A trip to General Conference

Ray's Aunt Darlene from PA is serving a mission In Salt Lake City.  She works in the Joseph Smith Building.  She offered to pay for our gas to come see her for General Conference, so we jumped at the opportunity! We have never been to conference before and have always wanted to go.  We got 5 tickets for us all to go to Sunday afternoon session.  The kids weren't sad at all that it meant missing an extra day of school. (When we left it was still spring break).

We left Thursday and drove and stayed with our good friends The Reddings who live in Meridian Idaho.  They are so good to us to come let us stay with them when we travel.  We love them and are glad they are our lifelong friends! Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of them this time.. next time.  It was fun as always to visit with them.  We even got to celebrate 2 birthdays with them.. Kims and Mackenzies!

Friday we went to stay with our good friends The Herbert family. (We sure are blessed to have lots of good friends!)  We have known them for many years.  Ray & Cathy grew up in the same stake together, so they share a lot of fun stories about youth activities growing up.  Ray met Shaun soon after he came home from his mission.  I met Shaun soon after I met Ray. We were all in the same ward at Ricks college.  Shaun was a witness at our wedding at the WA DC temple.  Cathy was there, too. And we were at their sealing several months later.  Below is a picture of their family now.

Cathy, Seth, Jessica, Aaron, Shaun, & Sarah Herbert

A funny thing happened while we were there, when we came out to our car the 1st morning, someone had egged it!

We had never been to conference before.  Even though it made for crazy traffic, it was fun to see the crowds of people coming and going to the conference center.

 We watched the morning sessions with the Herberts and Sat. afternoon at Aunt Darlene's apartment.  She is across the street from the conference center.  It is really fun to be in walking distance! It was a little tricky finding a parking spot...

 I love that they are snuggled up together to watch conference!

 Waiting seemed to be the name of the game... This is outside Darlene's apartment.

 We wandered around Temple square area for a couple of hours.  We went in the Church History Museum. It was pretty cool.  We didn't get to see all of it because it was closing soon.  Here is a replica of the podium at the conference center.

 It was suppose to rain all weekend.  Someone told us that in Salt Lake it was raining. Near the conference center, it didn't rain at all.  It was a little gray at times, but mostly sunny.

 The statue of the restored priesthood.

 The trees are just starting to blossom.  Aunt Darlene told us that the workers have been busy planting flowers for conference.  It was beautiful!

 Here is Aunt Darlene.  Behind her is the Joseph Smith building where she serves.  Her office is the 3rd row up, over on the right.

We went into Deseret Book.  It was crazy!  There was someone singing in there and Michael McLean was there!  We heard that we just missed Marie Osmond.  It was a little too busy for us, the kids didn't like it much in there, being that busy.  They were showing me they are not amused faces.  (They have these faces down good!)

 I told them that they had these faces down good & that maybe that would next year's Christmas card picture, this is what followed.  :)

 This is the lobby outside Aunt Darlene's office (cubicle).  The work area was locked.

 The temple is soo beautiful!

 Sunday afternoon session of General Conference!  I didn't take my camera because I thought I read somewhere that they weren't allowed, so luckily I had my ipod to take some pictures.

 It was an amazing experience!  I love how quiet it got when the prophet walked in and we all stood!  I love our prophet President Monson!  We had really good seats.  We were in the middle section, Terrace 6.  We got there early enough to sit in the 3rd row.  The only problem was that we right in the middle so I didn't know which big screen to look at.  Darlene brought her binoculars.  It was fun to watch the apostles walk in and greet each other.  You can tell how much they love each other!

We were so tired of driving!  9 hours to Boise, 5 hours to Salt Lake City and then back again.  Poor Ray wasn't feeling well most of the trip, so he didn't drive much.  Thank goodness for a 3rd driver.  Melissa drove quite a bit.  When I got my ipod out, up above is some of what I got.

2013 Calendar

Most of my close friends know that every year I make a calendar for our family as a Christmas gift.  What started out as a nice idea in 1999 has become a tradition that our extended family looks forward to every year.  When I saw my dad yesterday, he said, Hand me my calendar.  :)  Luckily they have progressively gotten better over the years!  I was just looking at the first I made yesterday.. Wow!  I now do it all digitally, I use smilebox.com.  I try to use pictures from the month of the year previous.  So these are January 2012 for January 2013's calendar. (I think you can click on the pictures to make them bigger).

 

                                                    Here is the month of January.

 

 February, we went on a youth temple trip.

