A Very Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!! We had a great Christmas this year, and hope everyone else had an equally wonderful day. I was so excited to get a digital camera from my parents and I'm finally able to post pictures again. I spent most of the day on Christmas playing with it and trying out all the features, so I got a lot of crummy pictures, but also a lot of great ones. I didn't have my digital until the afternoon, though, so I missed all of Christmas morning. Maybe someday I'll actually get the film developed from my dinosaur of a camera and post those pics as well.
Maura loved Christmas!! She was almost overwhelmed when she came down and saw her presents on Christmas morning. She spent about 20 minutes with the first toy before we could convince her to even look at anything else. In fact, we ended up packing up most everything and taking with us to my parents house for her to open throughout the day. She's been so busy playing with everything that she just finished opening her last two presents yesterday!!

I think this sign about sums it up. We're so blessed to live in this country, enjoy all our freedoms, worship God and enjoy our holidays in warmth and ease. We are lucky to have all we do. We really enjoyed our families this year, especially getting to enjoy the holiday with Maura and thinking about our son being a part of the celebration next year.

Katie and her boyfriend, Scott. He came down to spend the evening with us. This is their first "official" picture. Aren't you guys lucky to see it!

Here we are. I'm really starting to feel big and pregnant and Brent looks like death warmed over. He was REALLY sick on Christmas Eve with a stomach virus and only mildly better on Christmas. All the pictures of my family that you see were taken just prior to them all falling deathly ill with the same virus on the 26th. Thanks for sharing, Brent!!

Mom and Dad enjoying having the whole family together. This is the first time all of us have been together at Christmas for 3 years. Lorie and I have been on opposite schedules with switching holidays, so it was nice to just all be able to get together this year. It's quite the event with so many people, though. I think we opened presents until about 3:00 in the afternoon!!

Maura with her Aunt Lorie. She really enjoyed having all her aunts and uncles around. It gave her a huge audience to show off for and to parrot what they were saying. She's learned that adults think it's funny when she parrots back what they say. What a personality!

Maura with her favorite present of the day. My parents got her this trampoline and she just loved it. She jumped for at least a half hour and got extremely agitated when my brother and brother-in-law tried to prop their feet on it. Unfortunately it's tall and hasn't made it's way to our house yet, so it'll probably be like Christmas all over again when it finally gets here.

Jumping, jumping, jumping!! She just had a ball. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. We love you!

Christmas with the Chambers

We are in Tennessee this week celebrating Christmas with Brent's family. It's been a whirlwind of parties and events here as we try to get together with both sides of his family. On Friday night, Brent's grandmother treated us to a holiday dinner at a local Bed and Breakfast called the Hancock House. It was a former stage stop, so it's a really old building and it's hard to imagine that it's fed and housed hungry travellers for probably two hundred years. We certainly enjoyed our dinner, but as always, there are difficulties with taking a toddler to a nice dinner. We did have Maura's booster seat, but she was still well within reach of the cloth tablecloth, napkins and fine china. Needless to say, it wasn't a relaxing meal for Brent or I!

Maura got to open one of her presents early. She's just beginning to understand that there a fun things inside the presents and she should really be more excited about what's inside than the wrapping paper itself! She's had more fun playing with her presents so far. If she didn't get another thing this Christmas, I think she'd still be happy.

Chuck and Sherran have enjoyed having us down, and Matt and Amy arrived with Ava on the 22nd. We've really enjoyed seeing the baby and visiting with them. Ava is a chunky monkey and as cute as can be!

Grandmother with Uncle Dan, Allie and Dylan. We had a great holiday dinner and are really enjoying our visit so far.

Warning...Random Christmas content.

Due to our unfortunate technical difficulties at Christmas, I didn't manage to get many Christmas pictures on the blog. I've been meaning to scan some pictures in , but who knows when that will ever happen. So, we're in Tennesse right now and I'm taking advantage of having my mother-in-law's computer with all her Christmas pictures already downloaded. A word of warning, they're in very random order. I had to search from among several hundred thumbnail size images for the ones I did put on here. I didn't intentionally put the first picture first--kind of happened that way. Just goes to show you that you can't control what a 21 month-old does when you're taking her photos.

Maura and Nan on the 23rd. We went to Aunt Lisa and Uncle Jack's for dinner. I'm not sure what she's doing here--probably has a hair on her tongue, which drives her nuts.
Maura and Ava. Maura loved baby Ava and talks about her all the time. I was a little anxious about having them too close together because I couldn't decide if Maura was getting a cold or not. I think she had a 24 hour cold about two days before Ava got there, but she was already on the road to recovery by the time Matt, Amy and Ava got there.

