Fall Family Pictures

Okay, now you can really see how lazy I have been at getting my blogging in. Last October before Cameron left on his mission we had one of Kandace's amazing friends take some family pictures for us. She did a fabulous job, Thanks Jessie! The following pictures are literally just a handful of the over 200 pictures she took of us that day.

The whole family. The family picture on this blog is our favorite, but here are a few more.

My handsome hubby and me. Together 26 years and we haven't changed a bit...right!

Casey and Tinke, great picture!

A funny story, she forgot to take Cameron's picture, and she called and met us at Gardener Village the Monday before he left and she took this great picture.

Happy Cute Courtney!

Kandace looking...Woooo Whooo! Beautiful picture.

Handsome Casey!

Me and my girls, isn't this a nice picture! But.......

It came after this silly picture. She caught everything on picture. Don't even ask what the girls are doing behind my back.

She even noticed Courtney's loud socks and snapped a picture!

I love this picture of Steve and the boys.

Like I said, she snapped everything, I am sure Cameron is comparing who's waist is smaller....

I love this picture of Steve and his girls.

And me and my two handsome boys.

The day we went back to take Cameron's picture she offered to do his missionary pictures.

She took over 60 pictures of just Elder Leavitt in his suit. So after a while I couldn't stand it and jumped in the picture and she snapped a few of just me and my Cam. I love these pictures.

And this is my favorite that day, my kiss and hug to last me for the next two years. We had a great time taking our family pictures, even though I got alot of grumbling about what to wear and why do we have to go to Gardner Village when it is soo crowded, these pictures were worth it. Thanks again to Jessie for putting up with us and taking so many great pictures!

Christmas here and gone!

This Christmas season just flew by. So I am a few weeks behind on my blogging. We ended up hosting 5 Christmas parties this season for Friends and Family, a total of 178 people were here to celebrate. Our favorite party every year is the "Haupt Family" Party. Even though we were small in numbers since a few people have moved away, we had a fun time.

Here is Tony plotting on how he can keep "Land of the Lost" DVD in the White Elephant game. Things always get a little crazy, which is why we love it! He did get his DVD in the end, and I got my Christmas bobble pig. Can't wait to see what great gift I walk away with next year

Another favorite game at the Haupt Family Christmas party is the "Candy Bar" game. This is always crazy and because we have played so many years we have added our own twist to the game by having 2-3 pairs of dice going at the same time, so it is hard to keep up with who has the candy bar that you really want. Courtney is plotting with Angelica on who has her "TOBLERONE"...I can't remember if she ended up with it, I think that Adair walked away with most of the candy because he can remember everything. It was great fun!

We ended the night with our special visitor. Tyson shows Santa that he wants his two front teeth for Christmas!

Tony lets Santa know that he was a very good boy this year!

Cry Baby Steve, still afraid of Santa!

Christmas morning Casey and Tinke came over to open presents and have breakfast.

The girls loved the gifts they gave each other this year.

And they loved their new headbands, scarf's and purses!

Steve was happy to get a Utah sweat shirt, so now he can go to a game with Mike! We had a wonderful Christmas, and our best gift came at 8 PM Christmas night when Cameron got to SKYPE us and talk to all of us at the same time. It was great to hear from him and know he is doing so well in the Philippines. We hope all of you had a fabulous Christmas too!

Tis the Season.....let the Festivities begin!

Okay, so my family thinks I am a little over the top at this time of year. What can I say, I love Christmas! This year I had my trees (we have 10 trees) up before I ran my race in November, knowing that I had a full calendar of events in December to be ready for. I had the privilege of helping to decorate the JetBlue "New York...New York" themed tree for the Festival of Trees,

Here is our tree that we decorated and all my friends from JetBlue. Left to Right is Margot Miller, Melanie Nebeker, Me, Brentz Brandt, and Karen Western. It took us about 7 hours, but....

Look at the detail. If you have ever been to New York, you would recognize everything on the tree, including pizza, chinese take out box, and taxi cabs. I went back to the festival on Friday and loved seeing people just taking their time to look at everything on the tree.

This is another great tree at festival of trees...The Grinch! Too fun.

These next pictures are things that reminded me of Germany. The windmill nativity is what I brought back as a souvenir, mine is not this elaborate though.

This Gingerbread house reminded me of New Swanstien Castle that we visited in Germany. I love going to the festival of trees every year, and really enjoyed being able to help with a tree this year.

Okay, so I host several Christmas parties every year at my home. The first was my team JetBlue party that me and my good friend Betty give every year for the past five years for our teams. We have the tradition of inviting one of our children's choirs to come over each year to sing to the crowd. This year we had the Madrigals, from Taylorsville perform for us. What a treat, I think I want a hippopotamus for Christmas now! This is why we love to have this party, for the great entertainment.

