2.28.16

Today was our ward conference.  I love conference days.  Bishop Williamson spoke about priorities. What are your priories and does what you do with your time reflect how you want your priorities to reflect?  It made me think about how I spend my time and what I want to be the most important things i…

   

Last night Keagan had a 

performance at the WA center for his swing dance. He has had so much fun with this group! There was a dance festival for the community from several different dance groups in the area.  Some were so cool!  Others.. not so much! ha! weird  But we had a great time and love supporting Keagan in his fun …

 

Another fun little side note.. I did the letter P in preschool this past week. I read the story of “The Three Little Pigs”  There are so many versions of it! One was a crazy version of the Pig family making waffles for a living... The children’s favorite version was, “The Three Ninja Pigs” HAHA

 

Our Elder Lacasse is being transferred this week. We are sad, but knew it was probably coming. He has been here @6months.  I hear is becoming AP. Not too surprised about that, either.  The missionaries are stopping by tonight so we can say goodbye. From what I understand, they don’t do the big trans…

2.21.16

Today is Aurora’s birthday! She is 13 today! I got to facetime her this morning.

 

This week has been a little crazy and different!  Monday we were in Utah, Tuesday driving home and then I am sick.  I can’t even tell you how much fun it was to just hang out with Melissa without anything we had to do. I really needed that time with her. I always miss her and I enjoyed it so much! Monday we did a little shopping. It is always fun to find cute baby girl clothes!  First we met our good friend Stewart Kearney for lunch. He served in Lacey, one of our rms. He took Keagan to an in door rock climbing place and the rest of us went shopping.  Poor Chaz had to work. Holidays are his busiest times for selling cars.  That evening Melissa dropped us off and we went to see Dallin Majors in a cute children’s play- Peter Pan, where he was Peter Pan! (Another one of our rms) Drama is his speciality.. it fits his personality. He was awesome! And it was so great to see him afterwards! Zack Bishop and his date and Kearney came with us. It was so fun! Dallin’s response to seeing us all there was priceless. I’m so glad we all went! I love my rms!

 

We got up at 4 a.m. to drive home. I’m glad we left so early. We missed the Portland traffic and were home by 5:30 p.m. And then back to “Normal” for the rest of the week.

 

But, I got sick. sore throat and fever. I’m so glad I didn’t get sick in Utah. And that it waited a couple of days after I got home. It has hit me hard. I don’t know the last time I haven’t left the house because of being sick and slept most of the day away. I’m hoping to be better by Tuesday when I have preschool. I was sad to miss church today! I watched a lot of Byu channel and conference talks.

 

And my phone died! I know.. a little materialistic but I lost all of my contact info and my pictures! Thanks goodness I had saved all my Utah pictures on the drive home! I would have been so sad! The only pictures I totally lost were the last 2 weeks of preschool. I had updated them before that and luckily I write this weekly letter and add pictures to it, so I had pictures from my letters. See what a blessing you guys are to me! <wlEmoticon-smile[1].png>

 

Not much else going on. Next week Keagan is performing for his swing dance at the Wa performing Arts center in down town Olympia. We’re excited to go see that!

  Love you all!

Sis Shoop

A collage of our 10 rms we saw!! Stewart kearney, Zackary bishop, hunter Pyne, Tyler Howard, Jared Oliphant, Grady bing, dallin major, Blake green, Dylan Anderson, and Jc Price.

Waiting for the play Peter Pan to start. 

Peter Pan and Keagan. 

Stewart and Zackary at the play. 

Us with Peter Pan. 

Us with Stewart. 

Us with Hunter Pyne. Doesn't Melissa look cute!!?!

We love stopping at multnomah falls whenever we can. It is so beautiful! And with all the rain lately, it was gorgeous!

Our dear friends the millers who we stay with when we go to visit Utah.  They are so great!

12.27.15

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! I talked to or saw pictures of almost everyone's skype pictures. How was talking to home?

We had a great Christmas starting on Christmas eve by going to my mom's house. It was the first year in quite a few that all my siblings were there. Even though we are close(ish) in proximity, the 4 of us don't get together that often. My mom was in heaven!

Christmas morning we had the Virgo family and our 3 missionaries over for brunch. We had a fun time with them! 

It helped having people over to make me not so sad with out Melissa and Chaz here. I missed them a lot! Thankfully for modern technology we got to skype her a few times over the weekend. At my mom's, Aurora facetimed her a few times and proudly took them around to talk to everyone and Keagan held her up to be in the grandkids picture!

