Tyler's First Blog it's about Brazil! Finally!

Lunch with President Oppe and his family! He was the mission president while I served in the mission office (for 11 months) so I got to be really close with him and his family! We spent 2 days with them in Sao Paulo.



This was possibly the ultimate highlight of our entire trip Iguacu Falls! We spent 1 day on the Brazil side of the falls and 1 day on the Argentine side. It is almost 3 times larger than Niagara Falls. While there we did a jungle tour and saw toucan's, monkeys, lots of birds, an iguana, and 2 alligators. During this part of our trip we spent 4 out of 8 nights sleeping on a bus!

The huge waterfall again! This angle shows the largest possible portion of the waterfall, but it still doesn't get close to the whole falls.



This is part of the falls you can't see in the previous picture.



Alligator



Iguana

Curitiba Temple with one of my great companions and his wife!

Absolutely amazing photo of Rio de Janeiro from the Christ Statue.

At the famous Cristo Redentor overlooking the city of Rio de Janeiro.

This is where we stayed for 3 nights on an island off the coast of Brazil. There was no electricity at night, so we almost died of heat but, it was just so beautiful we couldn't leave!

We spent a full day on this beach, it was about an hour hike from our Bed and Breakfast. It's called Lopez Mendez beach, it was recently voted on of the world's top 7 beaches. We left early to get to the beach, so for the first hour we were the only people there!

I meet a really nice guy who happened to have an extra fishing pole so one evening I went fishing with him. All we had was a bamboo pole, 10 feet of line and some fish guts but we caught a lot of fish!

we did a hike to this amazing jungle waterfall. We spent about an hour swimming under it and resting on the rocks!

The perfect breakfast Acai (my favorite food in the whole world. It's a fruit that grows only in the Amazon its served frozen blending with strawberries, mango, and guarana), Pao de Quijo (cheese bread) and Suco de Caju (cashew juice)

Your guessed it! More Acai!

This was taken from the patio of one of the big mall's in Rio. Pao de Acucar is in the background.

cute little monkey we saw.

more monkey's :)

This shows some of how beautiful Rio de Janeiro really is! This is taken from the top of Pao de Acucar (sugarloaf mountain) Everything you can see was my area during some point of my mission. You can just see the Christ Statue in the upper right corner of the picture.

Sunset from Pao de Acucar.

Another view from Pao de Acucar. We stayed up there for about an hour watching the sunset!

We rented bikes and rode around the lake.

Kara took this picture while we were on our bike ride.



This is Lucienne one of my favorite people in the whole world. She was one of those people just waiting for the gospel! It was great to go back to Brazil and see that she is still firm in the church and very happy! We had dinner with her and her family and it was great!

Lucienne and I again with all the delicious food she prepared!

The desert that Lucienne made for us fresh mango, pineapple, strawberries, and papaya with pineapple and chocolate ice cream! YUM!!!

This is the whole family who we had dinner with!

This is Lucienne's niece her and Kara had a great time. She didn't care at all that Kara doesn't speak Portuguese she would just talk and talk.

This is Kara on the famous Copacabana beach! While I was on my mission the Rolling Stones came to concert and there were 1.5 million people packed on this beach to watch the show all right in my area!

These are some friends that were staying at the same Bed and Breakfast, he is from England and she is from Ireland. We took them out to get some Acai!

Brazil!

Well, after a long and painful wait we FINALLY go out VISAS just two days before our flight! So it's official! Thursday we are headed to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!!! We are visiting Tyler's mission and other parts of Brazil. We will be visiting his old Mission President as well as one of his old companions and go to church where he had on his mission. We are hoping to find a couple of the people he taught and see how they are doing. It's hard to locate people in Brazil. Most don't have phones or internet.


A few places we are going:
Christ Statue in Rio

Iguacu Waterfalls

Ilha Grande (an island off the coast of Brazil that does not allow any vehicles) This is where we will spend Thanksgiving week at a little bed and breakfast ( about $30 a night!)

We can't wait!!! I'm so excited, yet kind of nervous too! Luckily my husband knows the area and the language. :)

Well, I better get packing! We'll have internet in a few spots so I'll try to add pictures here or on facebook if I can.

What What Kara's updating her blog!?!?

Holy Smokes it's been a while! After Colorado Springs Tyler and I spent a month in California selling dish network at the L.A. County Fair! It was a lot of work and lots of hours but we had fun anyway! We both sold a lot of accounts and it was definitely worth going!

