Sasha

January 31, 1995 ~ June 26, 2008


Sasha died early in the morning the same day I left for Girls Camp. We all loved her very much and will miss her!

She developed a cough during the winter and when I took her to get it checked, they did x-rays to rule out pneumonia and saw that she had a collapsed trachea, which is a fairly common ailment in small breeds. It gradually worsened (early June) to the point that when she became excited or experienced exertion she would wheeze and cough, gasping for breath, and then pass out. A few moments later, after her throat muscles relaxed she would revive. After about a week of that (one or two episodes a day) and another trip to the vet, I think she and I both figured out how to prevent that. We tried not to let her get excited, and I carried her as much as possible, especially up and down the stairs. Her breathing got more and more shallow, with panting episodes; the poor thing just couldn't breathe! She died in her sleep.

Memorial Day Fun

Well, I don't think that we will soon forget the strawberry daiquiris and the margaritas (they were all virgin of course) or the fun in the pool, or the good food from off the grill. My only regret is that it took so long to post this.

Days gone by

Yeah I know it´s been a while, well my days have been more full and I haven´t had the same amount of access to the internet these last few days but I´ll try to remember everything. One thing I forgot to talk about was the stake conference we had about 2 weeks ago, it was pretty cool because I got there really early because Alex was singing in the stake choir and they were practicing before it started, well as people walked in apparently they recognized me from behind and would tap me on the shoulder and we would hug like old friends that hadn´t seen eachother in a long time, it was really cool because it just kept happening and each time it just seemed to get better. It was also really cool because my mission president was there and he went up and sat down behind the pulpit, and I hadn´t even realized he was there or would be there, then he looked up there and he was looking right at me and a huge smile flashed accross his face, so we both got up and started walking towards each other and we met in the aisle and he wrapped me up in a huge bear hug (for those who don´t know my mission president he is like 6´7") then his wife came up behind me and then she gave me a hug too. As Ryan would say they were emotional times for all of us. It was kind of funny because Sister Aidukaitis then said, "I recognized you from behind as I was walking in, and thought why is President giving Elder Heward a hug? Then I remembered that you had already served your mission." They then invited me over to lunch on Wednesday at their home. It was really fun to be able to see some of the Elders I have served with, Elder Gonçalves who I was really close with was there and so it was really fun to see him too.

Then on Monday I ate lunch at a members home from my first area. She is so nice, it was remarkable because she remembered everything about me and my family, she said she was so sad that Mom couldn´t come because she thinks Mom is the prettiest lady she´s ever seen. She was telling her husband (who was baptized about a year after I left the area) that you wouldn´t ever be able to guess how old my mother was by looking at her. She also gave me a gift to give you you Mom so you´re pretty popular down here, just so you know. I also got to visit Júlios family, they were baptized the week before I arrived on the mission, so I got to teach them the new member discussions and we were pretty close. I don´t know if you remember that you sent me two of those CTR shirts but I gave one to Júlio and he showed me that he still has it. Then on Tuesday I visited a bunch of the people I taught in Valparaíso, it´s really fun to be able to sit with these people and not worry about having to run to another appointment.

Thursday I went to my Mission President´s house and ate lunch with them and Elder M. Silva, who had just finished his mission, and his father, who came to pick him up and visit his mission. They asked all the questions you would expect; about work, school, dating/marraige, etc. and it was really fun to talk about old times on the mission. Visiting them feels like visiting family, I honestly couldn´t imagine a better couple to preside over a mission, I love them.

After lunch Alex took me to Santo Antônio where I am now staying with Valmir and Shirley a couple that I baptized here. They have two little kids so its fun to play with them. One was born right after I left the mission and his name is Morôni they´re the cutest little kids. I went and visited a bunch of people here in Santo Antônio on Friday and then at night we went to Taguatinga (a big city nearby) and ate Rodízio de Pizza. It´s the same idea as the brazilian place we went to be before for my birthday except instead of meat it´s pizza. I had heard of them before but I never went to one on my mission because it was just kind of inconvenient, we didn´t have alot of time at night and that´s when they´re the most popular. So anyway it was even better than I could have imagined, the cool part is that they have this pasta bar kind of thing with a bunch of sauces and stuff to put into your pasta, and you choose the pasta and then all the stuff that goes into it and you put it into the pan yourself with the kinds of sauce you want. It´s like YC´s Mongolian grill but better. The rest of the time they´re bringing pizzas and lasagna and lasagna-like stuff to your table and asking if you´d like it (you know like the meat). It was pretty great.

