Come Thou Fount

Here is a video of Melissa, her teacher Marie Martin, & Amy Nelson on the pianio playing "Come Thou Fount" for our combined young men/young women meeting today during church.

Happy sweet 16 Melissa!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter!

Here are some pictures from the past year.

Melissa & Keagan

doing what they do best..

With Her family!
One of her BFFs
Brooklyn


Melissa loves to dress-up!!
Here she is at D.I. (a thrift store)
dressing up in ugly outfits with a couple more of her BFFs
Katie & Kimmie

She got her permit!
Yikes!

She loves to dance!
Here she is in the middle of waiting for fireworks dancing with Brooklyn to the music playing.

waiting for the 4th of July parade
dressed up.. again
&
on her cell phone!

One of the many great things about Melissa is that she is a loyal friend. She keeps in contact with her friends that have moved. Here she is with Lauren, who has moved, but remains good friends with. Thank goodness for texting & facebook!

She loves to be silly! These are the kind of pictures I find of her!

She is great with little kids, too. Kids gravitate to her. She plays with them & makes them feel special. She is a great babysitter.

Here she is with Turner, Reagan, & Aurora

Happy Birthday Turner!

(This is after he saw his bday poster, I didn't the pictures in order)

Snuggling with Cooper.
I LOVE this picture!

At her dance recital with her friends!
She was (is) amazing!
She got to go to BYU this year for a clogging dance conference!
She also just made the dance team for next school year.

Dressing up...
for the different Holidays

Loving to dance

with her cousin Becca @

my cousin Jodie's wedding

She even loves to dance with her brother!

When Lauren came to visit

at the Science Center.

With her extended family...

The Faliveroops

Here she is at our ward party at Skateland..

with some of her favorite kids that she babysits.

One of the best things about this year...

Getting her braces OFF!

Here she is before and after her apt. to get her braces off, after having them on nearly 3 years. As you can tell, she was soooo excited!! She couldn't wait to have caramel & popcorn. I brought caramel with me in my purse for on the way home!

Happy Birthday to my amazing daughter! I love you! You are beautiful inside & out! I love being your mom!

Happy Birthday Keagan!

Happy Birthday Keagan!
(obviously the date on the camera was wrong)

I can't believe my "baby" is 12!



Keagan & 2 of his good friends, Landon & Riley.

At the star wars exhibit in Seattle

This one I love, it is a typical Keagan thing to do.. help Aurora(his cousin) and be friends with her, but pretending to not like her so much when other people ask.

At his band concert.

At my Cousin Jodie's wedding dancing with his sister & auntie AND loving every second of it!

Keagan & cousin Andrew. Keagan loves playing with Andrew.. or Andrew loves playing with Keagan?!

Keagan loves scouts, here is getting one of his awards.

These are some random pictures of Keagan this year. He is getting where he doesn't like his picture taken as much. This year Keagan decided to grow his hair out long, you can see that in a few of the pictures. He also dyed it black. He got it cut short right before his bday. He is spending his bday at scout camp this year. I am hoping he is having a good time. I sure am missing him!

Keagan is thoughtful, kind, and considerate. He likes to tease & horse around. He is my early bird & likes to be on time. He is always watching the clock and making sure we're not late. When you tell him that you are going to do something you have to stick to it, he won't let you back down. I have to be very careful how I word things with him, we might do that or maybe.. because if I say we are doing something he will hold me to it! He is becoming quite the gentleman, too. Often times he will come and open the car door for me. He's funny, though - I told him earlier this year that he needed to be a gentleman to the girls, and he said, UGH! Mom, that means they have to be ladies, too!

I love you Keagan!