One of the many things I love about this time of the year is seeing all the families gathered home for the holidays. And we got to hear Josh williamson talk today. (of course he did such a good job!) And see Isabella's baby be blessed by Luis Hernandez. (sp?) 

I have sent out all your cards, so if you haven't received it, look for it soon!

Pictures 

*Our Christmas tree

*One of my favorite ornaments. I love nativities! I have several and several ornaments.

*My siblings. Cindy (Auroras mom), Adam, Eric, and me. I'm the oldest, then Eric, Cindy, and Adam.

*The grandkids..Keagan is holding Melissa up for the picture.

*us at Tumwater Falls. It has been raining so much lately that is a little crazy, but not as bad as it was earlier when it was overflowing the fence and banks!

* our missionaries with the stockings we gave them. 

* Melissa and Chazs cute picture of their first Christmas they posted.

* and my siblings with my mom

And a Christmas card that I originally made, but it didn't work for the Costco format. Darn it!

Love you all!

Sis shoop

12.20.15

Merry Christmas! Christmas cards are on the way. A couple of you I still need addresses for, sorry if they're late! But I was thinking if all of you! I'm excited to hear about your skyping home next week.

I love this time of the year! All the fun parties, lights, movies, and people thinking about the Savior.

It's been a fun few days. We got to have the missionaries over yesterday. They are a fun group. They've heard how much I love the missionaries and they're trying to become my favorites. Haha! We get them over for a little bit Christmas morning. I'm excited! 

We're also having the Virgo family over. They have a 3year old son, Chuck and 5 year old girl Layla. I've had both in my preschool and Keagan babysits them, so it will be fun!

This will be Melissa's first Christmas away from home. Im trying to not be too sad... I sure missed her today at church! The best Sunday of the year! The music was beautiful. I recorded a few seconds of the prelude music before church started. I hope you can hear it.

12.13.15

My newer phone was acting up. So luckily I didn't get rid of my old one yet and most of my addresses are on this one.

I can't really remember much from this week.  

We took Keagan and a girl from oly 1 on a date (Amanda) before the stake formal dance.They went to this really fun and yummy restaurant in Chehalis called the quesadilla factory. You get to choose your tortilla and all your fillings. It has air hockey tables, pool table, basketball,  and arcade games. All the fun things! Then we drove them to the dance in Chehalis.  They were fun to listen to their chatter.

 It still seems strange to me that he is dating and Melissa is married! 

All my memories on Facebook the last couple of days have been melissa and her friends going to the formal stake dance. 

Keagan started working this week at the clothes store- Marshalls.  He likes it. Mostly he likes the paycheck!  :) Bro. Shoop works there one night a week too.

It has been crazy rainy here. Super big downpours, even massive thunder and lighting! There has been flooding in all the normal places and several road closures. I 5 was eve n closed for a day near Vancouver wa because of a mudslide! 

This week will be fun. We are celebrating Christmas in preschool.  Our ward Christmas party is Friday night and then next week starts winter break! 

Love you all!

Sister shoop

Keagan getting ready for the formal dance.

And 3 pics from 5 years ago of winter formal.

12.6.15 round 2 in Utah

This was an awesome weekend! With not a lot of sleep..

We started off leaving Thursday afternoon to drive to Portland. It was cheaper to fly out of there and stay in a hotel than fly out of seatac. We had to get up at 445 to get started.

We drove to Ogden to visit the Ericksons in their new house. It was a great visit! Ray really misses old bishop.

One of the best parts of my weekend was seeing my "old" friends. Leslie Oliver and I acted like teenagers for a few days before, sending each other crazy texts and pictures. I can't believe she drove all night to come see us (Melissa).

We stayed with Bro. Shoops friends that moved to utah from Penn. Their house us huge and amazing! They are so nice, too!

They live in Orem.

We spent some time with the Oliver clan. I hadn't seen Hayden in probably 3 years. It was so fun.

Now her open house was in this cute old house. And then we got to see so many great friends! And several of my rms! Kearney, Green, Cichoski, and Muir. I seriously felt like I was in heaven! I think that is what heaven will feel like! Getting to see and hug people that you love and maybe haven't seen in a while. I can't wait for the real pictures to come back, but for now, here are some of my cell phone pics.

Merla coleman was there, too!

Lacey 2 kids at one time or another..

Keagan, landon oliver, shane rackham, stephanie rackham, katelynd bean (guinto), melissa and regan oliver.

Back row caleb woodbury, hayden oliver, josh williamson.

And I got to meet josh and green's girlfriends!

#blessed

Riding the plane on the way home now.

Love you all!

Sis shoop