤦♀️ but we didn’t and we remembered before we missed our onboarding time. We talked with Allison and Matthew right before we got on the boat. We did the Wonder of the Seas with Royal Caribbean. It is the biggest boat we have ever been on. It was big but it was still pretty easy to get around and didn’t seem like it was to far to places. It was bigger in that it was wider for the most part.
There was a theme night each night and a dance party with the theme every night. I told everyone we didn’t have to go to the dance parties but we had to dress up. The first night was 70’s night. Since we just had Ryan’s bday it was a prefect time to use our costumes again. Ryan’s platform shoes didn’t fit in his luggage but he still fit in. The girls were good sports and wore matching hippie outfits. The other nights were fancy night, white night and Caribbean night. I did not take as many pictures as I meant too. I was going to buy a picture package and get some from the cruise line but I didn’t realize I had to get them before the last day or they were gone. So unfortunately I didn’t get a lot picture memories.
So our first day on the boat we explored, got settled in our rooms and had a fun dinner in our 70’s attire. The second day was at Coco Cay, Royal Caribbean’s private island. We started at the water park. They had a wave pool and a bunch of slides. Ryan went down the first one with us and got a little motion sick so we left him on a beach chair eating ice cream cones and the girls and I went on a few more slides. When we had our fill of that we walked over to the beach and did some snorkeling. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. We saw some cool fish, a shipwreck, a stingray that seemed to like Emilee, and some cool plants. The girls played on the beach for a while and we had a relaxing day on the beach until we were ready to go back to the boat.
Our third day on the cruise we were at Nassau. We had been there before so we decided to try something different from our last visit. We went to the Royal Caribbean private beach club. It was pretty nice. There were a couple beaches- the girls spent most of their time there, swimming and playing in the sand. They also had several different pools- party, relaxing, little kids, adult only different options like that. Ryan and I went to the relaxing pool for most of the time. They also had lots of food options that were included so there was always plenty of food to eat. We went back to the boat a little earlier this day to get out of the sun after a few hours. The other cruises we have done have been in winter months. The weather is still nice then but not quite so intense. The middle of summer is pretty darn toasty so we had to go find air conditioning after a few hours.
Our last day on the boat we were at sea floating around. We enjoyed the pools, shows, and activities they had on the boat. Ryan and I got a massage, the girls hung out with some friends they made. We all did a cupcake decorating class together. It was pretty fun. The frosting was so heavy it smashed our cupcakes. The frog turned out pretty cute though. We all passed and got our culinary award!
We got off the boat on Friday at 7am. Our flight was not until 7pm. We had reserved a rental car to drive through the Florida keys until it was time to go to the airport. The car rental place didn’t end up reserving a car for us…they told us we were fourth in line for the cars as they were returned but didn’t know when that would actually be. Dumb. So we went to the airport and got our tickets moved to an earlier flight. It was another exhausting travel day home. We had to run to our flight on the layover but we made it. Ryan’s dad picked us up since our car had a flat. We went back the next day and met the tow truck to get it fixed. By the time we got home we all went to bed and crashed until morning. We had a very fun trip. A cruise is a fun way to see several places and have lots of entertainment options. I’m sure we will do another one sometime.
That is not in reference to President Trumps second term. That is in reference to Ryan’s age he turned this year. We did a pretty good job celebrating him I think! For his birthday dinner he requested that Emilee make him spaghetti and meatballs-with love. She did. I contributed some garlic cheese bread and his mom recipe for chocolate cake. It was the same weekend as Father’s Day so Emilee gave him his traditional new pajama pants for Fathers Day along with a collection of Bluey paraphernalia to add to the Bluey pajama pants she gave him for Christmas. It is kind of a joke in the family. Emilee loves Bluey (a little kid cartoon) and we tease her about it-mostly Matthew and Dad. And she gives them Bluey clothing or toys in return. She gave dad a stuffed animal, a shirt, and a small toy car with Bluey in it for his work desk. She also thought it would be funny to take the center of his birthday cake out and make him think she ate it.