Temple weddings

I got to give the lesson today on Temple Marriage. (click on the link for more information about Temples) I have been gathering pictures of couples that have lived in the ward(Lacey 2nd), or had someone grow up in the ward. It was so fun to do & see. Here is the video:

A Royal wedding? Memories

Who is watching the Royal wedding?! Is anyone really getting up at 4 a.m. to watch it? I'm not.. but I did set my dvr to record it & I'm sure it is all we will see & hear about for the next several weeks. Although I do think it is a little silly.. there is part of me that loves the romance, excitement & fairy tale of a Royal Wedding. If it could only be happily ever after..I do remember getting up @ 4 a.m. with my mom to watch the Royal wedding of Princess Diana. I remember thinking how beautiful she was!
But of course that was before dvr, vcr recordings & all that.

I was dating myself.. again & telling the kids all about when I got up to watch the first royal wedding.

We were very poor. My mom had just gotten married or was going to soon and had been a single mom for a couple of years. We didn't even have a car that worked.

This memory makes me laugh now. We had 2 tvs, no not 2 working tvs, 2 tvs that were broken. We had the huge tv on the bottom(one similar to 2nd tv picture) that had only the sound working, and the tv that sat on top of it that had the picture working. It was complete with knobs to turn, we only got to channel 13, (no remote). Sometimes you had to play with the antenna to get a better picture. We had the antenna on top of the house, too. In a year or two after that we got really fancy and one of those rodor things that you could turn and move the outside antenna that was on the roof from the INSIDE of the house! Fancy!!!

(That almost looks like the ugly brown carpet we had in the living room, too)

Anyone else have any memories of watching Princess Diana's wedding.. oh and Prince Charles.

Faliveroops

Recently some of our good friends, the Olivers moved back to Arizona. Our families have been good friends for a long time! We have been blessed with having some very good friends! A few months ago, Melissa, Brooklyn, and Hayden decided that because our families are so close that they named themselves the Faliveroops after all of the last names (Falter, Oliver, Shoop). It is so nice to know that with our families that will we always be friends no matter how many years go by and how often we see each other. I'm so grateful for them!

Here are a few pictures that have at least part of Faliveroops in them from the past few years...

Daneah, Melissa, Hayden (this is the usual-Hayden in the middle of all the girls), Isabella, & Kimmie getting ready to go to the formal church dance in Elma. (Dec. 2010)

Maleah, Melissa, & Brooklyn going to the Elma formal stake dance the year earlier, Dec. 2009

The next few pictures are of our families all together (missing, Dixon, Kylie, & Lauren) eating dinner at our house the week of helping the Olivers get packed up and ready to move to AZ. I loved having everyone over!
Feb. 2011

One of the fun things about the Faliveroops is besides being the parents being the same ages, we know a lot of the same people from childhood, but didn't know each other until we were adults. Sandy & I have known each other since '93, (when Ray & I moved into the ward) and we barely missed each other in our youth. I moved from Rochester, WA (Centralia -Chehalis stake) in 8th grade & she moved to Chehalis a year or so after I moved away. So we know a lot of the same people.

Leslie & I just barely missed each other, too. I moved again to Lacey just 2 weeks after I graduated from HS and she moved away from Lacey just a week or so after graduation. I met Leslie when she moved into the ward in 98 or 99.

Here are some more random pictures of some of the Faliveroops from the past few years (in no particular order):

Above is Melissa & Brooklyn back in the "clubhouse" days. Meaning when the Falters lived in their tiny house at the Park and the kids played in the clubhouse to that community alot! See Melissa & Brooklyn have always liked to play dress-up! These 2 girls have never not known each other!

Another dress-up picture of some boys.. Keagan, Austin, & Adam.

Brooklyn was with us when the kids got their pictures taken & we had one taken of all 3 of them, we had one taken of just the girls, too. All in their old navy shirts.

Joy school graduation

6.12.2000

Hayden, Andrew, Brett,

Melissa, Maleah, & Brooklyn

Keagan & Landon as babies- I think this at the Thurston Co. fair.

This is one of our favorite joy school pictures!

Maleah, Brett, Brooklyn, Jenna, Melissa, & Hayden

I could add lots more pictures, but you get the idea, we have lots of fun memories of these 3 families & will continue to have more! I love my Faliveroops family!