I think the crowd loved the singers! The night was a hit! I have since had my bunco group over for our Christmas party, and this week I will have the JetBlue supervisor party and the Haupt Family party next Sunday. Good thing I have a family that puts up with my crazy December over load of parties. We wish you all could be here and enjoy the fun with us! Happy Holidays, and we hope you are having a great time too!

Haupts Happy Thanksgiving

We are so Thankful for Family and plenty of food. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed having Grandma and Grandpa Haupt and Keith, Cindy, Morgan and Breadan for Thanksgiving. Keith will take credit for the Turkey, even though Grandma got it ready to put in the oven and Keith actually put it in. It was a delicious meal.

Friday, after Thanksgiving we had a small family open house for Keith and Cindy. Cindy got a "Haupt" overload from all the family that stopped by.

Baby Olive was checking out Grandma Haupt's teeth, She is a future dentis

Uncle Jim entertained the kids with his magic tricks. Breadan and Morgan enjoyedtheirselves.

Ohh.... Thanksgiving morning we got up bright and early and started the day with our traditional "Human Race" 5k. The girls are all smiles, even though it was freezing cold outside.

Here we all are before the race, our traditional group picture. This year Aubs talked her honey Austin into joining us this year. He was a good sport! We're sure he is hooked on this tradition too!

Now.....the real reason the girls love this 5k in the freezing cold. While we were waiting for the race to start we decided to walk to the front to get away from the strollers. We stopped and started talking and I turned around and the Indian that ran last year was standing by us. He was nice enough to let us snap a picture with him. I think that they are all ready to be enlisted for this race again next year. Morgan may even come all the way from Oklahoma.

Here are all the runners, there were over 3,600 runners. Bigger than last year. The best thing is all the proceeds go to the Utah Food Bank. We love the tradition and plan on continuing this for as long as we can. We had a fabulous Thanksgiving and we are soo Thankful for all the blessings that we take for grant each day. We know that we are truly blessed. We hope the you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too.

Valley Of Fire...Girls just having fun!

This weekend was one wild and crazy weekend. Austin and I ran the Valley of Fire 10k last year for the first time and decided to run it again. This year I knew going into it what I was up against.....hills....hills .... and more HILLS! What was I thinking???

Here we are at the start of the race,,, all smiles. Bring it on!

Going up one of the many hills. I lost count of how many hills we went up and down. I just know that they changed the route and added a few more hills. Perfect, I was running on a bad knee, and hills love bad knees!

I walked up a couple of the hills so I snapped a few pictures while I was walking. I don't run this race for the time, but for the scenery. I am never disappointed!

We did it! Me and Austin after the race. Austin took first in her age division, I took first in my age division and Austin's friend took first place overall in the womens. We crazy people stick together!

My very own cheering section. Both of my girls came with me to the race. That meant getting up at 5 AM and driving for 2-hours, then hanging out for around 3-hours. They are the best cheerleaders ever! Love you girls!

Sisters! Good thing they like each other soo much. And this is the reason they really hung out with me...........

After the race we drove back to St. George and went to "New Moon". Ahh....Team Jacob is alive and well. We loved the movie and are planning to see it again this week when Courtney comes up for Thanksgiving. Give us a jingle if you want to tag-along.

The end of our perfect "Girls Day" was dinner at "In and Out" in St. George. Kandace hadn't been there, and the one in Draper opened last week and the line is still crazy, so we stopped in for a burger. Kandace has her own theory why it is called "In and Out", you'll have to ask her. This was the best weekend we have had for awhile. It was much needed. We are now looking forward to Thanksgiving and family visiting. Hope you all have had a great weekend too!

A Funny Thing Happened When I Went to Vote...

Okay, so today I actually remembered to go vote. I meant to do it on my way home from work but forgot. So Kandace and I had to run an errand and I told her I needed to stop and vote on the way home. I ran in to cast my all important vote which took all of 5 seconds. As I was leaving a lady said "Hey, I just saw you in the Utah Food Bank Newsletter". I gave her a strange look and said what are you talking about. she said, "Look, I just finished looking at it". She gave me her Utah Food Bank Newsletter, I opened it up and there we were, The Utah Food Bank Poster Family for the Thanksgiving Human Race. How funny is that? I have ran this race for the last 4-years. We give a donation, and half goes to the Utah Food Bank and half goes to the LDS Humanitarian fund. We love this Thanksgiving tradition. Last year there were 2,000 walker/runners so I had all of us wear our elf hats so we could find each other. How funny that someone took a random shot while we were taking our own picture. So the lesson of the week is...Sign-Up and run the "Human 5K Race" with us Thanksgiving morning at 8 am. We would love to have you in our picture this year!!! We'll be watching for you!