Grandmother and Ava. Grandmother loves babies and I think she loved having Maura and Ava both around over Christmas.
Grandpoppa and Ava. It was so much fun to see all the relatives get to meet Ava for the first time.

Back to lunch at Lisa's. This is Lisa, Phillip, Amy and John.
Matt and Amy enjoying dinner baby free. That's the nice thing about visiting with relatives: when you have a small baby, it's about the only time you don't have to hold the baby while eating.
A rare moment when Ava isn't being cuddled by someone--I think she was sleeping. Grandmother and John.
Nan, Poppa and Ava. Matt and Amy were in Tennesse for almost ten days so Ava got to enjoy lots of Nan and Poppa time.
Grandmother loving on on Ava. She looked like such a snowman all bundled up.

I always enjoy getting to visit with relatives while we travel. This is Michelle and her daughter Riley who we only get to see on holidays. Michelle and I always enjoy talking. We have the unique experience of being married into the Allen clan.

Maura and Joslyn riding the horse together in a rare moment of peace. We had a party at Chuck and Sherran's house on the 22nd. These two play together, not always so well. Joslyn being three has very definate opinions of how play should go that an almost two year old doesn't always conform to.

Meeting Baby Ava. She is just such a cutie and such a chubby bunny. We loved having an infant around the house.



Proud Uncle Brent. He won't admit it, but he's a real softy when it comes to babies.

I think this picture kind of personifies Christmas wonder. This train is a smoker train from Germany that burns incense. She was so enchanted by it all and kept pointing out Santa.

Tearing apart the smokestack on the train. It's hard to keep your hands off something so exciting.

Brent and Maura watching Veggie Tales, What else can inspire this kind of concentration? Brent had a headache and this is a cold hood--I think he looks like a gangsta.

Maura playing with the marble game. This game could keep her occupied for hours.

Maura and Joslyn trying to play a game. Notice Joslyn trying to direct Maura.

My little snotty faced child. I always vowed to keep my child's nose wiped before I had children and realized the reality of having a continually running nose.

Maura and Poppa enjoying Christmas the old fashioned way--rocking in rocking chairs.


Maura with Nan and Poppa on Christmas Eve. We were sad to have to leave this day, but enjoyed one last Christmas Brunch together.

Maura entertaining us all. She's such a funny girl these days and you never know what she's going to say next.

Once Maura got into the swing of things while opening presents, she wanted to open everything. She's trying to open all the presents under the tree--even though none of them actually belong to her.

There are so many fun toys at Nan's house. Maura obsession on this trip was this huge dollhouse. She practically crawled inside to play with the dolls.

Merry Tennesse Christmas everyone!

Technical Difficulties!

Hi All!

The Allen family is still suffering from major technical difficulties when it comes to technology. Our computer is completely dead. I can't even turn it on and get it to run now. Unfortunately that means that our digital photos are now locked somewhere in the recesses of this piece of junk, probably never to be retrieved. It makes me really sad, because I haven't actually ordered hard copies of my photos since August. I'm hoping we'll be able to resurrect the Ebook that they're saved on and attach it to our new computer when we finally manage to get one. We're hoping to buy one in the next week or so. I still don't have a digital camera--I'm asking my parents for one for Christmas. In the meantime, I'm back to my 35 mm which I really resent now that I'm used to previewing all my pictures to see if they're any good. It drove me crazy on Saturday. The church had a breakfast with Santa, which was really nice. Maura took one look at Santa, though, and said, "No. No." And she meant it!! We took her back later when things had quieted down a little and she would condescend to take a candy cane from poor Santa, but not to get anywhere close to him! I got a picture of her with Santa only by sitting on his lap myself and holding her. (Yes, Hannah, I have been sitting on your father's lap!!) I have no idea how the pictures actually turned out and will have to wait to see them. It's making me a crazy person!! We've been busy with all kinds of Christmas activities. We've already been to one Christmas party. I'm working hard at getting the house decorated. The plan was to put up the Christmas tree last night. Well, we got it into the house, put in on the stand and realized that it looked like the leaning tower of Pisa. We had to take the thing down, saw two inches off the bottom with a jigsaw, drill and new hole and finally managed to get it to look a little more normal. So, there it sits in the living room with light, but no ornaments. I have to buy some film later so that I can get pictures of Maura "decorating" the tree! She's still not over the fact that there's a tree in our house! Should be entertaining!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! I know that we did. We travelled to Tennesse to my in-laws house and we've currently consumed two seperate Thanksgiving dinners and enough food to keep a third world country fed for at least a week! We watched Kentucky play their hearts out in four overtimes against Tennessee and lose by two points when they weren't able to complete a two point conversion. What a heartbreaker!! Maura even had a great time "watching" the game, and would always give us the touchdown sign when prompted. She has had the biggest weekend! She has played, visited and eaten enough for three children! This morning, her Nan and Poppa took her to McDonald's while we slept in. They said she ate a whole egg, a pancake, a fruit and yogurt parfait, and a large glass of milk. Eating has never been an issue for this child! We'll be heading back to Kentucky in the morning. Back to the grindstone!

