12.25.16

Merry Christmas everyone! We've had a great day being together! And I've heard from several of you while we've been here. I only got to see two of "my boys" this time, but that's ok, with Christmas we wanted to spend time with family.


I got to see my friend Carie


Go to temple lights with my favorite people.. Ray, Keagan, Melissa, Chaz, and Hazel.


Hazel has grown so much in the past month since we saw her! She's starting to stand when you hold her fingers, almost crawl, and move everywhere!
She's so fun!


It snowed a ton today, so that was so fun and magical for Christmas Day!


We also went to go the see "The tree of Life" lights in Draper today.


Merry Christmas! And much love to you! I'm sure your visits with your family were wonderful!
Love ya!
Sister Shoop

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12.18.16

This week I had a little bit of a scary experience in having the possibilities of bad things that could of happened to me, but the tender mercies of the Lord pouring out to me so much, I had to sit for a while and contemplate what happened and say many prayers of gratitude.
This is what I posted on Facebook.

Sometimes when bad things happen we may not understand or be upset by what happens. Today I am feeling blessed and thankful!
Our back brakes went out on our black car.
Yesterday they were making a loud noise, but I had no idea what that noise was. I drove a friend up to Lakewood and nothing bad happened. (I believe a miracle! And we were being looked out for). Today Ray Shoop took it to go to work (another miracle, he usually takes the other car). And it started making really strange noises and all the lights came on! (Another miracle, it wasn't me, it would of really really freaked me out!). He was just a light away from Les Schwab. (Another miracle). They are fixing it right now. Another miracle (although this one is harder to swallow) is that we just paid off our Les Schwab card.. that's just life.. but glad we had a way to pay it and not miss out on some fun Christmas activities!
I had a friend once tell me how she felt about things happening and it has always stuck with me.. What if my brakes were going to brake down sooner.. ( on the freeway causing a huge accident) and Heavenly Father held them together for us until just the perfect moment when they could break down. After all, brakes do need fixed. I believe this. I believe that I was watched over. I believe in miracles and a loving Heavenly Father.

Another miracle I thought of that I wouldn't share on Facebook is one line of my patriarchal blessing says something like, you will be blessed as you drive on the highways. When I was sitting contemplating all the miracles of this incident and all the things that could of gone wrong, this phrase came clearly to my mind from my blessing.

I'm so glad school is out for a couple of weeks! We are looking forward to seeing our Denton family! Not looking forward to the driving.. but looking forward to being with our family!

Merry Christmas everyone!

At our ward Christmas party with the elders and Larry and his girlfriend Sue. They want to hear the lessons again for him. We're having them over after we get back from Utah!


My cute preschoolers Christmas prints for their parents.

Ray and Keagan were talking sports and looking at their phones for info. Hahahaha!

Love you all!
Sis Shoop
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12.11.16

Well the major news of this week was that it snowed!! Twice! Once, just a tiny little dusting and then Thursday afternoon-evening, it dumped! For our area, it was so much snow! It was beautiful! We got a little over 5 inches.


I always feel like a little girl when it snows! I don't like to go out and play in it.. but I get excited and love to watch it through the window. I was subbing at Aspire middle school when it started with only 20 minutes left in their day. I walked into the main building from a portable and looked out the window and it had just started. It took all I could to not squeal in a happy delight! It kept snowing until 1 or 2 am(my weather app said).
What was really nice was that we had a teacher professional day on Friday so there was already no school the next day!
I'm loving everything about this time of year. I love it when we turn our hearts more towards our Savior and think of things we can do for others.
One more week of school and then hopefully we can drive to Utah and see our Denton family. We feel blessed that we get to see them as much as we do! Hazel is going to be 8 months old this week. Crazy!!!
Her cute Christmas sweater!


Hahahaha, She's even cute when we can't get a smile out of her.

Love you all! You're in our prayers! And welcome to the mission field- mtc, Elder Beckdol!
Love
Sis Shoop
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12.4.16

Happy December and Happy Christmas season. I love most everything about this season including the lights and Santa Claus. I love family and friend gatherings. Mostly I love how there is more service and we think more of our Savior.
We had our annual family white elephant party last night. It was my turn to host. We had 29 people in my house. It was crowded, but fun. Thank goodness everyone behaved themselves. This is not always the case at these parties... It is my mom's side of the family - her siblings and my cousins. Unfortunately only her one sister (she is one of 4)comes now. But I guess it's all good. We miss the others.

Me, my mom and my siblings.

My youngest brother, Adam and his family.

Keagan and his cousins.

Saturday was a great day! We started off with the child of record stake baptisms. There were only two that got baptized. One was baptized by her bishop and the other was our recent convert family's child Owen - Yanni's nephew. The prayers, talks, and musical numbers were all done by the siblings of Owen. They were short and so sweet and tender. I love the simple and beautiful testimonies of these newer converts.
Then in the afternoon we went to Yanni's farewell open house. I think he is reporting Wednesday. He is going to the Ogden mission. He is going to be such a wonderful missionary!


It might snow this week! It keeps changing on the weather ap for tomorrow. Of course, Keagan is hoping for a late start. I'm subbing tomorrow. I'm not sure how that works with a late start..

This week it was one of our missionaries birthdays, but we didn't find out until 8:30 pm ish, so we ran to the dollar store and got him a balloon and candy. We have fun missionaries right now.


Have a great week!
Love you all lots!
Sis Shoop

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