Just Dance

I have totally skipped all the Christmas posting, and I promise I will backtrack and put up a few cute Chritsmas photos and moments with family in Spokane, for now I have to post the most hilarious music video ever!



My sisters crack me up! They just made a music video to the song "Just Dance" by Lady Ga Ga ( I am so out of it, I don't even know who that is). Heidi rocks at video editing, and with Sierra for a director you can't go wrong. I thought it was worth your time to take a peak, (besides Lucy has a sweet dance solo for all the Lucy fans) so I posted it!



Does anyone else's family do weird things like this in their free time? Just curious.

Christmas Cheer

It seems to me that I haven't put enough Christmas Cheer up on the blog lately, so why not have a photo shoot at the tree lot? Actually, we took all these tree pictures a week and a half ago, but I kind of checked out of the blog world the last two weeks while practicing for the play my family was doing, "Annie." I played the Police Officer (it sounds weird, but just picture a tough New York woman cop from the 30's. Doesn't make sense, but turned out great. When the video goes up on U-tube I will post) as well as a Servant (no pictures in my sweet cop getup! Sorry, camera ran out of batteries!)Sierra played Lily (Rooster's dumb blond girlfriend. She is absolutely hilarious and I can't picture anyone playing the role better) and my Dad played President F.D.R. himself (and yes he shaved his beard off)! Good times! Unfortunately as I mentioned in the last post, Lucy wasn't in the show. We were planning on it, but the directors seemed stressed toward opening night and I thought coordinating a dance number, including parts where we were supposed to freeze, with a 15 month old would have put undue stress on them, so we opted Lucy out! It was fun anyway, just to get out of the house and on the stage again (we practiced at least 4 hours every day last week), while Dave played Mr. Mom with Lucy, but I kind of had Lucy withdrawals being away from her every day and now we are stuck like glue (really she won't leave my side!)

Anyway, nothing like a good family trip to the Christmas Tree lot.

Gorgeous sunset, huh? We were trying desperately to get Lucy to smile and keep her elf hat on at the same time, an impossible feat as you can see! She hates hats and cute hair bows and her days of endless posing for photo shoots are definitely out the door! After about 10 seconds of posing she is on the run, so I just take what I can get these days! Luckily Sierra and Heidi like posing, so I can still take pictures of someone!

Welcome to our family photo shoot...here is what Lucy thinks of it:

"If you think I am going to smile with this stupid elf hat on your kidding yourself!""Seriously guys...take this thing off" "Wow, Heidi and Sierra really are funny. Ha ha Mom, trying to put my hat back on...your too slow and you missed my only smile!"

And that is the end of our awesome family photo shoot!

Lucy really loves playing with Grandpa Bob. If you don't know him you can't possibly imagine how much fun he is. She used to love going to him, but after he cut his beard off for the show, she isn't so sure. The first time he came home with it off, she heard him and started running toward the front door. When she saw him she ran away from him, crying, toward me. After 5 days now, she is starting to accept that he is still the same person, but she still exercises caution.

Well, just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! My address book is in the process of being shipped across the world in a box right now, so I am not going to get to the Christmas cards this year... this will have to do! Love you all!

Beauty and the Beast

My Sister and Father starred in "Beauty and the Beast" the last couple weeks as Belle and Maurice. They are both incredible actors with even more beautiful singing voices! I posted a few videos of the performance for your enjoyment at the bottom of this post, if you would rather just scroll through the pictures and watch videos, not that me blabbing about Lucy's every mortal experience isn't thrilling! They are so talented and very worth watching!

Lucy and I watched 5 of the 6 shows they performed! Wow! Lucy even made it through one full show (because she still had jet lag she slept half the time, which is very unlike her during an exciting event). The other 4 shows she made it through most of the first halves, but couldn't resist getting up and dancing in the isle for the second halves, so we migrated to the lobby.

During a rehearsal Lucy got to go on stage with her Grandpa and loved it, so she was confused why she couldn't go up during the real show. When Grandpa would come on stage she would put her arms out to try to go to him and then try to get down and go up to the stage herself. I guess you are never too young to get the theater bug, in fact Lucy has been invited to perform with me, my father and sister in "Annie" next week. I am going to be a tourist in New York with my baby, pointing everything out to her. The director is a little worried about Lucy upstaging the singers, but I can't blame anyone for wanting to look at her! I couldn't be more thrilled to perform with Lucy in her Theater Debut!

