Happy Skyping

This is where Wes was able to Skype from.  They fed him really
well!

His new shoes....

Wesley's BYU garb!

well nothing much more 

the pillow case Morgan made for him...

happened this week besides service for a less active member (it was from a horror movie! there were like spiders the size of my palm everywhere!) and sunday! which was awesome! we had a LA come to church after lots of time working with her. and we had 2 investigators come to church! let me tell you about one of them, Y! she is SOOO awesome!!! :) she is a referral from a member. she is the girlfriend of their son. she came to church with them yesterday and went to gospel principles class and it was the last lesson about exaltation and we were kinda sweating it with all of the deep doctrine going on in there. but when we visited her that night she told us that she loved it and that she learned so much! she already believes this is true, she wants the peace and happiness that she sees in her boyfriend and his family and wants to be baptized too! she really is super prepared and an example of how the lord will prepare people for us as long as we are obedient!

Don't know about the fog.  I am sure he has seen some before...

p.s. the weapons were a bad idea...with 4 men's minds put together we quickly found out a way to make them lethal! we made a crossbow that shoots a skewer through an orange! AAHHHHH!!!!

i hope you have a happy new year and that all goes well!

--

Love Elder Jones

Merry Christmas!

All the girls with their stripey PJ's.  And... Mason's stribey
socks (and cute butt).

Wow, what a year.  We have been truly blessed this year.  Our sweet missionary is doing FANTASTIC!  I think he was a little homesick yesterday, he had a little bit harder time saying good bye this time, than he did in May!  But he looks great.  He is in a great area, and they are feeding him like a hobbit.  He gets elevensies, and lunch and tea and supper etc.  Mason, after learning how to wrestle, can hardly wait to get his mits on "chubby" as he likes to refer to him.  Morgan misses him so much, we have started referring to Wes as "he-who-must-not-be-named".  ha, ha, ha...

We had a relatively quiet Christmas.  Sydney was up early, so she went and got Morgan up, and then they worked on Mason.  Jeff and I were up by about 8:30.  We made our Christmas scones and hot-chocolate for breakfast and then went to start the mayhem.  Mason got his annual "Hoodie" and a ton of Reeses products and a Kindle (which he won't admit that he loves)...  Sydney got her MP3 player, she was thrilled.  Morgan got her running outfits and "UNLIMITED TEXTING".  She was thrilled too.  Jeff got 3 new polachinqua pans, so he was excited too.  We all got new tennis shoes (Thanks Stasi and Katie!) and I am getting a pot rack for all of Jeff's new pans!  Yeah!!!

After we talked with Wes, we made our Spicey Buffalo Bleu Mac and Cheese to have with our ribs and salad.  We have been given so many treats, so I didn't make any desserts for Christmas this year.  Maybe for New Years we will make a fun dessert.  After dinner was made, we headed off to see the Hobbit!

Guess I should have put on a little make-up :/.

When we got home, we had our dinner and watched "Guardians of the Galaxy".  Super chill day enjoying our family! We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas.  We are so grateful for the gospel in our lives and the example the Savior set for us, to help us return to our Father in Heaven.  What a blessing and true gift.  Have a wonderful Christmas break!

Let it SNOW!!!

Well, Sydney has been all over the weatherman lately.  When he says it is going to snow and it doesn't, she just lights into him.  Oooh, she can be a piece of work sometimes.  But, she finally got her wish.  We woke up Christmas morning to 14 inches of snow.  And... we got an additional 4 inches throughout the day.  CRAZY!  So after we opened presents, we all got our snow gear on and helped to remove the snow.  We are supposed to get some more on Sunday.  As Sydney says, at least it feels like Christmas now!  We will have to figure out how to get a video of Molly "swimming" through the snow.  She is literally underneath as she surfaces and runs through it!

Where the garage door and snow meet!
In the background, the front of the snow blower is
18 inches tall.  Don't see much of it!