We also went out with some friends for his birthday. There is a 70’s dance club Ryan and his friend have been wanting to go to. Ryan likes to dress the part and his friend likes to dance. His wife likes to dress the part and I like to dance so we make a pretty good team. We all dressed up and went to a fancy dinner before. There were a few people at the restaurant that were in their 20/30’s in the 70’s that were thrilled with our outfits. One lady gave us dance tips and her friends had to drag her away when they left because she wanted to join us. LOL. It was a really fun night, the place was lot of fun, they played music from 70’s 80’s and 90’s and at one point they play the Car Wash song and they have an actual carwash brush that spins and fills the whole dance floor with bubble foam. We danced until the the guys feet hurt so bad they couldn’t dance anymore. Notice in the picture they both wore platform shoes.
We kept pretty busy in June. Emilee went to her first Youth Conference. Our church took all the youth to Nauvoo Illinois for a few days. She had not been to Nauvoo since she was three I think so she got to go and this time she will remember it. She said it wasn’t the greatest most fun time, but she did have fun and enjoyed it overall. Our young women and the young women leaders in our ward are pretty awesome. They seem to all get along well and the girls really like the adults.
Bus ride to Nauvoo with Hali Gudjenov and Sister Wickham
Emilee had a little niche in her room that was kind of a waste of space so she asked her dad to build a book case in it. He built it and I painted it and now Emilee has a place for all her books and legos.
I mentioned in a previous post that we had a skunk problem. It started in April…and it was still a problem in June. The people we hired to get rid of them NEVER caught any skunks. They filled their home in and made it so they couldn’t get back in, but then they moved to our bushes and sprayed their stupid skunk smell everywhere. They sprayed somewhere and it smelled so strong it woke me up from a dead sleep at five in the morning one time. I thought it had gotten in the house somehow. It hadn’t but inside and outside of our house smelled like a skunk for a solid week. Instead of wasting more time on animal control not catching them, Emilee and I gave Ryan permission to take care of them on his own. Based on this picture I will let you figure out how he did that. Three weeks later the inside of our house doesn’t smell like skunk-the storage area under the porch did a few times when it rained but it has finally stopped. The outside smells like skunk in two areas that are getting better each time it rains, and there are NO MORE skunks living on our property.
All of us went to Arkansas for a weekend to visit the Torgerson family. Emilee stayed and her and Lizzie went to Sherrie’s for a few days. They seem to get along really well together. They like to do lots of crafts, go swimming, play mindcraft and hangout together. Mimi (Sherrie) took them to a painting place and they did that together one of the days.
Emilee goes in to shock if she doesn’t eat McDonalds at least once a week. This was one of our trips. The FIFA Soccer World cup is going on right now so the toy she got was one of the teams. It happened to be Brasil so she wanted to take a picture to show Matthew. She is also showing him the sad excuse for a ‘small’ fry she got in order to get the Brasil toy. And BTW, I am spelling Brasil the way they spell it in Brasil, not America, so that is not a spelling error. I am sure there are plenty of other spelling errors in my posts that are legit though.
And last but not least for this post. Coco loves that we are home more-I’m only working two days instead of three for the summer, and Emilee doesn’t have school. She has taken care of the house like a champ when we have left her a few times but when we are home she is always willing to cuddle.
A mom on Emilee’s team coordinated a photographer to come take pictures of the girls. Here are Emilee’s.
This is Emilee’s team before one of their games. One of the umpires has whatever team he is umping for listen to the national anthem before he starts the game. Em is the player with black cleats.
After there season was over most of her team went to a KC Diamond softball game together. It is the first year we have had a professional softball team in KC. The girls got to come early and meet the players and get autographs and hangout on the field for a while. Grandpa Terry came with us. It was a fun evening!
Matthew is still in Ibura. He has been there for three transfers which is 18 weeks. He is hoping he will go to a new place for his next transfer. He has had three companions while he has been there. Elder Saternino (sp?), Elder Carter and his first training missionary Elder Cabrera (sp?).
He recently got a new mission president as well. President Martinis and his wife finished there three year call and President Bradford and his wife are now there. He really liked president Martinis (I am probably spelling that wrong). He was good at motivating and connecting with the missionaries. He likes to spoil them with lots of good food at zone conferences and fun ‘mega’ p-days. Matthew is liking President Bradford so far too. He has only been there about two weeks but Matthew met with him. He brought two of his kids with him and is from Texas.