Then on Saturday I went to Valparaíso just to eat lunch with a family that I hadn´t been able to see while I was there. It was really fun. I baptized on of the sisters in the family and alot of the others were already members. Her baptism was really cool because she had sisters come from all over Brasilia to see her baptism.

As for the temple dedication it was awesome! It was really emotional for me because it´s so hard for so many Brazilian members to go to the temple because of the distance so you start thinking about how much this is going to bless so many people. Unfortunately it won´t affect the members in my mission they will continue to have to travel about 12 hours by bus to get to the temple (they won´t be going to the new temple that was dedicated, it´s farther away). Elder Ellis, a member of the seventy spoke (he´s also visited our mission) and he talked about something that was really good, he talked about the temple being too close. He said most of the Brazilian members couldn´t even imagine a temple too close because so many live so far away, but he said the new temple in the area was going to be a cheallenge for the members there in Curitiba because now they would have this problem. They would be able to tell themselves the temple is so close I´ll go tomorrow, and then the next day they would say the same thing until month after month had passed by without going to the temple. It´s definitely true, we have that tendency. I remember when I got home from my mission I felt like the member in Arizona took the temple for granted, the members in Brasilia dreamed about having a temple here all the time, that was what the missionaries ate, drank, and slept. It was our goal to provide the fertile soil, we worked so hard for it. Then when I got home and saw that there are so many people who don´t go to the temple when It´s so close to us I was like this is crazy the members in Brasilia would do anything to have what we have. When I got home from my mission I went to the temple quite often, often more than once a week because I told myself I wouldn´t take it for granted. Well just like everyone else I slowly fell into the once a month or once every other month deal. He talked about making a plan with your family about how often you will go to the temple and so I´ve decided to do that, and get better about how often I go. Especially now that three new temples have been announced in Arizona. I think that is going to be awesome! I can´t wait. Tonight President Monson is making history he´ll be holding the first meeting ever from the President of the church here in Brasilia. I´m really hoping that tonight President Monson is going to announce a temple here in Brasilia. I think I would cry. We´ll see.

My Good Friend Habib

The last two days have been pretty great I have to say. Saturday I ate lunch at Raimundo, Dina, and Nalva´s house, a family that I baptized here in Valparaiso. They were also feeding the missionaries so it was a pretty fun experience chatting with them too. Elder Palmeira (far left on the couch) was trained by my MTC companion Elder LaPorte and Derek Hall was teaching his parents before when he received his mission call to Brasilia. I had met him before but it was fun to chat with him again. I got to hear all the updates from the mission and joke around with the missionaries so that was fun. They were talking about how much dust there was and how large the area was etc. It was funny because the family responded with, "Well when Alex and Heward were here there weren´t as many asfalted roads and there was only one companionship in the ward." So we kept joking with them about how easy they had it now etc. It was fun, they´re funny guys so it´s good to joke around with them. We ate Lasagna which is definitely one of my favorite brazilian meals. It is so good, it´s not the same as we eat in the States, but similar. They had two huge pans of Lasagna, one with white sauce and the other with red. So good.

Anyways, after the missionaries left we were waiting around for Adriane to meet up with us (she has a car) to go to the famous Lago Paranoá, the artificially created Lake surrounding part of Brasilia. While we were waiting Alex and Nalva put on some music and were trying to teach me to dance Forró, it´s kind of a mix between swing dancing and more Latin like dances that you´ve seen (eg. Salsa) the legend is that Navy seamen from the US brought it to the northern part of Brasil but I don´t really know about that. Alex is really good at it but I look like a fool, so I just let them do it. I´ll have to get it on video it´s pretty sweet.

Well we went to the lake and it was a really pretty area. I had obviously seen the lake before but I couldn´t really stop and walk around because we were always on a bus on our way to something important when we were in Brasilia. I took a picture of the famous "Ponte JK", ponte is bridge in portuguese and the JK stands for Juscelino Kubitschek who was one of the Presidents of Brazil and actually designed Brasilia and everything although it was only finished well after he was president. Alex called it "just kidding bridge." Anyways there are tons of things here in Brasilia called JK, and in Palmas (it was modeled after Brasilia). It´s supposedly the third most beautiful bridges in the world, but I don´t know how you´re supposed to back that kind of statistic up. Hold on a second I´ll wikipedia that...ok I couldn´t find a definite list of the most beautiful, though it seemed to make honorable mention on a few blogs about bridges it didn´t even make the top ten most of the time. Well I think it´s beautiful, and the area surrounding the lake is definitely beautiful. Just look at my photographic skills.