Happy Birthday Morgan

My sweet daughter is 18 years old.  Crazy how time flies.  It was just yesterday that she was a screaming, tantrum laying 8 year old telling me that she NEVER wanted to grow up.  And that I couldn't "make her grow-up"!  So much has changed since then.  She is a beautiful talented woman now ready to tackle the world, (at least we are getting closer to this ideal).  We took the family out to dinner last night to celebrate her birthday.  We went to Hu Hot, a Mongolian grill in Spanish Fork.  The kids loved it.  They were passing out tattoos, as you can see from the pictures. As it was all-you-can-eat, Mason went back 4 times and was wanting to go back for a 5th  before we dragged him out of the restaurant.  We met the Wilcoxes there and had a great dinner.  We came home, while Morgan and her friends went to the school stag dance. It was the ugly sweater dance, so Morgan decided that would be too hot, so she and her friend went for ugly leggings. But once they got to the dance, everyone thought they were cute.  Go figure! Unfortunately, the ACT was the next morning, so a lot of the kids I had invited over for dessert couldn't be out that late.  But she has her Kindle now and she is thrilled.  Fully loaded with all of her reading choices as well as all her church books.  Awesome.  Love you darling!

What a Wonderful Life....

so this week was really good! tuesday we had temple service! the temple is closed for 2 weeks so we are just doing tons of work on the grounds! me and a couple other elders got a relay team going and we ripped out all of the concrete borders surrounding the gardens! then we had to break them all in half because they were super long! we were like john henry beating the steam engine! hoorah!

then we had a member present lesson with A. and we taught them the plan of salvation and the law of chastity! it was a lot of stuff to cover and a little crazy but we were able to go over it again later on in the week! we had to change her baptismal date to the 3rd of January just cuz we really want to work with the husband so they can make this step together!  we made a timeline of all the stuff that she needed to do to be baptized and she agreed to do all of it! so she came to church on sunday....and HER HUSBAND BROUGHT HER!!!!! YAYAYAY!!! he had worked an overnight shift and still decided to come! it was awesome! he had a great experience even though i bet he was dead tired!  AND A. also came to the Christmas devotional that night!!!! WOOOHOOO! it was awesome! She is so prepared and is like a sponge just soaking everything up! the work is really accelerating in this area now! we have a new ward mission leader named bro lopes! and he is really ripping it up! 

we had a super miracle this week! so a member had a bunch of left overs from thanksgiving and she wanted to give them to us. but we couldnt come and get them until 2 days later! so we finally get over to her house and it is just a ton of food! so we take it and go to our next appointment which is with J. we talked about faith and it was just really hard cuz they are going through such a rough time. they are getting evicted and they have no place to stay because none of the apartments will accept them cuz of their credit. at the end of the lesson the kids were screaming and she was just super stressed and she let us know that she didnt even have anything in her cupboards to feed her kids. Wow...We ran out to our car and gave them ALL of the food that the member had given us! she was grateful to tears! it is so powerful to see how the lord works through us to bless others!

-- 

Love Elder Jones

Jeff is on a roll!!!

My sweetheart has been gung ho on getting a few projects finished.  He started on the rubber band machine guns.  He is making quite a few.  As you can see from the mess, he has been quite diligent in making some headway here.  We thought about sending one each to Wes and his companion, but then realized this just wasn't a good idea.

Then last night, the girls and I went to see how old fashioned candies are made here at high altitude.  We learned how to make divinity, fudge and toffee.  Morgan is all over making the divinity.  Her label will be "Thanks for being so divine".  So when we came home, we were all on a huge sugar high.  We turned up the music, but the kids keep wanting to listen to Pandora on the computer.  The sound is terrible.  So I came up with hooking it up to my kitchen radio.  That worked, but it was quite ungainly.  Jeff saw what we were doing, and he went to town.  He had gotten these speaker for free and hauled them out.  Hooked them up and now we have great sound in the kitchen that works with the internet.  Wha-hoo!  So we were jamming out to Tony Bennet and the classics.  So much fun.  Hope you are all enjoying the holiday's.  Have a wonderful week.

Christmas Fun...

You know there are times when you know your kids can do a better job of something than you can.  This was one such time.  Jeff wanted some new Polachinqua pans for Christmas.  So I had my sister pick some up at the restaurant supply store before they came down for Thanksgiving.  They are a 12 inch non-stick pan and a 10 inch non stick pan.  So how do you wrap such devilish things.  Well, I posed the question to Mason and he got this funny grin on his face.  I told him to do the best he could and just to figure it out.  I emphasized the fact that it didn't have to be pretty...

