Carey Family

Sue

December updates from Elder Brian

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12/7/2010

Lunes:  Not much happened during the day until the evening when we ate dinner with Los Salvador and then we went to this big noche de hogar that we arranged.  We had it in the bishop’s home and we invited all those that were investigating and those that had been baptized within the year to come.  It got started an hour late, but it was a good success.  We were pretty happy.

12/14/2010

Miercoles: In the afternoon we went and checked up on this former investigator and we had a sweet lesson with him.  He had a lot of unanswered questions from former missionaries, and we were explaining about the true church of Christ and then the First Vision.  The most powerful/spiritual First Vision moments of my mission.  He was crying and then afterwards we were silent for about 2 minutes.  Really sweet.

12/21/2010

Friday:  It started raining hard on Friday and it has not stopped once since.  There is SO much water and thank goodness we have a car.  We have been soaked the last 4 days, and tomorrow it is supposed to rain too.

Sunday:   We saw so many miracles.  In sacrament meeting, we didn’t have any investigators…but Elder Kidd and I sang a song, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, and Hna. Yturralde played piano.  It was beautiful and it sounded really good, REALLY strong spirit.  I also gave the opening prayer.  So afterwards in gospel principles there was this guy that was just sitting there dressed in shirt and tie that looked familiar.  We started talking to him, and turns out he isn’t a member but has come to the ward like 4 times.  No one knew that he wasn’t a member!?!?  And he is in our area.  Practically is a member already, has a friend in Encinitas who is a member.  We are going to spend Christmas Eve with them, and the qoute was that “I am going to work hard, to get my wife involved in this!”  And he has never actually spoken to missionaries before!  So great!  We got home after church so happy.  We ate dinner with a member family, Los Salvador, and we are going to be over there for Christmas calls and such.  They are an awesome family.  Great day, and miracles continue.

12/28/2010

Friday:  Christmas Eve!!  We went at 9:30 to pick up Elders and then we drove them to Vista for the party.  We had all the packages divided up and we gave them all out to our zones.  There were a lot of them.  Then we practiced for the talent show for a little bit and then mingled with everyone.  We had lunch catered by some members for free and it was delicious.  Then we gave President Cook a present from our zone.  Last week when we were at the library the librarian said that they were going to be throwing out their collection of the encyclopedia of mormonism, but that if we wanted them, we could have them.  So we took them and then we got them all signed and gave them to President.  he LOVED them.  P.S.  This is the one that Grandpa Walker is in.   Then I also played piano for the devotional.  It was super good, and then at 6 we left.  During the devotional I received some intense revelation, that the Lord is going to place in our path someone who is very ready to recieve the gospel.  So Elder Kidd and I have to go find him now.  We got our transfer calls, and I am staying again with Elder Kidd here in Escondido!  So it will be 9 months and counting of being here in Escondido.  Crazy.  When we got home, we went over to Los Madrigal and we ate dinner with them.  They are an investigator family, and actually it was the first time that we visited them.  Super nice.  Super ready.  We ate Pozole and tamales, and it was really good.  We picked them up as new investigators and we had a sweet lesson!!!

2011 Reading

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Instead of joining online reading challenges in 2011, my book club girls decided to something different this year, inspired by a blog idea discovered by alisonwonderland. We’re doing our own list swap reading challenge!  The idea is for each of us to generate a book list of five books for each member of the club that we think that person would enjoy reading.  That means each of us will have 30 books recommended to us by people who know what we like to read.  It was actually very fun to come up with the lists for other gals as I looked through their goodreads lists and thought about books I had read that they might enjoy.  It was also interesting to see the book lists they came up with for me.  Quite an eclectic list I’m excited to start on next year, and all but six are in my personal library or my local library.  The entire swap list is on our book club blog but here’s my list:

For Sue from Alison

  • Small Change: The Secret Life of Penny Burford, by J. Belinda Yandell
  • Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
  • The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
  • Beauty, by Robin McKinley
  • The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo

For Sue from Karen

  • Faro’s Daughter, by Georgette Heyer
  • Charles & Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith, by Deborah Heiligman
  • Charms for the Easy Life, by Kaye Gibbons
  • Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, by James L. Swanson
  • The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

For Sue from Holly

  • The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
  • The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
  • Persuasion, by Jane Austen
  • Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert O’Brien
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach

For Sue from Leslie

  • David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
  • The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, by Terry Ryan
  • The Magic of Ordinary Days, by Ann Howard Creel
  • The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley
  • East, by Edith Pattou

For Sue from Natalie

  • Each Little Bird that Sings, by Deborah Wiles
  • The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Magic of Ordinary Days, by Ann Howard Creel
  • Emma, by Jane Austen
  • Founding Brothers, by Joseph Ellis

For Sue from Linda

  • A Walk in the Woods – Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, by Bill Bryson
  • Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
  • The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt
  • Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
  • The Blessing Way, by Tony Hillerman

Carey Christmas Party

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Every year we have a Carey Christmas party before Christmas at the Rapp house in Bountiful.  This year our gathering was rather smaller than usual as Scott’s brother Mark had moved his family to Virginia, near Brent’s family; Matt, Brian, Patrice, and Shawn, are on missions; and two of the married Greenhalgh kids couldn’t come, plus Mark had to work at the MTC.  We were there with no kids, Janice and Phil were there with their oldest, Paul, and his wife Tania, and baby Addy; the Rapps with their four youngest; the Fazulyanov family; Grandma Carey and Aunt Renae.  We had lots of yummy food and then the kids all performed a Christmas number of some kind and the adults told a story relating to Christmas.  Then we sang our traditional “12 Days of Christmas” by holding up the cards.  That has been sung at every Carey Christmas since long before I joined the family 26 years ago.  Several years ago Janice made each family a large set of matching cards and each time your number comes up you have to stand and hold up your card.  Mysteriously, Paul Rapp always gets 12 drummers drumming which means he only stands once.  (Younger kids usually opt for a partridge in a pear tree, allowing them twelve opportunities to rise and hold).  We had a great time, as always, and enjoyed being together at Christmas.

Click on a photo to see them large in a gallery.

Walker Christmas Party

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This year my parents and siblings decided to have a holiday party.  We had a great time with a soup buffet and an ugly sweater contest won by my brother, Scott, for his Pittsburgh Steelers sweater.  My sister posted pictures of the ugly sweaters on her blog.  Mark played guitar and sang and my nephew, Taft, was mesmerized by his guitar playing.  We had a dessert buffet provided by my sister, Stefanie, and a viewing of “Small One”, the Disney short that my Dad worked on when he was at Disney Studios.  We also had a Nativity play.  I borrowed costumes from my mother-in-law and showed everyone a scrapbook page from my Christmas book illustrating the last time we did a Nativity play in 1999.  Mark and Kylie reprised their roles of Mary and Joseph, Brady was the baby the last time but this time he was a donkey.  The other little cousins weren’t around.  Brian was a shepherd that time but he was absent this year on his mission.  We had a great time and lots of fun together.

Click on a photo to see them larger in a gallery.

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Festival of Trees 2010

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Our extended Carey family does a tree every year for the Festival of Trees that benefits Primary Childrens Medical Center.  We do it in honor of Scott’s brother, Paul, an Air Force pilot killed when his plane crashed in Alabama in 1995.  This year our Carey tree was themed “Cookies and Cream” and we did snowmen and ice cream.  It was black, white, and silver, with red accents.  Christine made cookies and cream ice cream scoops out of play dough and Oreos to put in the ice cream dishes and Mom tested several brands of ice cream as she emptied out containers to put under the tree.  You can click on a photo and see them larger in a gallery.