Some December Festivities

We started this month off right with a trip to Idaho Falls for my brother Nate's wedding. Here are the kids waiting for the cute couple to come out of the temple. It was freezing, so I will forgive Shane for not taking very good pictures!:) Here is the best one he got of Nate and Shanntel. Hopefully I can get some others to post so we can show how cute and happy they were. It was a wonderful day for them and for our whole family.

We had a special time with my immediate family. My brothers and sisters and I took a moment and stayed behind the whole group with our parents and spouses. We wanted to pause and reflect on the fact that our whole family was there in the temple together. What a wonderful testament to my parents, to my siblings and to our spouses that we are all trying to do what is right. I think it was an experience that we will all remember and be grateful for.

A yearly December event is the school choir Christmas program. Natalie and Hallie are so dedicated to go to choir before school once a week. Many of their friends quit every year because they don't want to get up early. My girls love it and they don't mind the early hours.

This is Hallie and her cute friend Kennedy.

Here is my darling 6th grader enjoying her last elementary Christmas program. I told her the other day I have a hard time looking at her because she is growing up so fast and it is making me feel so old!!

My beautiful daughters. I am always so proud of them. They are both such good girls.

Yesterday I finally got to some holiday baking. The kids helped me make some sugar cookies. I was so happy with how well they helped and how they listened when I told them to make them pretty without putting tons of stuff on top. Even Jace listened and they were careful and had a lot of fun making some cute cookies!

Natalie helped us too, she took the pictures, so she isn't in them. I love that projects are getting a little easier each year as the kids get more helpful.

Here are some of the finished cookies! I didn't decorate any. The kids did awesome work I think! I was also lazy this year and couldn't face baking a million things for the neighbors, so we made some huge batches of sugary chex mix and took them to everyone in some cute Christmas boxes. I think it was still cute and fun and so much less work.

I also want to report that I am done with my shopping and wrapping. It is a record! I finished 6 days before Christmas. I need to do it more often. It is so much more relaxing! Now on to cleaning the house after all the messes! I am looking forward to a couple last events of the season!! I am so excited to see my kids faces this Christmas morning, I think it will be a good day!

Thanksgiving 2009

Here is our Thanksgiving table. Here is Shane getting ready to carve our monster turkey.

Here we are getting ready to eat our feast. Trukey, Rolls, Stuffing, Maria's vegetables, potatoes, gravy,corn, cranberry sauce, and pies!!! Yum! Yum!

We had a great day and enjoyed having Shane home from work for two days in a row!! Keep reading for more November Posts(better late than never!).

New Moon and other November Pics

Though I am not a Twilight die hard by any means, I am always up for a girls night! I went to the midnight show on opening night with a bunch of friends to see New Moon. We started it off right by going to Olive Garden first. We had our vampire teeth and joined a restaurant FULL of other people that were going to see the movie too. It was chaos at the theater, but it was fun to be with my good friends! We enjoyed giggling at all the cheesy parts and at the people who were so obsessed with it. It was a late night, but a fun night!

Here is my silly boy looking like an oompa-loompa. He put on the funny witch tights while I was folding laundry, then the girls put on his new coat to match so he would look even funnier. He danced around the house for a while making us all laugh.
These are the cute things the kids made at school for Thanksgiving. Abbie loved her Indian outfit, and I loved it when Jace came out of school with that cute turkey hat on. Gotta love these kids!!

Abbie's 6th birthday!

My sweet little Abbie turned 6 on November 11th. We spent the day at Classic Skating having a great time with some friends. This is her cute cake. She was so excited to see it.

Here she is eating the head of her butterfly!

Bouncing away in the Bounce Zone!

That night we went with our family and Oma to dinner. Abbie chose the place!! Where did we spend her birthday dinner? Chuck A Rama! Good Times. She was so happy to get as many icees as she wanted and jello!

This DS was at the top of her list as a present. She had a great birthday!!

Shower for Shanntel

On December 5th my youngest brother is going to get married to a really cute girl named Shanntel. This past weekend I had a bridal shower at my house for her. We had about 30 people and we had a really great time. This is a picture of the dessert table. Her wedding colors are pink and brown. So I went with that! We also had a soup bar in the kitchen, but I forgot to take a picture of my tortilla chicken soup.

These are Raspberry puff pastries that I made from my mother in law Maria's recipe. They turned out great and they are sooo good!

My good friend Jamie helped me do these mint chocolate dipped oreos. Also a hit and very yummy!

We also had these little cupcakes and chocolate dipped cream puffs. It was really fun to put it all together and give her a special day!

Halloween 2009!!

Another year, and another round of costumes for the Toponce children!!! This year they all knew just what they wanted to be (Abbie did have a little nudging because I thought it would be cute with Jace) Here is our Superman Jace! He didn't love that I colored a curl on his forehead, but I told him the grownups would like it. They did. We got a few laughs from the people handing out candy. Jace didn't feel so hot, so he did one street and had me come home for the stroller. Then after one more street he was done. He loves flying around the house in his costume, so I think we will get plenty of use out of it!

Abbie-my super cute super girl!! I thought she looked so cute!! She was a trooper with the trick or treating she just wanted to keep going and going this year.

Here is our Vampire Hallie. My candy lover didn't want to go out very long this year, so she came home early and handed out candy with dad. I think she regrets it now.

Here is our Sorceress Natalie. I think her costume turned out really fun-I was proud of my make-up job and she was loving it. She went trick or treating with her friends for the first time and had tons of fun and got tons of candy!

My spooky kids getting ready to terrorize the neighborhood!!

Halloween Cupcakes

Here is my sad attempt at creativity. My friend made spiderweb cookies, so I went for cupcakes. Not too pretty, but luckily kids are easy to impress! They loved them.

I have been away from blogging and anything beyond basic functioning lately, so I was glad to have some energy to do something for the kids. Keep reading to see a few other things we have been doing lately.