While at the shows we taught Lucy that the Beast was scary, and now whenever we talk about it she puts the most dramatic look on her face and pats her chest to sign "Scary." Although the show was over two weeks ago, Lucy still wants me to read her "Beauty and the Beast" book to her. As we read it she signs "scary" for the beast, "grandpa" for Maurice, says "Burg" for "Burger" when she sees Belle (it's a ridiculous and long story why she calls her Aunt Sierra "Burger") and when the beast changes to a prince she has to give the page a kiss (she just started doing that one on her own and I wonder if she thought of it herself or if one of my sister's taught it to her to be funny!).

Here's is my Dad showing some of his fans what Lucy thinks of the Beast. Sometimes she gets it mixed up and does the scary sign when we talk about Grandpa. I believe Lucy says "Scary" whenever there is anything dramatic!

Here is the whole Poppleton Gang after one of the shows (minus Brian who is stranded on a deserted island with incredible surfing waves! Poor Boy!) As you can see, my Dad is a little outnumbered these days!

I bet you wish you were there to see the show now, huh? Well, next best thing...watch the video!


Here is the Father/Daughter song Belle and Maurice sing together called "No Matter What" They are adorable! I completely teared up while watching them sing this. Both so talented and having way too much fun playing this kind of a role together (I will admit, I am soooooooo jealous Sierra got to do this with our Dad! This would have been my absolute dream come true to perform this with him!):

(Before watching scroll down to the "Prop 8" post and hit pause on the video. Sorry it's so annoying that it automatically plays! I will work on fixing it!)

Hungry for more? I know, it's pretty good! If you didn't get enough, here is Sierra performing my favorite song "Home":

So proud to be related to her!

If you still can't get enough here is one more clip of when Maurice enters the castle and meets the Beast:



If you absolutely love watching my family perform you can find some of their previous roles by searching "bpoppleton" on Youtube. We have put everything from my Dad playing Fagin in "Oliver Twist" singing "You've gotta pick a pocket or two" (which is by far the best character he has ever played), Sierra in "Sound of Music," and my Dad playing FDR in "Annie" last year.

I love my family and am so glad I grew up on the stage! It couldn't be more fun and I am excited to be on the stage again next week after almost 7 years (I did audition for one show at BYU, but that is a seriously talent overcrowded University and I gave up on ever making it on the stage there a long time ago)! Now if we can somehow get Dave on stage...hehehe

Prop 8 - It's not over yet!

Saturday afternoon we spent the day in Oceanside, a bittersweet day as we watched my family's last performance of "Beauty and the Beast" (I watched every performance, except for one, for a grand total of 5 times to the show, of course, with Lucy that probably only amounted to 2 full shows after subtracting all the scenes we missed. She did make it through the full show the first time and I was impressed with her attention span most of the time.)

After the show, the family indulged at a nearby pizza joint and then went out for an evening stroll to Oceanside Pier. We had no idea the excitement we were headed for. Halfway down the Pier we met a large group of protesters, bitterly fighting the newly passed Proposition 8, heading toward us at full speed, and full volume for that matter. It was hard for me to quietly let them pass, although I knew that was the appropriate action (especially considering there were about 1,000 protesters that were for No and only our 5 family members were Yes). They had many very hateful signs, specifically targeting LDS people and I wished at that moment I had a BYU sweatshirt or anything to identify me as a Mormon, without standing on the bench and proclaiming that I was LDS and I didn't hate homosexual people! It pained my heart as I realized many of these people just honestly cared about equality and had no idea of the consequences legalizing marriage between same gender could pose.

After the heated event, we were caught by the local news where I felt very blessed to be able to explain my opinion, and even more grateful after I watched the broadcast and found that the splicing of what I said left my my message completely in tact and safe from the twisted effect editing comments can often have when being quoted by the media.

Watch my moment of fame in this quick 2 minute clip:




I know most of the people reading this blog are probably of the same opinion I am, but I can't sleep until I get my heart out!