Matthew is finding lots of people to teach, teenage boys and some of their parents are the people that seem to connect with them the most. He loves to get his pizza with chocolate stuffed crust whenever he can. Food is one of his biggest joys. There is a sweet lady that feeds them and has them over a lot. I talked with her on the phone once. She was very sweet and I told her thank you for taking such good care of my son while he it there. It is the world soccer cup right now. He has loved celebrating with people when Brazil plays. He is coming up on his one year mark too! That is exciting. He only has one of all the holidays left before he comes home. He likes to practice his guitar. I put songs for him to learn on our photo album.
We still talk to him for a few hours on Monday. I look forward to it every week. He seems to be doing pretty good, which I am very grateful for. His first companions out of the MTC have now gone home so he is transitioning from the ‘new guys’ to the ‘old guard’. He has enjoyed training his companion but is still hoping to go to a new location next transfer, which is this week so next time we talk to him we will see if that happened or not.
Emilee wrapped up her last few days of 7th grade last week. She made new friends, got to know some old ones better, tried new things, learned new things, grew a few inches and made a few honor rolls- B Honor roll first semester, and Presidents Honor roll 2nd semester. It was a pretty good year for her I think. She wants to have a long fun summer and then she will finish up her last year in middle school and move the Terry house out of middle school forever! The saying the days are long but the years are short is very true.
The end of the school year isn’t as chaotic as is was with elementary activities in the mix. We still had some things going on though.
For Mother’s Day I had some yellow and purple tulips on the counter and our beautiful cat ate the purple ones and it looked like used the yellow ones to sharpen her teeth on. Stinker. So Emilee was a sweetheart and made me some paper flowers that so far Coco has inspected, but left alone. I thought they were pretty cool.
Ryan went on a work trip to New York and one of the vendors asked if he wanted to go to a basketball game while they were at dinner one night. Ryan thought he was asking for a future visit and said he would love to. Going to a game at Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks is a pretty sweet thing to get to do for a basketball fan. The vendor said he would see what he could do and less than an hour later they were heading to the game. Ryan said they got the full NY experience because they arrived a few minutes after the game started and had to crawl over some people to get to their seats (which were pretty good seats as you can see) and the people cussed them out for both offenses.
My big sports moment was at a dental conference I went to with some girls from school. As we were heading to the meet and greet after the first day the Chiefs KC Wolf was walking down the hall and indicated he wanted to take his picture with us.😂😜 Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, we got a fun picture.
We had a new tenant arrive at our house a little bit ago. We are calling him Jerry. Based on the size of his house he is building under our porch he is pretty big. He is pretty shy so we haven’t seen him but very messy and not really welcome. We called a company to come relocate him to a more hospitable location. They thought Jerry was an award winning giant groundhog. They put a camera and cage up to catch him. Shortly after that we their camera got a picture of shy Jerry and he is not in fact a groundhog. That was two and a half weeks ago. Jerry makes an occasional camera shot but as far as checking out the transportation to his new digs, he isn’t interested in the slightest. It is getting pretty annoying. Hopefully they figure out how to catch him quickly. The Amazon delivery person has no idea how risky they are being when they deliver our early morning packages.
And last but not least, some cute cat pictures featuring Emilee and my lap, two of Coco’s favorite places to be. As I am typing this she is trying to scoot my lap top out of the way and take its place on my lap.
Emilee finished up track. I already posted her pictures and some of the races. She did really well. When it was all said and done and they handed out the awards she had her hands full. It was VERY FUN watching her race. I am already looking forward to it next year. She set a new school record with her teammates in the 4×400 and 4×100 relay races, and she set a new school record by herself in the 200 meter. Good job girl! We are proud of you for working hard and trying something new!
Matthew posts a lot of pictures for us from his mission. It is awesome, and I love seeing them. I am a little behind on adding them to my posts though.
His last updated I did, he had just gotten to Ibura. He is still there, he is almost done with his second transfer which is 12 weeks. It is a little bit of a crazy area. There are lots of drugs and drug activities. Lots of gangs and gangs fighting. Everything we have heard, and it has been true with Matthew, is that the gangs leave the missionaries alone and don’t want to mess with them.