I'm having major technology difficulties, so you may not hear from me again anytime soon. Our computer has crashed due to a virus and now my digital camera is on the fritz. Who knows when we'll be able to replace/repair all those items and get back into the swing of things! Hope everyone is doing well! Lots of love from the Allens.

Florida Trip Part I

Well, it's almost a month later and I'm finally getting around to blogging our Florida trip. We went to Sarasota on fall break in October. It was SO much fun! We stayed in a house that belongs to a friend of Brent's family. I don't know about you, but my own family doesn't have any friends who own multimillion dollar houses on the beach. I'm just lucky to have married into this well connected family!! This house is these people's winter home. We LOVED it! There was more than enough room for us, Brent's parents and Matt and Brenda to all have our own suites. We weren't exactly tripping over each other in this place. Above, you see a picture of the front of it. Don't we look tiny?

The back of the house complete with pool, spa and fountains. This place was amazing. We visited once before during Thanksgiving of the first year we were married, but it was a completely new experience to come when we could actually use the pool, beach and other amenities.

We really had a lot of fun. We went mini golfing one night and took Maura with us. She had great fun running after all the balls and picking them up. It was perhaps the quickest 18 holes of mini golf I've ever played. We had to keep moving to keep her happy that night. She did like feeding the live gators they had at the course, though.


Matt and Brenda. This trip was kind of like their honeymoon, since they didn't really take one after their wedding. What a cute couple!

Living life in the lap of luxury. We really just hung out around the pool and beach all day for the whole week. You really don't need to go anywhere or do anything else when you're surrounded by total luxury.

Maura and Brent enjoying the spa--don't worry, it wasn't hot. Maura loved the bubbles, though, and kept throwing her toys to watch them disappear in the jets.

Maura with Poppa. She loved the lions and spent a good portion of her time outside perched on the back of one of these statues. They had four lions total. It was so funny. Every day this big tourist party boat would come by and they'd be talking about how big the house was and everything. Kind of made you feel a little weird to be seen outside while all the tourists stared at you.

Chuck and Matt having a kayak race. I'm not sure, but I think Matt's plan here was to capsize Chuck and then take the lead. Regardless, it was a very physical race.

Matt and Sherran having a much more sedate kayak ride. We really enjoyed the kayaks and also the dock. Every morning about eight manatee would gather around the dock to hang out and eat. They were so fun to watch. There were even two babies with the group. They'd usually be there for an hour or so, then move on. We also saw dolphins from our dock. Three dolphins came swimming by one day and played out in the water about 30 feet from our dock. They were jumping out of the water and everything. It felt like Sea World!


Maura at the beach. Her new favorite beach activity is picking up ever rock, shell and cigarette butt she could find and tossing it into the surf. Big fun!

Here's a group sand castle effort. It really did take this many people to build, because Maura knocked it down just about as fast as you built it. With three people, you could kind of stay ahead of her!

What a cute little beach bum. She really enjoys the beach and we went there just about every morning of our trip before it got too hot.

Brent threw her up in the air until he was completely exhausted! She still couldn't get enough of it. She kept saying, "AGAIN!"

Feeding the gulls. Yes, we broke the cardinal rule of beach etiquette and fed the gulls, but as you might notice from the beach behind us, it was nearly deserted out there. Maura loved the sea gulls and would run at them just to see them fly. Feeding them was just an excuse to get them close enough for a real chase.

Anyway, as you can see, we had any awesome time. I'll post the Disney pictures soon. Maura was in heaven there!