It has nothing do with hating anybody. Homosexuals have all the same rights with a civil union that they would have with a marriage, so how does this have anything to do with equality? It's just a word, a different word for a different thing. We are standing up for a very important definition of a word, that doesn't deny anybody any rights, except ourselves if it does become legal. Making marriage legal between same gender couples forces society to treat it as acceptable and decent behavior. By voting Yes we were protecting our Religious Freedom (if it becomes legal how long will it be before our church leaders will be forced to marry same gender couples as has happened in other places?) and the sacred family unit, and Parent's Rights to teach our children our own morals without having to compete with such an influential party in our children's lives as the public school system (some people argue that wouldn't happen and that they don't teach about marriage in school, but there are already documented cases in Massachusetts of reading books about homosexuality without any prior notification to parents, as well as enticing literature about homosexuality being distributed at public schools). People say we discriminate, but this is about teaching our children what is appropriate behavior, not hating a certain type of people. Whether it is a born tendency or a learned trait, sexual preference is a choice, unlike skin color, which some No advocates are trying to compare this to. One of the greatest blessings of being human is the ability to control ourselves, unlike the rest of the creatures in this world. It really doesn't matter if people are born homosexual, because we are all born with an intense sexual appetite, but that doesn't make it right to express those desires whenever you want. I believe we must control our sexual desires. These intense emotions and the sacred creative power we have been blessed with is designed for our use in the holy bonds of matrimony between a man and a woman. You choose your sexual behavior regardless of gender. Behavior will always be a choice, and frowning upon a behavior isn't the same as treating someone differently based on the color of their skin. (This is in no way a rage against homosexuals, I realize it must be incredibly hard to control these desires and I am not trying to judge them and know I can't feel what they are going through and what has brought them to this point in their lives, but regardless of my sympathy they choose the behavior and I don't believe it should be taught as acceptable and appropriate behavior, which legalization of same gender marriage implies) I want to teach my daughter that it is important to wait to express those feelings with the man of her choosing until united by marriage, because I believe that is the path to happiness. Much in the same way, I want to teach her that a marriage between a Man and a Woman, and subsequently raising a family together is also an essential part of God's plan for happiness. This type of family is the fundamental unit of society, the unit which all good in this society stems from. The more corrupted the family becomes the darker and darker this world will become. We have to do all that is in our power to protect the integrity of the family in this society. To legalize marriage between same gender would be a step toward destroying the traditional family, making it easier for the world to teach to our children incorrect morals, making it more acceptable and easier for people in need of love who haven't yet chosen a sexual preference to turn to inappropriate behavior. This is about preserving families, not hatred for any people. I still love my friends who choose lifestyles that are against my moral standards, as does does God to an infinitesimally larger degree. (I have been accused that we believe that God doesn't love homosexual people, and to that I say: isn't there a way for God to entirely love an individual while frowning on that behavior? Any parent who has watched their child go down a path of drugs or crime or any behavior that brings misery upon themselves can answer that it is completely and entirely possible to love a child to no end, and be saddened by the path that they have chosen for themselves). I don't hate my friends who choose to have sexual relations before they are married, and I don't hate my homosexual friends either, but I will always stand for anything that makes either type of behavior a less inviting option for my child and the rest of this world.

Legalization of marriage between same gender makes it all that much easier for teachers and the entire world, for that matter, to present to our children that this is a normal and acceptable lifestyle. Children shouldn't have to wonder at such a young age what gender they should be attracted to (if they make that choice later, we can love them despite their choices and hope for a change of heart, but at least they would have made that choice once they are old enough to make a little more sense of this world).

Call us what you want. Protest us. Send hate mail to our leaders. Deface our churches. Try to destroy our holy temples. We will never back down from protecting our values and our families and for this reason I hold strong to my opinion and am constantly thankful to the 52% of California that voted the way they did. After the elections I thought this fight was over, but it appears to be only at the beginning of a long journey. I am prepared to see it through to the end.

"I Love Lucy" and so do Koreans!

Oh the fame...you would think she was a movie star or somthing! Things can take really long here in Korea when you bring Lucy along, but we have learned a few tricks that help. Trick one: walk fast and pretend not to hear the numerous comments about the American Baby who looks like a doll (usually works great, but I practically bulldozed one lady who had already detained us for about 10 minutes. She jumped right in front of the stroller like she had a death wish and would sacrifice anything for one more minute with the American Baby. Crazy Lady). Trick two: put a hat on Lucy (of course, that still doesn't hide the big blue eyes) Trick three: put the shade cover down on the stroller (but Lucy hates that, which can sometimes draw in more attention) Trick Four: Just play up the foreign card. When someone comes and starts clapping as if they want to hold Lucy just say "I'm sorry, I don't speak Korean" and then run before they try to make their wishes known with sign language. Trick Five: We are debating purchasing a black wig. How do you say "My child is not a pet. Please do not touch!" in Korean! Here is a little glimpse into the life of Lucy here in Korea: The average congregation around Lucy, taking pictures with phones, etc.