Shortly after he got to Ibura, he went on a trip by bus with a few dozen other missionaries to a city and helped with a big humanitarian service project. They help load/unload and distribute tons of food and water and basic hygiene supplies to the city. Matt said it was the best week of his mission so far. They had a program while they were there too, the locals did a lot of dance and singing performances. The missionaries sang some songs, there was a few local choirs. They also took the missionaries to do a little sight seeing in some really cool looking places. Here are the pictures he sent from the service project.
I can recognize Matthew from here.Zoomed in a little closerThere he is!
On his second transfer in Ibura he got a new companion. Elder Carter. He is an American from the northwest. Matthew has liked all of his companions and gotten along with them fine but he was pretty excited to have an American companion again to be able to speak English- at least at night. He was also pleasantly surprised to realize that he is basically pretty fluent in Portuguese now. Elder Carter is only a few months in and still learning. Matthew thought it might be a little rough since he was now the “Portuguese speaker” of the two of them but he didn’t have any issues. They have kept pretty busy finding people. They work with a lot of teenagers. If they don’t have any plans or ambitions then they usually just join a gang. The missionaries try and help them see there is better things in life. It is a hard mindset for some of the people they work with to overcome. Matthew gets a little frustrated with sometimes.
A bus that some people started on fire one night…
Other fun times he has between working hard to help and teach people each day it his p-days and Zone Conferences. He is closer to other missionaries than he has been in other locations, so often they get together and have soccer games, or BBQ for p-day. They also go to the mall and eat Popeyes Chicken for lunch. They also have temple days. At the last one he went to he was able to see his first companion on the mission- Elder Waite. He was able to come to there apartment and do divisions with them for a few days too. He is going home in less than a week so Matthew was excited he got to see him one more time. Last weekend there was a Brasil LDS singing group that put on a concert. All the missionaries in the area were able to go. Matthew said it was a lot of fun. Music is one of the things he misses most. He is only aloud to listen to church music. The concert was church music but it was fun to be in a concert environment and sing and dance with almost 2000 other people.
Waiting for a professional team to finish playing so they could play.Stage for concert being set upPicture from the concertThis is Elder Rasbands visit
Matthew is working hard and we are very proud of him. It is the rainy season where he is now. Some of the videos he has sent show him trudging down the street in a down pour with a foot of water flooding the street. All day everyday. It looks pretty miserable but he has a good attitude about it. We look forward to talking to him every week and hearing what he is doing. Last week is was heading home early a few nights because a few of the gangs were having issues and solving it by having shoot outs. I hope we are done with hearing about that. He has been out a little over 9 months. We told him he almost needs to start thinking about what he wants to do when he gets home and making sure we hit all the dead lines for housing and school.
Ryan and I went and watched a few of Matthew’s old baseball team mates playing in a college game. It was fun to see a baseball game again with a few players and parents we knew. I took a picture to send to Matt after the game.
Emilee tried track this year!! I was hoping she would and I thought she would be good at it, and I thought she would like it. All of those things turned out to be true. She tried the high jump. She did pretty good but if she wants to keep doing it we need to get her a coach to really help her get the technique down. She did good when Liz gave her a crash course. When she didn’t have someone that new what they were doing that could tell her where her form was breaking down it was a little tricky. She did fine with it and we will see if she wants to do it again next year.
She started out in the 400 meter dash, and then her coach added her to the 200 meter dash and the 4 x 400 meter relay, then the last two meets he added her to the 4 x 100 meter relay. She placed in the top three for almost every race she was in and ended up qualifying to go to the three league meets. She placed in the the top 5 for all of the league events she did. They broke the school record for the 4 x 400 relay at their last meet of the year. She is a fast little stinker. We are trying to convince her to do a running club for a while over the summer or fall to help improve her running technique and make her even faster. It was a lot of fun to watch her race and enjoy doing something she is good at. I recorded a few of her races, I need to be better at that. I like to watch them and cheer and it is hard to do that if I record her.
Her 400 meter time was about 1:08 by the end of the season. Her 200 meter time was just over 29 seconds. The best 400 x4 relay time was 4:31.
