Christmas Day

Our Christmas Tree, one of the things I enjoy the most is having all these ornaments that have special meaning to our family, from the homemade to the special ones I have gotten over the years from good friends or special places we have been. (I like to get an ornament when we go somewhere on vacation- if they have one) I have an angel on there that is falling apart but from one of my YW leaders who is fighting against cancer right now. I also have a little soldier man that I made in 3rd grade and lots of cute kid ones!

Our stocking hung by the chimney with care

Keagan leaving cookies for Santa with a note..

Keagan woke us up at 7:30, which was what time I told him he had to wait. He was soo excited! I love the pure joy and excitement he had!! Even though he didn't get a DSi.

Keagan handing out the presents.

Melissa excited about her Santa present, a $50 visa card! Wow! Santa was nice this year!

Keagan couldn't believe it! I love it!

I love this picture of him!

Keagan got lots of k'nex toys.. Melissa spent most of the afternoon reading the instruction book and building this! Go Melissa!

We had a great Christmas Day! We had quiche for breakfast, Grandma & Grandpa came over, we watched some movies, read the story of Christ's birth in the scriptures, relaxed and didn't even get dressed! Perfect! Keagan loved his new coat, too. This is how he fell asleep that night, still in his new coat, clutching his $50 visa card. :)

Onto shopping the next morning..

Keagan's not tongue tied anymore!

Keagan got his surgery a little over a week ago for his tongue. I felt so bad for him. It really hurt a lot! The DR gave him a few dissoluble stitches under his tongue. It was pretty sore for quite a while. He even asked for Tylenol - which is very out of character for him! All week he has been very careful with what he eats and hasn't wanted to show us that he can stick out his tongue, yet. We've been asking him the last couple of days, saying, I'm sure it is healed now,etc. But he has said, well what if it hurts my tongue, etc, etc. Well yesterday, he was drinking out of a straw, and the straw moved, he used his tongue to move it, and then realized he stook his tongue out all the way. Then he starts playing with his tongue, sticking it out various ways and having this huge smile on his face. It was priceless! I wish I could of video taped it! I took him to the DR today for a follow up and he is all better! Now this weekend we need to get him an ice cream cone! I'll have to get pics, soon, too.

Melissa's play

Melissa was in a little play at her school, something like The Fastest Thimble in the west, or something like that. (sorry I can't remember it's name) It was very cute. Melissa and Brooklyn were dancers in it. They got to wear very poofy tutus that Sandy (Brooklyn's mom) and I got together and made for the girls. Yes, I made her skirt. Those of you who know me, don't fall over from shock... Aren't they cute.. I know w/ the dasani machine right in the middle.

Christmas 2009 Newsletter

Here is a copy of our Christmas card and newsletter with added pictures and links. (Where the words are underlined, I guess they are a different color, when you put the mouse over them they are underlined, you can click on them -if you want- and go to the old blogs about that word..)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

December 2009

Dear Family & Friends,

When we pause to reflect on what we have done this past year, we realize that we have so much to be thankful for. I love this time of year when we can take a minute to do that!
This year has been fun and busy as usual! Some of the highlights include Trips: a few trips to Boise, trips to Portland, and our favorite – a long time coming and deserved trip to PA, pages coming to stay at our home, Keagan learning how to ride his bike, orchestra concerts, power tap performances, talent shows, seeing different temples- including the one Ray & I were married in, going to grandma & grandpa’s house, enjoying our hot tub, getting several trees cut down in the backyard, Melissa getting glasses, couponing(is that a word?), Melissa going to stake dances (yikes!) and reconnecting with old friends!

Some of the kids getting ready for the stake(church) dance at the beach

Melissa getting ready for her 1st church dance

My friend Corey & I at my High school reunion. We were neighbors, we have the same b-days & our mom's have the same b-days! It was soo good to see her!

A Good family friend of ours.. my little brother - Adam's girlfriend in High school, who we still love and adore! We consider her part of the family!

My friend Jennifer from High school and church, Sis. B (Alana Brudvik) - my YW president 20 years ago(yikes!). We got together for lunch and had a great time catching up!

Our favorite trip was going to PA!! It had been 4 years since we have been back. We had a great time being with family and seeing several of the sites! We went to Hershey Park (of course!), WA DC, Gettysburg, Harrisburg – the capital building, and a really cool historic museum there. Did you know that the Shoop family has their own cemetery? We spent a day searching it for Ray’s grandparents and couldn’t find them. We went back another day when the caretaker was there and found them right away – they had too big of a headstone, we were looking for something smaller! Of course the best part was to hang out with our family. We have really missed them and enjoyed reconnecting with them. We can’t wait to see them again and wish we didn’t live so far away!