Help!!!!!!!!

Mom? Dad? Are you really going to abandon me like this?

This is at the grocery store, which is always the craziest because of the workers. One of these ladies was playing a game with Lucy where she started slapping Lucy on the face. It made me pretty angry and just before I grabbed my baby from them Lucy started bawling as pictured above. Poor girl.

Despite her worried look in some of these pictures, Lucy actually loves the fame and usually doesn't seem to have any stranger anxiety toward Koreans. She smiles and waves like a queen as we walk along. She has even started bowing like Koreans do when people stop to say hello. I have to admit, I enjoy attention as well, (who can resist people doting on your child who you adore so much) so unless I am in a rush or completely exhausted I make the best of the fame and try to make new friends. It only bugs me when someone coughs all over and then reaches out to touch or hold her, or like the other day when some random woman said hello and within 10 seconds was kissing her on the lips. I am just not okay with that kind of germ sharing, but at that point there was nothing I could do. I have been praying for her safety and I am pretty sure despite the amount of germs she has encountered, she will survive here in Korea. I'm more worried about how deflated her ego will be when we get back to America and she realizes she isn't really Shirley Temple.

Hannah MANtana

Sometimes dreams really do come true and you really are the person who actually wins! Today was one of those magical moments!

Well, I will start off the story by relaying a short experience from a week ago. We were at the check out stand at Macey's grocery store and the bagger was a young and very friendly boy. He asked us if we had any fun plans for Fourth of July.

I replied "Well, we are hoping to somehow win Stadium of Fire tickets"

He answered "Oh, did you enter the contest?"

"No, what contest"

"Macey's is having a drawing. There is an entry form right there. You should fill one out."

We started filling out the entry form. Although there was only about a 1 in 1000 chance of winning, I was feeling incredibly lucky because I said I wanted to win tickets before I even knew of the contest.

So July 3 roles around, my family is in town, so I inform them we have to be at Macey's from 4-6 p.m. for the Stadium of Fire ticket drawing. We all go to my sister's dance performance at BYU. She had been at dance camp for two weeks and did a performance at the end. It was supposed to go from 3:00-4:00, but was still going at 4:10 p.m. I was sweating it because I knew they would draw our name and we wouldn't be there to claim our sweet fourpack of tickets! Lucy was absolutely loving the show despite my stress and the fact that she hadn't napped at all. She would yawn and start to put her head down and then just start wiggling and dancing to the music as if she was saying "okay, I've got to stay awake. This is really cool and I don't want to miss it!"

We dashed to Macey's to find out that the drawing wasn't until 6:00 p.m. Ahhhh, man... you mean I could have gone home and put Lucy down for a nap, but now it is 4:45 and I don't think we have time!We check out the festivities and spin the spinner to see if we win a prize, Dave of course does and so we got free Batman Premiere Tickets. Sweet, at least we won something!Then a nice lady informs us about the Hannah Mantana concert (spelled that way on purpose) it is a Karioke Contest for Dad's only. They have to sing a Hannah Montana song and whoever the crowd likes best wins 4 tickets to the coveted and sold out show, Stadium of Fire, where Miley Cyrus will be performing. I look at the list of singers, which is pretty short and start to beg Dave to please sing. Any of you who know Dave are probably wondering what I said to convince him, but somehow he agreed. Every once in a while there are just moments of pure and true love, this was one of them. Okay, I think partly he just plain really wanted to go. We have watched the fireworks from Stadium of Fire from a distance for a while and it would be awesome to finally see the show along with them and I think he realized the odds were much better this way as opposed to the drawing. My Father, being the most awesome Dad ever that he is, also signed up to do it, no convincing necessary( if you know my Dad, you know singing a song in front of hundreds of people is really just like a walk in the park for him).

They were both excellent, especially considering they had only heard the song about twice on Heidi's i-pod right before performing. My Dad sang "Best of Both Worlds" while Dave sang "Who said, Who said?" They were both very animated and really got the crowd into it. Sadly, I didn't have my camera or you would probably be seeing millions of pictures of this moment in history. (My Mom did get one picture that I will try to add later!And my sister videoed so I will let you know once they are posted on U-tube!)