So having a cat is going ok. They are pretty clean and she is great at using her litter box. She sheds so much. That is the hardest part. She can jump where ever she wants too. Both of those things mean I now spend A LOT of time vacuuming and cleaning than I had to before. I am constantly lint rolling my self, the couches, and even the cat. She is sweet and loves to cuddle. Most of the time that is great but sometimes I want 100% me, no other living being in the same room with me time. So I get to go hide in my room instead of the living room. I am her person. If all of us sit on the couch she will come to my lap. She is trying to sit on my hands while I am typing right now and keeps looking at me like I am interrupting her trying to nap on my lap. We think she is losing her hearing a little but other than that she is pretty healthy. I never thought I would have a cat video to share but I have a cat now so that means I will post stupid cat videos.
Emilee started another season of softball. Most of her tournaments are still coming but she had one in April. They all improved a lot over the winter. I think they won more games in their first tournament then they did all last season. The last day of the tournament was rained out so there wasn’t a winner, but we were on our way. They had fun and it looks like it will be a fun season for them.
The Model S Tesla that Ryan drives is being discontinued after this year. He loves his car and has driven almost 200,000 miles in 6 years in it. Since the version he likes the best is being discontinued he decided he should get a new one and start the clock fresh on his car… and he just likes having a car payment. Definitely some holes in his logic but he decided to do it. He was going to get boring white again, but I convinced him to do black or the blue color. The self driving mode on it is pretty amazing. It can take you almost anywhere start to finish without you touching the wheel. The kids have always argued about who gets his old Tesla when he got a new one. We decided none of them need a Tesla as their first car and we are selling it.
Ryan does his annual trip to Las Vegas with his mission buddies each year. They watch the March Madness games together, golf, eat lots of food and hang out. They were able to crash a corporate event one of the days they were there this year because of a connection one of them had through work.
A coworker of Ryan’s rescued a cat a few months ago. It was really skinny and had an infection. They shaved her and took her to the vet. It is a girl, she was owned by someone at some point because she has been spayed and declawed. But they either let her go or she got away and was lost. The vet thinks she is about 10 years old. So they named her Coco and brought her home. She has grown her hair back and put on a little weight but they had two other cats and she doesn’t like other cats or dogs. I would guess that since she has been declawed and on her own she can’t really defend herself so she has to bluff and fight with all her might when she was on her own so she goes on the offensive pretty quick. So she was their downstairs cat and the other cats they had lived upstairs. They mentioned that if anyone wanted or knew of someone that wanted a cat they were trying to find one for her. Her hair has grown back and she has put on a little weight but is still pretty skinny.
We weren’t really looking for a pet but the girls are always asking for a dog or cat. I wouldn’t want to declaw a cat, but since she already is, and she is older. I thought she would be a good one to try. We agreed to take her for a few weeks and do a trial run. Just in case one of us was allergic or we decided she wasn’t a good fit. It took about two days and I think all of us were pretty much attached to her. She is a sweetheart. She loves to snuggle and follow you around. They gave us special cat food for her because they said she was throwing up a lot when they got her. She still eats that but we give her chicken and turkey too. She seems to like it and has already put on a little more weight. We have had her for a week and plan on keeping her.
None of us really love the name Coco but we can’t decide on any other name that we all agree on so we call her Coco and a bunch of other ones right now until one sticks.
As you can see she is a great snuggler.
She was crawling over my lap and fell asleep half way off.
We hung out around home for a the first few days of break. Ryan was out of town for work but when he got home Emilee and Ryan and I tried out a new putt putt place. They have a restaurant attached so we ate their first. When we started golfing, Matthew called so we passed him around for the first few holes while we golfed. He did pretty good at carrying on three separate conversations and picking up right were we left off depending on who took the phone from the next person. It was almost like he was with us. I was winning until the very last hole, and it all fell apart.
About half way through the break Ryan went to Las Vegas with his mission friends for his usual March Madness adventure.
Allison stayed at her grandparents for a few days.
Emilee and I went on a girls trip to St Louis. We stayed at a hotel right by the arch, ate yummy food, and went to some fun places. Our first stop was the Museum of Illusion. We got some really cool pictures there.
Emilee wanted to check out a few bookstores while we were there. I think we ended up going to about four different one. We got some good books and had fun reading and chilling in some of the places for a bit. We also went to the aquarium and did a fun ropes course. We enjoyed having a fun trip together. We both like to sleep in and don’t have to be go go go the whole time. I think we had a great balance of relaxing and doing things.
