Hi mom!
Thanks for the two big letters! I think a lot about how blessed my family is. I'm so grateful for the good lives we live - and when I think about it like that, it makes me understand how much more God expects of us, you know? As members of the church with a big happy family and with our knowledge of the Gospel, God wants us to share our blessings with others, because the brighter our "light on a candlestick" is, the more people can be effected by it. We have the brightest candlesticks in the world as members of God's church, so we should share our light with as many people as we can, whether it be through sharing the gospel or just serving God's children by listening, sharing what we have, anything.
We didn't really do anything exciting for New Years since we have to be in bed by 11, but I was definitely up at midnight with all of the fireworks going off! We said "happy new year" to each other and then went to sleep haha! Portugal makes excuses to make any day a holiday - for example, today no one is working just because it's the day after New Years, so it's like a 3 day celebration. I haven't even thought about any new years resolutions yet unfortunately, except that I want to write in my journal every day until I get home, since I've been going at about 1 or 2 times a week, which is lame. So there's #1! and I didn't fail yesterday so we're off to a good start. :)~
We taught that brazilian family again - Carlos, Ana, Julio, Juliana. They are super devout protestants but they accepted the book of mormon and said they would read, so we'll pray that they will get an answer!
I'm so sad that the Tower of Terror is closing!! Anna told me in her letter that she put in the package. I also bought some berry jam today, so I can officially open my peanut butter tonight! :)
What are some of your new years resolutions? Thanks for answering my questions by the way. :) You're the best! I love you so much! I'll go write dad real quick while I still have some time. Have a fantastic week mom!
Love, Elder Valentine!
So we left at 7:30 am on Monday morning the 26th. Kimber and Kevin met us at our house and we stayed together the whole way (in our separate cars). We had good weather to drive in, but when we got to the Las Vegas area there was a huge traffic jam so it took us an extra two hours to get to California because of it. But we still went to IHOP at 9:30 pm and ate dinner!
Tuesday morning we woke up early to use our "magic morning" early entry. We were in the park by 7:15! The weather was beautiful with clear blue skies, and we had jackets on at first, but it warmed up by 9:00 or so and we didn't need our jackets until it got dark again around 5:00pm. Our first ride was Buzz Lightyear ride instead of our tradition of going on Space Mountain first because of Lincoln and Porter. We wanted to make sure we mostly did stuff they could enjoy too. But we still did all the big people rides too- the baby swap pass is super awesome. Two of us would always get to ride twice so we took turns being those two lucky ducks.
Apparently the week after Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year so it was pretty crowded, but it didn't lessen our enjoyment. It was a great first day! Whenever there was a parade, they had to open up some extra walkways to keep people moving so several times we got to see behind the scenes a little. One of them was through the area that they are building Star Wars Land! It looks like it's going to be amazing! There's always a "Day 2 slump" so Kimberly's kids were a bit cranky the 2nd day and they went back to the hotel early that day. The rest of us stayed until around 9:00.
Day four of the trip, Thursday, we went to Universal. I don't know if you remember when we went there before, but you've been to Universal in California and Florida. If you recall, we didn't love it the first time in California. The employees were grumpy, it was dirty, and all that. Florida we mostly just went for the Harry Potter land, but it was so narrow and cramped it was hard to enjoy. Well, I'm happy to say, they have improved greatly! This time we had a great visit! It was clean, the employees were really nice and helpful, and Harry Potter land was exactly the same only slightly more spread out. It was crazy busy there, but we ended up getting some "front of the line passes" from a few different employees and we got right on some of the rides when the wait times were two hours! Thanks to Kevin who can sweet talk anybody! 😉 Because we were there in the "winter/Christmastime", they were serving hot butter-beer so we got some of that. It was delicious! We ride the main Harry Potter ride (remember how awesome that was?) and a few others. I mostly stayed with the little kids while everyone else rode, but there was this one Jurassic Park ride that they went on and I wasn't gonna go on it because it involved water, but they talked me into it because when they went on it the first time they didn't get wet. So I went and stayed dry the whole time until the end and then a dinosaur at the very last part of the ride squirted me right in the face!! Just me. No one else!! Haha.
On Friday was our last day at Disneyland/CA Adventure. The Tower of Terrir ride is ending so we tried to ride it as much as possible. At night they make it so you ride in complete darkness! It's so fun! One of the times we were in line, we laughed so hard because Dad leaned against a gate and it wasn't locked so he fell in an everyone looked because the gate slammed against the wall super hard and made a very loud noise that drew attention to it. We were laughing so hard. Dad was embarrassed but he played it up and made it funny.