On our way home from Cali, we stopped by my brother Shawn and his wife Monica's place in Arizona. We had a blast playing with our nephew Lincoln! One of his favorite things to do right now is pretend to die. He often will randomly ask one of us to "shoot" him. If no one pretends to shoot him, he'll make the "shooting" noise himself and then proceed to go through a very slow-motion death scene. haha, it's so funny. He puts his hands up in the air and very very slowly falls backward, sometimes lifting his feet up in the air while on his back. He will do this in the house, at the park, and even in the middle of an isle in the grocery store. ha! He's a lot of fun! Shawn and Monica made the trip a lot of fun as well by planning a picnic, hike, trip to the temple, and taking work off to spend time with us. :) Thanks!

those are oreos in linc's teeth :)

Since then Tyler went on a business trip with his manager hanging up signs for dish network. They started in Idaho and drove through Wyoming and Colorado. While he was gone I was able to go on a super fun girls night out in Park City. Nicole Godfrey Houghton invited me to spend Friday night two weeks ago in Park City with her girlfriends since her husband was out of town as well. We had so much fun walking through and eating on main street park city, staying in a super cute condo, talking all night long, making a yummy breakfast, shopping at the outlets and garage sales, and then finally seeing the movie Where the Wild Things Are! It was so good to be out with the ladies! I've been around so many guys lately (summer sales, the fair), it was good to be with girls again! Oh, how I've missed "girl talk". hah!

serious photo

This past weekend Tyler and I spent Thursday through Monday up in Idaho with Ty's family. His parents bought a house in Rexburg and it is beautiful! I'm so happy for them! They have a HUGE yard, with a waterfall and pond in the backyard! We did a lot of fun activities with them including fishing, watching Jacob's high school football game where he played in the marching band for the half time show in the pouring rain, gold panning, fossil hunting, hot tubbing, Wii playing, and eating lots of yummy food! It was a very fun trip. Only downer was Ty's sister Emily went up the week before so we didn't get to see her. :(

This was a toilet someone made up in the mountains. Ha!

So that's what we've been up to lately in a nutshell. :) Hope ya'll are doing fabulous!

Ty's 24th Adventures

Well, Tyler's birthday was a lot of fun! I woke up at 2am and decorated our front room with balloons, candy, sticky notes of things I love about him (hung up on the wall in the shape of I (heart) U), and presents. Then I went back to bed, well tried too, but I was too excited! Eventually, I got some sleep and then Tyler finally woke up and was super surprised! :D
He got:
Two AE shirts
Simpsons Wii game (yes, I re-wrapped it and gave it to him again. ha)
An Oakley wallet (he was soooooo excited!)
And a Simpsons Fooseball table!!!

Yay!!

We went out to breakfast at The Egg and I and then pretty much worked the rest of the day.
But the next day.... WE.....WENT.....SKYDIVING!!!! (indoor) :)

It was so much fun! It was seriously the most insane thing ever! We went with our friends Sean and Spring McDonald up in Denver. They have the movie and pictures and are making copies and sending them to us. So as soon as I get them I will post! It was a BLAST!!!

After that Tyler and I ran to Dave and Busters one last time to use up our remaining points and won a few cool prizes. Then we hurried back down to Colorado Springs to start packing, cleaning, and finishing up work.

Grandpa Jensen passed away almost two weeks ago. It was super hard to hear because he had been doing so well the last few months. But he fell down and cracked a rib and then developed pancreatitis which was very painful. His chances were slim, so after discussing things with family and doctors, everyone decided it would be best to just bring him home. They were able to switch up the medication so he was no longer in pain. We all said our goodbyes, unfortunately, I had to do it over the phone, but I was able to do it. He passed away later that night. His funeral was Friday of last week. I was supposed to fly out, but got really sick. I through up about 20 times and couldn't stand up without falling over or vomiting. So, I missed my flight. That was very hard. But I know everything happens for a reason. I love him and miss him so much, but he's back with Grandma now so that makes me happy.

Tyler and I drove back to Utah Saturday. I was still feeling super weak and my stomach killed, but we needed to get back. So I drove the Audi and followed Tyler in the Taurus back home.

It's good to be back but a little weird. I feel like I should be in school right now. We're actually leaing again on Thursday to California. We are going to be selling in the L.A. county fair! So that should be fun. We'll be there for a month working five days a week. Then after that, we'll be back in Utah again until we leave November to BRAZIL!! :D

Anyways, enough typing, I'll post some pictures. I know those are more fun. Again, I'll post more when I get them of skydiving!!! :D