Matthew’s new area is in Ibura Brazil. It is a suburb of Recife. Known for drugs and gangs. He is in an apartment with his companion and there are two other Elders in their own apartment on the other side of the city. His companions name is Elder Saturnino, from Sao Paulo Brazil. He hit his 7 month mark about the same time he arrived.
He has only been her a week or two so they are getting used to the area and meeting people. There is certain areas of the city they do not go for safety, and Matt has seen a few drug deals happen in broad day light. The people know they are there to teach about Jesus so they are pretty good about leaving them alone, if they aren’t out after dark. There is a few teenage boys that have been baptized and are bringing their friends, brothers to church and it sounds like Matthew is trying to reign in 12 ferral boys who have never heard the word reverent, let alone be reverent in their life. He said a few of them that have been coming for a while are better but some of the newer kids will start wrestling and fighting at the drop of a hat and it is pretty exasperating.
About the same time he transferred to Ibura there was a special fireside and one of the apostles, Elder Rasband came and spoke to them for a while. Matt said it was pretty cool. He was further south is Brazil in Sao Paulo, and his mission president knows him so he asked him to stop and speak to his missionaries before he headed home.
Matthew is standing next to his first companion, Elder Waite who is about to head home.
This area is closer to a lot more missionaries so they will probably be able to get together on p-day more often. He said they do the temple, or BBQ’s or soccer a lot.
We sent Matthew a package and it got to him this time! He has a new tie and tie tack to wear.
Matthew had two transfers with his companion Elder Toledo in Escada Brazil. From talking with him, it seems like he liked the area and enjoyed the people. They did a lot of good and sounds like they were able to get a few people more active than had been before. It isn’t a ‘high baptizing’ area which makes it seem like you aren’t ‘successful’ sometimes but I think they did a lot of good. Here are the last few pictures from his time in Escada. There are some from a zone conference and a few trips to play soccer in Recife while they were there on p-days.
I believe these pictures are from his last zone conference.
These are the last pictures he sent us from Escada before he left for his new area.
I was at work the other day and got a notification on my watch. I saw it scroll through with this silly picture of Emilee asking for money. It was cute enough that I decided to donate.
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The weather has been getting nice enough for her to ride outside for her lessons more. She is getting pretty good.
Allison qualified for State wrestling this year! The first group of pictures if from her qualifying for state match.
ScreenshotScreenshotThese are the Spring Hill girls that qualified for state.
Qualifying match videos
It is pretty awesome that she made it to State!! We were excited for her. The parents made ‘fat heads’ for their kids and we attended the parade walk for them around the school before they left. She missed a lot of regular practices because of some therapy she was doing but she made them up with morning practices and worked really hard.
They do a walk out of all the State athletes before the matches begin. The SH girls are in the yellow on the front (bottom) left side of the picture, starting maybe 10 people in.
Ryan and I decided to do a little get away. Well, Ryan decided and I went along and had a great time. He is the instigator of most of our trips and I appreciate it. We wouldn’t get around to it as much if I was instigating it. We went to a resort in Cancun. Last time we were in Mexico we did some day trips to see different areas and the Mayan pyramids, and a cenote. This time we were just there for three days and we decided we wanted to relax and do not very much. We walked around the area we were at and ate good food and did some window shopping. Otherwise we stayed at our resort and napped or read a book on the beach or at the pool. I got a great tan in February! In the evenings they had some show or activities we could go to. The last night we were there was the super bowl so we watched it on a big screen with the rest of the hotel. It was very relaxing and it was nice to be able to unplug for a few days.
Flying in it was raining. We have had the worst of luck on our beach vacations. We research the best time to go for great weather and smaller crowds and when we get there it is ‘unseasonably cold’ ‘not been this cold for 30 years’. So we were a little discouraged. The rain stopped pretty quick and we didn’t have any more after that. When we landed the airport had no gate for us to go to. Like they were surprised we were there.🤦♀️ They told us some stupid story that the plane at our gate broke down so they didn’t have a spot. But our plane was joined by 5 other planes parked at some random spot on the tarmac before we were done. We waited about 30 minutes for a bus to come. Then another. Then finally a third before it was our turn and we were able to get on one and they drove us to the airport. Last time we flew into Mexico it took about three hours to get our luggage from baggage claim so this time we didn’t check bags and were able to leave once we finally made it into the airport. I took a picture of their ladder while we were waiting for the bus to leave, it made me laugh, “Excellence from touch down to take off”. Ok Mexico.