We came up with some new "FOD" words on the Soarin' ride- they were good ones but I can't remember now! You would have liked them. One was with the F standing for Faith! I wish I could remember. The other was Star Wars related- First Order Droids I think. I love it.
I wish I could tell you more but I think that'll have to do for now! Lincoln and Porter were so fun to have with us. They were the cutest and they loved Carsland the most of course. It was just such a great trip! We talked about you the whole time. There was even a guy working on the Star Tours ride that looked just like you and acted like you too! Kimberly took pics of him so I hope she sends them to you. We can't wait til we go again and YOU will be with us!!
On Monday, January 2, 2017, Spencer Valentine <spencer.valentine@myldsmail.net> wrote:
Dear Mom,
Haha just real quick in case you have some time, dad didn't tell me anything about the trip - he said "mom will tell you the details!" haha so if you want to tell me that would be great!
On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 4:54 PM, Linda Valentine <lindacmemail@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Elder Valentine/Son,
Christmas was a whirlwind! It has gone by SO fast. But it has been GOOD! We are so blessed!
Dad told you about the trip- it was so good! The weather was in the 70's except one day it rained a bit but we were glad cuz it was much less busy!😊 It was really hard to come home to 20 degree weather and ice everywhere!
Since that's all we did this week, there's not much to say about our week. One thing I will say about the trip - it was really different and extra special because 1) Christmas, 2) Happiness and everyone got along so well! 3) I saved all the money I would have spent on Christmas gifts and we used it for treats and souvenirs and it was fun to be able to buy pretty much anything we wanted the whole time we were there! I spent my portion on ornaments for our Christmas tree since we are trying to make it Disney themed. Ethan got a super awesome light saber, Anna got a cute sweatshirt. Dad didn't really want anything, so he mostly got food! Anyway, usually we are trying to be frugal while there, but this time we didn't have to be so it was extra fun and stress-free.
Okay, so last time you asked me a few questions which I will answer now. 😊 In case you forgot what you wrote, here it is:
"How is the nanny thing going? How long are you planning on doing it for? What's your favorite hymn? And your favorite scripture? I'll ask you some more questions next week. :)"
My nanny job with the Powells is still good. The kids are getting easier as they get older. Especially Damian. He's gone through a lot of really annoying and difficult phases, but he is four now and he's mostly just a cute and well-behaved boy. Naomi is the same age as Ryleigh, and she is in a hard age of getting into things, getting hurt a lot from falling down or climbing things, and she's pretty stubborn so she cries a lot when you tell her know or you have to take something away from her. But overall it's getting easier. I'll admit that there are days when it gets tedious and I don't want to do it, but there are also days when it's fun and I really don't mind it. And I get paid well so it's a great job. As far as how long... it's hard to say. When I got the job (four years ago!) They said they were hoping to hire someone who could stay until Damian was in school. Now that they have Naomi, I'm sure they are hoping I'll stay until SHE is in school now too. Which would be another four years. Honestly, there's always the possibility something could change and I won't continue for that long, but I probably will. It would be hard to end it without a really good reason, especially since they live next door! So we'll see! I probably will stay for the long term. The thing that makes it a good job is that if I need to go somewhere or pick up Ethan from school if he's sick or whatever,I can put the kids in the car and go. I can't do that with any other job I would get. And it's always the same schedule- other jobs I would have to work varying shifts. And it's in the morning. I'm off by 3:00pm, so I have my afternoons and evenings free. That's one thing I did not like about teaching piano- it tied me down in the afternoons!! So there you go. I'm sure I answered that in much more detail than you really wanted. But get used to it! It's how women are and you'll have a wife one day! 😉
It's hard to choose a favorite hymn, but I think if I had to choose just one it would be "Where Can I Turn For Peace". A close runner is "All Creatures of Our God and King". That one might be tied with "I Know That My Redeemer Lives". I love the hymns so it's hard to choose. But those are all favorites.
Favorite scripture:
2 Nephi 25: 26 "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our cchildren may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins."
Love that one!
I love that you asked me questions I can answer. 😊
Do they celebrate the new year in Portugal? What did you do to ring in the new year? Ours was a bit anticlimactic because we got home from our trip at 11:50pm so we carried all our luggage in the house and watch the clock turn to midnight, then said "happy new year" to each other and went to bed! 😬
Well, I love you tons! Looking forward to hearing from you!
Love, Mom
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