Well after we hung out there taking a few pictures we went to the famous Habib´s fast food restaurant. I´m not sure exactly where the food is supposed to be from in the middle east, Alex says it´s Morroccan food, but anyway it´s pretty good and they have chains all over Brazil, actually I just looked at their website and it says they are the second largest chain in Brazil. These little guys are the happy and sad esfihas, in my opinion the best food Habib´s has to offer is esfiha. I ate 13 of those little esfiha guys myself. Those happy faces turned into scared faces real quick when they saw I was an esfiha eating machine.

Carne!

Well I´ll just tell you now there is no organization to these pictures. They´re just kind of thrown on there. Well I arrived here in Brasilia safely this morning and Alex picked me up at the airport. It was really interesting being in a city in Brazil that I already knew really well, instead of how I always felt lost in São Paulo. Well we went and saw his mom who works in Brasilia not too far from the airport and she was really happy to see me, I had always called her mom when I was in Valparaiso and it´s just that kind of really close relationship. Anyway she walked towards me to give me a hug and then paused and said, "I can give you hug now right?" It was funny. Then we went back to Alex´s house and dropped off the luggage and picked up Nalva, a girl who´s family I baptized and we went through the whole "I can hug you now, right?" routine. Then we went back to Brasilia and picked up Adriane from her work and went to the mall. We went to the "Shopping", what we would call the mall, and played at the arcade place for a while and rode this virtual reality roller coaster thing (pictures)and then we went for the really good stuff. We went to a churrascaria called Portão do Sul where we took some pretty goofy pictures in front and then ate ourselves silly. It was really good food.

Oh and one more thing, I couldn´t write yesterday but it was a pretty cool day I got to see all the touristy parts of São Paulo. The places I had always heard about while I was in Brazil but never had the chance to see. I saw the Praça da Sá which is a huge square right in the middle of São Paulo with an enormous Catholic Church. I made a joke that it´s kind of like the Salt Lake Temple, because it´s the center of the city. Anyway I got to see Liberdade, the famous Japanese neighborhood of Brazil where the largest number of Japanese people outside of Japan live. It was really cool, it was like an enormous Lee Lee´s market, seriously, that´s exactly how it felt. Oh and people speaking portuguese with a Japanese accent is awesome, I loved it. I got to see the Avenida Paulista which I would compare to the fame of Times Square in New York. I saw Parque Ibirapuera, a huge park in the middle of São Paulo and another historical square of São Paulo with some really old mansion like buildings. There was this one that is a museum now that totally looks like the mansion from The Count of Monte Cristo with an even bigger front lawn. It was really cool. The pictures were all taken at night so they didn´t turn out very well but you´ll see them when I get home. Ok well I love you guys and I´ll talk to you later.

Gooooo-Kart!

Well here we go day two. Once again a great day! It started out pretty great I have to say I woke up feeling very loved whereas last time I went to sleep I woke up with Ralph the pitbull snuggled up with me this time I woke up with their other dog, a mutt that looks kind of like our old dog taffy, snuggled up at my feet, I thought ok no big deal and went back to sleep only to wake up again 10 minutes later with Ralph sticking his cold nose all over my arm. There was enough space on the bed for only his head which he laid down next to my arm I thought ok no big deal and let him rest his head on my bed. That was my first mistake, it´s the classic camel in the tent story, next he put his paws up and then he squeezed his whole huge body onto the bed, it was amazing I thought there was no way he was going to fit. Quick sidenote as i´m writing this he is asleep again on the bed next to me snoring quite loudly. Anyway he managed to pull a Harry Houdini and squeezed onto the bed with me and managed to lay down so it looked quite funny two dogs and a large american all on one tiny and I mean tiny bed. I was afraid it was going to break. Well as it was kind of cold it wasn´t so bad to be snuggly, and me and Ralph have really bonded, I think i´m his favorite now.