This is the view from the pool I was in. Pretty awesome!sunrise
After the first day the weather wasn’t really to bad. It got a little windy sometimes but it was warm enough to enjoy the beach or pool. They resort had different restaurants or a buffet to choose from. I thought the food was decent, and I didn’t have to make it so that makes it a win too! Ryan likes to wear his KC hat at the pool to make friends and I like to put my headphones it and sit by myself in peace.
I didn’t look before we went but I was thinking I would be halfway closer to Matthew than in Kansas before we left. I was still further than I thought. I was only 950 miles closer. Because of our flight times I didn’t get to talk to him as much as I usually do on Mondays so I am looking forward to talking to him next week.
Matthew is on his second transfer in Escada. It was a big change from Salgueiro and it took him and his new companion a minute to get their stride going but they seem to be doing good and getting some good things accomplished. I am proud of how hard he works and how he is dedicating himself to doing his best. You can see in the pictures they are keeping busy and doing a lot of good. This week on February 11 Matthew had his 6 month mark. He is a quarter of the way done with his mission. He is getting pretty close to fluent. He says he can speak and understand pretty much everything, he needs to keep adding to his vocabulary and work on his accent now. That alone is a pretty big accomplishment in six months. Plus all the other things he has learned about the gospel, living with others, working, being mostly on your own, traveling across continents, self motivating, accountability. He is elbow deep in life lessons and learning. We are proud of him. And I miss him like crazy.
They were able to find a sister who hasn’t been to church for a long time and in the past she wouldn’t let anyone come and see her or visit. I believe her name is Jessica but I might be remembering wrong. She is in her 40’s now but she served a mission when she was younger and people said she was really great and loved the gospel. She has depression now and had been having a hard time getting out of her depression. They found another sister who knew Jessica and was a friend a long time ago and they had her help them find Jessica and convince her to let them help her out. They spent a few days cleaning her house and yard up, and her friend got her some medicine and helped her get cleaned up herself. She has even come to church a few times since then.
All the yard and weeds you see were cut down and removed with the machete and hoe. Good old fashioned manual labor.
Here are more pictures of the city.
Some of those stairs the city is named for.When Matthew is talking to me and walking around his phone is pointing at the sky and every now and then you see massive amounts of wires above his head. He sent a picture of how many are on one pole.
Sometimes on p-day they travel to Recife to the mission presidents neighborhood and get together with other missionaries to play soccer on the beach. It sounds like a pretty fun day. Last time Matthew said he was on a little bit in awe when he stopped to think his 19 year old self was playing soccer on a beach in Brazil with dozens of people from around the world. His team alone had an Argentinian, an American, a professional soccer player from Paraguay, a Bolivian, and one of the riches men in Brazil. Quite a group the church brought together.
Heading back to Escada after a day in Recife.
These are pictures of Matthew and his current companion Elder Toledo working in Escada. One of Matthew’s favorite parts of his day is eating food so he also likes to send us pictures of the food he enjoys eating.
These boys offered to run any errands for them if they needed anything.I am glad there are members that feed them in this area so they get at least one balanced meal a day.District meeting.Zone Conference with member of the seventyI liked this picture because I can see his confidence and peace and happiness in his eyes and face.
This area has a lot of members but not very many of them come to church. Matthew and Elder Toledo have been working on reactivating and encouraging members to come. They had a pretty successful activity a few weeks ago. They have also found a new sister that was baptized this week.
Did splits with Elder Aranjo (spelled wrong I am sure)
I love how she says ‘pingy pong’. 🙂 in the first video and how Elder Toledo says ‘wow’ in the rain video.
My sister DeAnna gave everyone a puzzle for Christmas with our pictures from last Thanksgiving on it. We put it together a few weeks ago. I enjoy doing puzzles, I have never done one with pictures of people I know in it. It made it even more fun! It was a very cute idea!
One of the fun things about our new house is its location is out far enough away from the city that we see lots of wild life. We see lots of animals in the flesh around our house. We also see evidence of them, or hear them, or smell them. Some of the most common ones are deer, coyotes, racoons, opossums, snakes, mice, horses, cows, donkeys, chickens, skunks, and all kinds of birds. I think we have even had a bear wander through our front yard as it was passing through but I am shunned when I say that by certain family members.