You will never believe it, but my Dad took first place and Dave took second. My Dad won four tickets to Stadium of Fire and David won four Grandstand Seat Parade tickets. I just feel like the luckiest girl on the planet to have these two awesome men in my life! Well, we didn't win the drawing, but between 2 free Batman Premiere tickets, 4 Grandstand Seat Parade tickets, and 4 Stadium of Fire tickets, I would say we cleaned up the place!

I just want to take a moment to say Thank You, Thank You, Thank You for being brave and singing, Dave. You are truly the best guy there ever was or ever will be! And of course, Dad, thank you for singing and being the best Dad there will ever be! You are truly deserving of the Hannah Mantana title!

Leavenworth (We are famous:part 2!)

Ah, back in Leavenworth today! It has been almost three years since we David and I made our mark in Leavenworth, July 2005, while on our Honeymoon! What a charming little Bavarian village. What a great job capturing that fairytale feeling that Germany has...

I loved this mural painted on one of the walls. The reason I liked it so much was that I remembered seeing it the last time I was here and thinking "cool castle" not even imagining that it was real. Now having been to Europe and seen the magical Schloss Neuschwanstein, in all it's majesty, this painting really had meaning!


Ah...the land where fairy tales really do come true...


This is my adorable sister in law Renee. I love this picture of her! She is such a fun and spontaneous person. She was telling me the other day about when she lived in England as a young girl and danced around the maypole, so we had to take a picture with the maypole mural!

Just capturing some charm of the village.


Very Charming, especially with the mountains in the background!

And of course while we were here, we had to see if the rumors of our picture being up in the studio were true, so we paid Studio 1890 Old Time Photos a visit!

3 years later our portrait sits in the front window

Here we are taking some pictures in front of our fame for all of our fans! There was another picture inside on the wall as well as a picture in one of there example Marriage Certificates! We talked to the ladies at the front desk. They were excited to see us and said that our picture was everybody's favorite. She says everyone wants to copy the pose we thought up! So there you have it. It is real. Fame and Fortune are all coming our way!

What? You, still don't believe that this really happened to a couple of nerds like us? Watch it on video here:





See, I told you!


You have just got to love Vince, David's older brother. He just tried the hottest hot sauce on this planet! See his eyes watering. He was on fire for at least an hour, despite the attempts with root beer to drown out the flames in the back of his throat!


Right behind the village we went on a pretty little walk by the river.David and Lucy flash a smile from the bridge! Lucy made me sooooo happy today! There is nothing like your child calling for Mama. While her Nana was holding her in one of the shops, Lucy started getting fussy. I was giving her tough love and told her that she could be happy with Nana and if she really needed me all she would have to do is call "Mama." I was just kidding around, but about 3 seconds later she looked at me and with a whiny tone said "Mama." I couldn't resist after that and went right to her!


Here is all the ladies on the trip (Renee, Lisa, Christy Perkes, Me and Lucy , of course!)
Okay, Okay I am standing on my toes trying to be as cool and tall as Christy! For those of you not from Spokane, Christy is David's best friend from growing up.

And this picture is for all of you married Spokane people who have nothing better to do, but talk about single people's love lives. Yes, this is Christy and her man Byron. I really don't want to overstep my bounds and embarrass Christy, but he is pretty cool and David and I are wagering that he could be the real deal for eternity. This could even be their announcement photo...you never know!

Anyway, if you ever get a chance to visit Leavenworth do. What a charming place full of little treasures everywhere.

We are Famous!

The picture at the top of this page with me and David old fashion style, we took on our Honeymoon when we were in Leavenworth, a little Bavarian town in the mountains a few hours from Spokane. That was almost 3 years ago and I haven't thought too much about it since. Recently, someone that knows David's family went to Leavenworth and happened to go in the studio and saw that this picture was now one of the huge blown up portraits on the wall. I guess we were always meant to be famous! I was really excited to hear this because I love being creative with pictures and thought of doing this pose instead of your classic straight face, stand by each other and wear old fashioned clothes. I guess the people at the studio appreciated our lively approach to old fashioned pictures! When I was a kid, I always wanted to be one of the pictures on the wall at studios and wondered how they were chosen. Of course, I also wanted to be a movie star, on the cover of magazines modeling, and basically anything else that everybody would see! Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that my dreams finally came true and I am the star of something (even if it is just a tiny studio in a tiny town!). Hopefully, someday we can go back to the studio and claim our fame!