Merry Christmas 2010..

3 days away...

I can't believe Christmas is just 3 days away. We are working hard to get ready to leave for the cabin tomorrow, Where we will spend Christmas and new years. We are really looking forward to this break to be with family!We have been busy with fun christmas things. This is just a random post of some fun pics of the kiddos.
My kids are so excited for christmas. Our Elf Bling came back this year and they have loved finding him every morning, Ella laughs her head off everytime she sees him, it is so cute. We have tried focusing on Christ each night before bed and reminding the kids that this is why it is the best time of year, because His spirit is all around. I love the feeling everywhere and know that it is His spirit that brings this happiness and Joy into our homes. Merry Christmas everyone!

 Skinny Brigham!

 They have to do a nice face picture and then I let them do a silly picture, Ella always tries to do whatever her brothers are doing!

A Christmas Party with friends..

We had the funnest little get together last night with my friends from high school. It was so fun to sit and talk with all of them and to reminisce about the old days and to talk about the new days, we are all in the same stage of life right now, married with young families, so we all have so much in common and it was seriously so fun to just be with them. I love them all and feel so blessed that I had these girls in High School and that I still have them now, I think it is pretty awesome that we were all married in the temple and we are all still very active in the church. I love you girls, thanks for such a fun night and I am looking forward to another one next month!

 Heidi, Melissa, Carrie, Hayley, Ashlee, Sandy, Butch, Me

 We did a white elephant exchange, there was some awesome gifts but this one was by far the best, Sandy had found a picture that was taken of all of us at our all night senior party and she blew it up to huge, Carrie got it and we were all dying at how young we all look especially compared to high school kids now, then we tried to re-inact the photo, I think it would have been perfect had Jade and Zeis been there. Seriously love these girls.

 Melissa and chad got a bag full of old Jazz stuff

 and the other hilarious gift was these huge underwears, seriously can you even believe they make  these.

 So glad we were able to get together and can't wait to do it again!

Sub for Santa and Candlelight Christmas...

The Shupe family decided to do a Sub for Santa family this year instead of gifts for each other.
So we sponsored a family of 5, each of us took a family member and bought a few things for them. Our little family bought for a 5 year old little boy, so Parley helped me pick some things out, he was a little curious as to who this little boy was and why we were buying presents for someone we didn't even know, I explained to him why we were doing it and I mentioned that this family didn't have very much money so we just wanted to help them a little bit with some christmas presents, he then said, "Mom, I want to give him all my money in my missionary bank." He has had this missionary bank since he turned one and has been putting any spare change or money he has earned working with his dad in it. I kind of forgot about this simple request until monday night when we were getting ready to go deliver everything to this little family and Parley said again, "mom, I really want to give this boy all my money." I asked him if he was sure and explained to him that it was a lot of money, He said he was sure, so we dumped it out and counted about 35 dollars, I asked him again if he reallywanted to do this and he had his pure little heart set on it. so we put it all in a little baggy and he asked me to put it in a box like a present. I was so proud of Parley, I know how important that money was to him and think that he made quite the sacrifice for this little boy. I will always remember this experience and hope that Parley will too. We delivered everything to this little family in their tiny basement apartment, they were very grateful and the boy was excited when Parley gave him the box with the money in it. What a great experience for our family and what a blessing this time of year is to give us these wonderful opportunities to help each other out!
After we delivered everything we went to dinner at Hire's and then up to This is the place park and went to Candle light Christmas, it was a lot of fun, they had lots of activities for the kids, a train ride, a nativity , santa, a puppet show etc. it was a lot of fun and all my kids loved it.