I believe one of our regular animals we see has already made an appearance in Terry Family Shenanigans. Thomas the hawk. He likes to perch on the peak of our roof over the back deck and then dive off and catch food when small animals come out of the tall grass into our short grass. The past few weeks he has been around a lot and we have seen him in action. He is beautiful and big. It is hard to say but I bet his wing span in between 3-4 feet. We think he might be a Thomalina instead of a Thomas. There is a very young hawk that has started hanging around too. He looks like a minature version of Thomas and usually perches on the rim of our trampoline net or the rail of our deck. We haven’t gotten any pictures of the new friend yet but we have a few of Thomas. Someday I’ll get out my real camera and stalk him a bit to get some good pictures but we took these really quick when we saw him hunting.
Diving to catch food in the grassFlying back up to his perch on the roof.
I went to the chiropractor and when I got out of the car I was greeted by these two ducks that were hanging out on the sidewalk. I had never seen them before but I am guessing they are local residents because they had a food and water bowl our for them.
But, the big surprise of a new animal we saw the other day was on our way to Emilee’s softball practice. We were passing a field with a bunch of donkeys in it and Emilee noticed one of the donkeys looked a little different. We don’t know how this guy made it to Olathe Kansas but we hope he is enjoying life with his donkey friends.
Emilee had her first school dance. Her middle school has a dance for the 7th and 8th graders in the winter each year. She looked beautiful and is growing up way to fast. She picked out her dress, she wanted it to be purple and she decided how she wanted her hair to be done. She originally thought a bun but changed her mind and went with curls, half up, half down. She went with a group of her girl friends. A few of them came over to our house to take pictures before and then arrive together at the dance. Emilee said she wanted to go in her dads car so she could arrive at the dance and have ‘drip’. I am not sure I said that correctly. But we took her and her friends to the dance and we had the song “Shut Up and Dance” blaring on the speakers when we arrived and they made their grand entrance. They had to run because there was a blizzard happening and it was a freezing 15 degrees at the time but it was still a grand entrance. It was pretty stinking cute. They all had a fun time. Emilee said they danced a lot and they had good snacks to eat.
Left to right- Lyla, Camille, Eden, Keely, Emma, Olivia, Harriet, Morgan, Emilee, Rachel, Ava, AveryEmilee, Morgan and Rachel
Here we go! A new year of experiences, growing, changing, learning, and memories to add to our lives.
Emilee went to Arkansas for the last part of 2025 and spent a few days with her cousin Lizzy. They had a great time and loved getting to be together. She was with them for New Year Eve and we picked her up New Year Day. We hadn’t opened presents yet so when she got home we opened some with her. Our family pajama pants this year were Dr. Pepper pants. Some of us are very big fans of Dr. Pepper. And speaking of things that people are big fans of, Emilee is also a big fan of Bluey…the cartoon for preschool kids…but there is apparently a big following of middle school kids that love it too. She got a pair of Bluey pajama pants for Christmas and she got her dad a pair for Christmas so we had to get that on camera.
A few days after the New Year it was warm enough to practice shooting her bow so we went outside and used the new target she got for Christmas.
Matthew is now in his Black Out Year. It is a term missionaries use for the year of their mission that they are gone from home for the whole 365 days of the year. The crappy part of that is the definition I just gave you. The silver lining is when it is done it will be just a few more months until he comes home. He is doing really well. His Portuguese gets better everyday and he is learning and growing a lot. We are proud of him and excited for the opportunities he is having. He is missed a lot. We went to dinner the other night at Costa Vida where he used to work. He called us while we were there and talked to some of the people he used to work with which he thought was awesome. On the way there we made this video for him so he could hear one of his favorite songs and see some of the Kansas sunset. Allison was in the car with us but didn’t want to be in the video.
Allison is working hard at wrestling. She is doing early morning practices and spends most of her weekends at meets. The most recent meet at Blue Valley North West she took 3rd place. Here is a video of her at a match in Topeka.
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Emilee is still doing her weekly riding lesson. She moved to a new barn this year. She is getting pretty good and comfortable on a horse. It is fun to watch her.