This was the result and I laugh every time I see them under the tree.  Hope you have some humor this holiday season!

Thanksgiving!!!

Wes was bored, so he arranged all his change by year!
What a way to use your time!

so this week was actually pretty good! we ran out of miles this week so we had to get rides from members all over the place! like on monday we went riding with a member all over to see people but they kept canceling. but we did end up having a really good lesson with a less active family! Bro F. was super impressed about the cups and knives analogy! then on tuesday it was super awesome! we went out to oakridge to eat with our new ward mission leader! then we visited an active member and helped her set up her christmas tree and then she fed us too! (2 in a row!) and then we went to visit a. our golden investigator! and she was cooking and so she invited us in to eat tambien! but elder jacobsen couldnt fit any more inside his body. they were nice about it (because if a hispanic offers you food, you dont deny it or else they get offended) and they said that they would never force anybody to eat...but as i was eating the little food that i could fit in they kept on INSISTING that elder jacobsen would eat something. haha so in the end they did end up forcing elder jacobsen to eat! so we had 3 dinners within 3 hours! and they were totally unexpected! haha

well we ended up having a super successful day that tuesday and the highlight of it all was a new family that we are now teaching! their names are J, M. J., and J! they are a sweet family from mexico with the cutest darn kids ever! like J. fell down and started crying then he looked at my face and started busting out laughing out of no where! and then every time i looked at him he would start laughing! is something wrong with my face??? haha the gospel becomes so much more real when we teach families! 

then on thursday! we had a thanksgiving video downloaded and so we used that as our approach for every contact! it was sweet and we saw tons of miracles! we got 2 new investigators A., and J.! they are both sweet! then we went and taught M.! she was actually a lot more solid than we had thought! she has a slight concern about being baptized again cuz she doesnt want to play with god, but she told us she had a dream before she met the missionaries about what she described pretty definitively as the inside of one of the temples and the entire floor was covered with books of mormon! how cool is that! so she is really interested about coming to church! she just has to get work off!

then we had dinner with the F.
family! it was great! there was spanish rice! tomales! potato salad! Flan! oh and DELICIOUS TURKEY!!!! spanish people know how to cook! nuff said!

then later that night we had a less active member lesson where we were able to teach really powerfully about repentance! we were able to give him the hope to give up smoking once and for all! in the new testament it talks a lot about the savior healing all manner of enfermities. but not all of them were a literal blessing of health. people had emotional problems and his teaching literally was healing. we have been trying to teach in a way that will heal the scars made by life experiences! it has been awesome!

we had another experience like that yesterday where the difference in the persons attitude from the beginning of the lesson compared to the end really was amazing!

i love the gospel, the holidays, the true meaning of christmas, and you guys!

Love Elder Jones

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, Grandma was very careful about her diet ;o)

Jeff had as much fun or more with the seige weapons!

What a whirl wind of a week.  We were thrilled to be able to have my mom, her dogs and my sister and her family come for the holiday.  We also celebrated Haden's (my nephew) birthday.  Needless to say, Sydney was not ready to go back to school today.  But we made a bunch of fun food, made way too many "mini-weapons of mass destruction", and we are still cleaning up darts and so forth from all of the contraptions.  But the most important part was that we built relationships, and had a great time with Stasi's kids.  They are sure fun to play with.  They also introduced us to a new game called Strut.  If you are a game officiado, go look for it.  It is painful as well as fun to play.  We played again last night and Sydney was so thrilled to win!

These were worth a good laugh at least!

Our turkey turned out awesome, we finally got the brine just right.  My sister brought her potato ricer, so we had some "creamy, dreamy, mashed potatoes".  I also made a raspberry pie that was the first to be eliminated.  That should tell you something.  I basically made a blind-baked pie shell and filled it with the filling, which is as follows:  8 c. frozen berries, 3/4 c. sugar, pinch of salt and 1/4 c. of instant tapioca.  Cook the filling until it gets thick and the tapioca has absorbed the juices, it will thicken as it cools.  Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.  Very good!  We haven't heard from Wes yet, but I am sure they fed him well for the holiday.  We are working on his Christmas package which will contain a lot of supplies for mini-weapons of mass destruction.  Enjoy the pictures and have a wonderful holiday season!