 

 

March

Dance Team

 

 

April

 

May

 

June

 

July

 

August

 

September

 

October

 

November

 

December

 

This is our cover, I just didn't get it in the right order.

Merry Christmas

Here is a copy of our Christmas newsletter and the picture we sent with our Christmas card.

Dear Family & Friends
          2012
     This year has been a year of big changes for our family! In March we found out that after 16 years of working for the House of Representatives, Ray was being laid off in July. After a few days of crying, praying, and being upset, we set to work. It was a trying experience, but we know it could have been a lot worse and we know we were blessed! We often heard friends tell us that they were praying for us and I can honestly say that I felt those prayers and appreciated them all!
     June 1st Ray started a new job with Orange Commercial Credit. He tells me it is a factoring company. (I still don’t quite understand what that means). He is on the phone all day collecting from companies that his company sold loans to. It is a new learning experience for him, especially having to sit at desk all day long. It is a nice company to work for. Some of the perks are M-F, 7-3:30 & they bring in lunch once a week.
      When this was happening Ray was in the final stages of finishing his schooling to graduate in August with his Bachelor’s degree in Science Management from the University of Phoenix. We were so proud of him to finish the hard work and graduate! We had a huge party for him in our back yard to celebrate!
     In June Ray’s Aunt Darlene was able to come visit us for a couple of weeks. We had a lot of fun showing her around Seattle and the area. The kids were still in school & Ray had just started his new job & couldn’t take any time off, so it was hard to a lot of things, but we still managed to do a few fun things. It was nice to have her here at the end of the school year for Keagan’s 6th grade graduation and Melissa’s dance recital. Aunt Darlene is now serving a mission in SLC at the family history center.
      On August 1 we celebrated our 20 year anniversary! We got to spend a week in Birch Bay (near the WA/Canadian border by the beach) in a very nice condo. We split the week and had the kids and their friends come with us for part of the week and part of the week by ourselves. It was one of our favorite vacations and we now have lots of fun family memories from it!
      The kids are doing well. Keagan started middle school this year, 7th grade. Now I don’t have any kids in elementary school. Another new chapter of our lives.. It took him a little while to get used to the changing of classes and having all new classmates, but I think he is adjusting well. He did his 1st sports season this year and played soccer. We had a beautiful summer and fall and luckily for us only 1-2 games were in bad weather.
     Melissa is a Jr. this year. It is hard to believe that we only have her home another 1½ years! She is looking forward to going to college and would love to go to BYU or BYU-I. She is on the dance team again this year and having a great time. It keeps us all busy! We enjoy having a reason to go the football/basketball games and watch her perform. This year because of schedule conflicts she couldn’t do her clogging. That was a little sad for all of us.
      I am still teaching preschool with my good friend Marie. I feel very blessed to be able to have a job that works around our kid’s schedules. We have 2 classes 2 days a week. It has been a lot of fun!       We hope that you are all doing well and would love to hear from you. That is one of my favorite things about this time of year is hearing from good friends.

Love from the Shoop family- Ray, Donna, Melissa, & Keagan

 

 

 

 

1st day of school

The obligatory 1st day of school posts and pictures.

Melissa is going into 11th grade at North Thurston High School.

 

She had to wear the purple renaissance shirt today.  She had a few days of training at the school and helped with the freshman orientation.  The whole point of the shirt is all of the students who helped with the orientation are wearing them so the freshman have someone safe to go ask questions to.  She had a great time helping at the orientation.. but was a little sad she didn't get to wear a new shirt today.  And tomorrow there is a football game and the dance team has to wear a team shirt.  So Friday she will get to wear a new shirt!

 This is how she really feels!

Getting up to be at Seminary (a church class) by 6 a.m.!

 How sad it is not even light outside!

Keagan is starting Middle School!  (SIGH!)

Komochin Middle School.  7th grade!  School doesn't start until 9:20 for him.  I really hate the middle school schedule!  He doesn't get out until 3:50.  No more kids in elementary school for me.

 His school doesn't have lockers.  He has to carry his backpack all day long!  He is starting a new adventure and riding his bike to school.  He was pretty excited about that.  Especially since the 1st week of school it is suppose to be hot.  (In the 80s for us in WA).

 He's got the middle school - teenager perturbed look down...  I think I'm more nervous for him than he is.

 

 Aurora, my niece is starting 4th grade.  She didn't make it over this morning, but her mom sent me her picture.  I will have her after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

I can't wait to hear how their days went!