Merry Christmas

We hope that you (as our loyal blog readers!) have a wonderful Christmas.  We were watching some home movies from this past year tonight and in remembering all the fun times we realized that this has been such a great year, with many blessings and happiness. 

At Christmas time our family loves to focus on Jesus Christ and his love and sacrifice for us.  I'm so grateful for Him, my Savior. I'm grateful for my family, my sweet husband Jared, and my children.  Holidays are so much better with children.  We've been able to do some fun family activities this year like seeing the lights on temple square, decorating cookies, watching Christmas movies,  having our own "Polar Express", reading scriptures and completing a daily "advent" activity from the Friend Magazine which focus's on Jesus being the light of the world.  We've also have passed around a Christmas Star, where whoever has the star is to do a service for someone in the family.  The kids were super excited to do this for about 5 days, and then got bored. So now we started another service game where we have randomly picked a family member's name and we are to do secret acts of kindness for the next couple days until Christmas.

A big thank you to all of our extended family members and friends.  We are so grateful for the love you give our family.  May your Christmas be full of love from family and friends, and we send you many good wishes for 2014.

Fall Pictures

 

This last week has been beautiful and we've tried to get outside to enjoy the warm weather before winter sets in.

Thomas and Natalie switched their costumes the night before Halloween.  I told them that if they could find things for a new costume then they could be whatever they wanted to be.  Natalie put together a vampire, and Thomas used last year's Ninja costume and turned it into a Dementor from Harry Potter. Amelia is a hobo, but many people thought she was a scarecrow or a clown.  And Abigail is her dream princess, Belle.

 

This picture was taken at the yearly Shupe Halloween party (or should I say Machen & Toone Halloween party?), Thomas is a last minute costume attempt to the Headless Horseman, holding his own head.

Trip to Arizona

We headed South with Grandma Dallas over Fall Break to Arizona to spend some time with Steve & Leeann's family (Jared's brother's family).  We had an amazing time and loved the beautiful hikes, an awesome natural history museum, the warm weather, and most of all time with family. Jared and Steve both served missions to South Korea and so the brothers put together a delicious Korean meal one night.  We also were able to go to Ben's band concert which was a lot of fun (he is so very talented), and celebrated Emily's birthday.

 The twins favorite part of the trip were the dancing cats at the restaurant Organ Pizza.  If you want a good show this is the place to go.  This man puts on a spectacular organ performance, to understand it you just have to go, very unexpected.

The pictures below are from the Arizona Museum of Natural History.  It was a super fun, interactive museum.

 We took home a nice sized bag of gold after panning for gold at this museum.

We had such a wonderful time with Grandma, we were so glad that she came with us!  It was especially great to have Grandma entertain the kids the entire 9+ hour drive.  Here Amelia is helping Grandma sew. One more highlight for the kids is that we got a car 2-screen DVD player for the drive, that was a lot of fun.  

 

Canning, Freezing, Drying, and more Canning

The end of summer had been so busy, in a good way.  We'd been blessed with so many fruit and veggies! They have been so delicious. I've spent a lot of time picking, cleaning, prepping, canning (or drying or freezing), cleaning again and voila, look at my shelves.  It's funny how productive I feel when I have so many jars to display. Now that fall is coming the produce is slowing down, now I finally have time for other things.

Colonial Days

These pictures are a bit out of order, but we just downloaded them from Jared's phone and I thought they were so cute.  They are from the 4th of July when we went to Colonial Days in Orem.  If you haven't been I highly recommend going; it's free and so much fun.  There are so many activities like a school, storytelling, and militia that the kids can join, as well as demonstrations like a blacksmith, broom maker, tanner... It was great, and not very crowded.  Perfect for our 4th of July.

Camping at Last

Finally had time to fit in a couple nights camping.  We went to Bryce Canyon (which we learned is not actually a canyon...who knew!).  The kids earned their Junior Ranger Badges as well as their "I Hiked the Hoodoos" pin.  The pin required a 3 mile hike in Bryce. We camped at a beautiful campground less than 10 miles from Bryce called King's Creek.

New Hair

After hearing Amelia cry for months each time I tried to comb her hair, yesterday I decided it was time for a hair cut. Seeing that my twins are not too picky about their hair I was happy to find a Youtube tutorial and cut their hair myself.  I think Abigail's turned out better than Amelia's, but Amelia has more curl than Abi does and she is a lot harder to sit still, plus she was first so I had a bit of learning to do. The girls love their new cut, Amelia looking at herself in the mirror kept patting her hair while saying "so cute"!

Toone Reunion

We just got back from a super family reunion (okay, not quite a family reunion since many couldn't make it). We stayed 2 nights in cabin just south of Manti, just a couple of miles from Palisade Park.  We had so much fun playing in the creek, canoeing, playing games, and riding on the ATV. Many thanks to Kathy for organizing it.  For those who didn't make it, we missed you and maybe we can plan something for next year.

More pictures here.