Well today I talked to a sister from my mission who´s working in the MTC here in São Paulo and I went to one of the malls here. It was alright but i´ve seen that before, the interesting part is just driving around, you wouldn´t believe the traffic and movement here and the streets, the absolute insanity of it all. I get so nervous sometimes when we drive it seems like you´re about to get in an accident every two seconds. So later tonight we decided to actually go somewhere where you can get in an accident and did we ever. We went and did one of Araújos favorite night time activities we went go-kart racing. It was awesome! Let´s just say there is a reason americans invented racing we rock at it, yeah I won. I also had the best lap time. Yeah. Actually Araújo passed me at one point but then he wrecked and was never even close again, i just pulled away. I was so intense I didn´t even realize how much damage I was doing to my hand, that´s the price for victory I was so concentrated on victory (that´s right Rochelle I´m competitive) Well that was pretty much my day. We came home and here I am writing to you guys about it. Well I love you and I´ll talk to you again later.

Planes, trains, and automobiles...ok no trains...yet.

I´d like to be able to tell you that everything went very well with the flight to Brazil, but lets be honest there is just no way that a flight that long will ever be able to be described with any positive words, but the fact is I made it, that´s important. There were some very interesting things about the flight that I would say turned it from a mundane activity to something a little more exciting. It all started a couple weeks ago when I had been looking for Dan Brown´s great book, Angels & Demons... Well after I couldn´t find it I settled on another book and randomly selected Michael Crichton´s book Airframe. Well it turned out to be an interesting choice. I would compare it to watching Jaws while on a house boat, actually I take that back it would be like watching Jaws while stranded with just a life jacket in the middle of the ocean, or working among an African tribe afflicted with some kind of virus and reading Outbreak. This book, Airframe is about a plane crash, yeah that´s right a plane crash. I finished the book while in a plane somewhere over Colombia. The interesting part the plane that crashed in the book had almost the same flight time as the plane I was riding in.

The other bad part about the plane ride was the lady sitting next to me she kept pushing me farther and farther into my corner, and she was old so you can´t really do anything about it. She was almost cuddling with me. The good news is I did finally get a nap today though I got to cuddle with someone else. We got along alot better. The picture of my cuddle partner is included.

Well onto the really good stuff. I got here at about 8:50 and cleared customs and everything by about 9:10. My friend, formerly known as Elder Araújo, now Rafael, was there waiting and we headed back to his house. After about an hour and 15 minutes fighting through classic São Paulo traffic we arrived at his house. I took a shower really quick and then we ate lunch, it was awesome I guess I forgot how good it is, or his mom is just an amazing cook but MAN that was good stuff. Then he went to work and I took a nap until about 6:00pm when he got home and woke me up. We both said it felt like the mission again when he walked in the room to wake me up it was kind of funny. We´ve pretty much been laughing non-stop remembering the fun times from the mission. It was also really nice to be able to talk again about the really spiritual stuff too and it just helps you remember how imporant the mission is for your spiritual well-being. Then tonight we went out and just cruised around saw some sights and ate some açai, the most amazing fruit ever.

My Super Heroes

IT IS FINISHED!

Happy Valentine’s Day, Happy Anniversary, Happy Mother’s Day, Happy Father’s Day, Happy Birthday …. to us (and everything else until it’s paid off)! It seems like it’s taken forever, but our “new backyard/patio” is a gift that will keep on giving - celebration after celebration - year after year!

Sunday was both Mother’s Day and our Anniversary – and I got beautiful flowers from Dale and Ryan. I should have taken pictures sooner 'cuz the roses died, so I moved the tulips to that bouquet. The bright pink flowers are very large and beautiful and still blooming (but stinky)! Corey and Jen gave us a wooden ship wind chime to hang from our new patio and I got a beautiful necklace from Mark and Caroline and stationary made by Braiden and Kloey. Monday we belatedly celebrated Scott's birthday by swimming and barbecueing delicious carne asada and grilled honey/citrus onions and peppers - it was delicious! I feel well loved!

When Children Speak

There are two fields of thought when it comes to first language aquisition, the innatist field, and the behaviorist field. First language refers to how children aquire language. Behaviourists believe that children watch and learn from people around them, so a child will not say something unless they have heard it from an adult. Innatists believe that children are born hardwired with the ability to speak, and they will say things that they have never been taught. What do you think, those of you who have children? Pay attention when they speak, it might be surprising.