One of Ray’s talents is to find great deals on Craigslist. One of them was to find us a free (yes, free) hot tub! We only had to put a little bit of money in it – mostly to update our own electrical to plug it in. We love to spend time as a family in there and enjoy our new backyard.

Sad to say, but true, in the 17 years we have been married, we have finally lived in one place longer than 4 years! With buying an older home, every year there is some kind of project that needs done. This year was cutting down some of our trees in the back yard. We had 7 cut down (for free – another one of Ray’s craigslist finds). Now the back yard is still in progress and won’t be done until next year (maybe-hopefully). It is so nice to have more light coming in. (Don’t worry; we still have several big trees left).

The best way to stay in touch with us is on the computer, you can e-mail us at rdmkshoop@comcast.net, find Ray, Donna, & Melissa on facebook, and read our blog (rdmkshoop.blogspot.com) and you can connect to Melissa’s and Keagan’s blog from our family blog. I plan on posting this letter on the blog, too with pictures and links.
We hope you and your families are all doing well and in good health. We look forward to hearing from you soon. We’re very grateful for this time of year when we can ponder the true meaning of Christmas and think of our Savior.

Love Always,
The Shoop Family – Ray, Donna, Melissa, and Keagan
*The pictures on the Christmas card (The first picture on the blog) – our family picture was taken at Chocolate World, can you tell Keagan was tired of having his picture taken? The next one is Melissa right before her first stake dance and then Keagan enjoying a water ride at Hershey Park.

Temples

I love to see the temple as the primary song goes. Temples are very important to us, we believe that we can be forever families after we die. We believe that temples are the only place where we should get married so that we can be a forever family. Whenever we are traveling I like to take my family to a temple so they can experience that sweet spirit that is around a temple. The WA DC temple is especially important to us because this is where Ray & I were married.

Whenever we go back east I try to take them to the temple grounds. If you want to know more about temples, click on temples.

Of course we we tried to cram too many things into the day and didn't have very much time at the temple. I wish we could of spent a whole day there. There is a very cool visitor's center at this temple that we didn't get to spend much time at. We were in a hurry to go DC and the Smithsonian's.

A couple of weeks ago we had another great temple experience! We went w/ my mom and Thom and took the kids w/ us. We got to take family names threw the temple and Melissa got to do some baptisms w/ grandpa Thom doing the work. It is too special to write all the details here, but if you want to hear more, ask. It was an awesome day! Keagan even went along and stayed in the lobby.

Shoop Cemetery

Can you believe the Shoop's have their own cemetery?! Pretty cool, huh? There are even lots available.. This is from our trip to PA. (I still haven't blogged all of our trip..) This is in Harrisburg, PA. Several of Ray's ancestors are buried here (go figure). We spent 2 different days here. The first we were looking for his great grandparents and scoured the whole cemetery, we thought, and could not find them.

Here is one of his grandparents.

Here is the one we were looking for - and found the next time we came looking w/ a map this time w/ a caretakers help. Uhm, I guess it was too big. We were looking for some little marker.

Can you imagine, we saw several of these in the Shoop cemetery - and we would get all excited, found it, oh, wrong Shoop. Who knew that there were soo many Shoops?

There were also at least 6 John Shoop headstones, which is kind of funny because that is Ray's brother and father's name.

lots of posts

My computer has not been taking my memory card to upload pictures, so the last couple of times that I have got pictures I have had to go to Walgreens to get them uploaded to a cd! I have no idea what the problem is, but it is a pain. I didn't realize how often I upload pictures! That is why I blogged soo much today, I got my pictures back!

Capital service project

Our youth got to go to the capital to put up Christmas lights. It was really, really cold, but lots of fun! After they put up the lights we went inside to warm up and Bro. Shoop took us on a little tour while we waited for pizza.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

carving the pumpkin

I think Keagan is a little spoiled! :) I would of made him dig out the seeds/guts himself. Keagan was the only one who wanted to carve pumpkins~ sigh~ my kids are getting too old! I was running out the door(I don't even remember where to!) and Melissa was gone, and didn't care if she carved pumpkins so Ray & Keagan carved his. He didn't want to touch the insides of the pumpkin so dad did it for him...

This was all I got before I had to go.