Snow Day!

It snowed today!!! I know that I'm probably too old to get excited about snow, but I just love it!! When Brent woke up at 5:15 this morning to check and see if he had school, he looked out the window and told me that the snow was covering the road. I was so excited that I couldn't go back to sleep! Pitiful, huh? He ended up having the day off and we enjoyed our snow day very much. When Maura got up, we told her about the snow and she couldn't stop looking out the window. Every time I asked if she wanted to go play in the snow, she jumped up and ran to the door like we were going to let her out in her jammies. We finally got ourselves all bundled up and she was so excited about going outside that she even submitted to the scarf and mittens. We made it out the door at 10:12 and she looked down with delight at the snow covering the porch.

She laughed for a minute and talked about the snow and how cold it was.

At 10:13 she took a step and heard the snow crunch under her boot. That was it, the end of the snow enjoyment for Maura. She was no longer excited to be outside and refused to walk another step the entire time we were out there. She needed to be packed around like a baby. Well, at least she's consistent. She has NEVER liked the snow. I wish I could download a picture of her last year in the snow. She screamed and cried like we were torturing her rather than trying to have fun. This snow hating is hard for a snow lover like myself to take, but I figure that maybe I can convert her someday. Otherwise, I'll have to send her down to my friend Hannah, who lives in Florida, to spend her winters!

This is the only place in the yard where we could set her down and she'd be happy. Her little playhouse didn't have any snow inside of it, so she at least got to enjoy that! Her friend Emily came to play in the snow with us too.

Emily is three and wise enough to really enjoy the snow. We had a "big" snowball fight and she has pretty good aim! She managed to get some snow down my collar!


What a cutie. She loves this little house so much.

This is where Maura spent the majority of her time outside. She wanted to sit in the hammock with one of us and be rocked and sang to. So, Brent spent most of his outside time singing Rock a by Baby to her while I had a snowball fight with Emily.

Maura wasn't opposed to touching the snow with her bare skin--just her feet. She was happy to throw snowballs back at us. What a funny child.

Me in all my pregnant glory. These jogging pants were the closest thing to snow pants that I could find that would fit! Look at me, though, I can still zip my coat!!

The girls playing for the two seconds it took Maura to realize that, yes, your feet will touch the ground eventually when you seesaw.


Brent trying to encourage Maura to take a step. She wouldn't even walk the two feet to get to him. For a minute, I was having flashbacks to this time last year when she was learning to walk!

We stayed outside for a grand total of thirty minutes. Well, it was fun while it lasted. The girls decided that two was better than one when it came to jumping on the trampoline.

Maura catching some air. I swear, she's going to hit the ceiling someday. She jumps so high on that little trampoline! Sometimes she loses her balance and says, "Whoa, better hold on!"

Impromptu dance party in our foyer. I think that this is the true essence of childhood; being able to dance like a crazy person even when there's no music playing.

What fun! These guys had quite a morning.

Under Construction

I'm so EXCITED!! We finally started working on the baby's room! Over Christmas break, we began the process of moving all non-baby items from out of the guest bedroom and into the office. While this may sound like a simple process, it was, in fact, excruciating. We basically had to combine two very cluttered room into an empty room and one even more cluttered room. We've thrown so much stuff away that the garbage men are going to start boycotting if we don't stop soon! It took weeks and weeks before we were able to regain enough order in our household to actually start on the room. This weekend, we were supposed to travel to Pennsylvania to visit my grandparent, but an expected snowstorm cancelled our plans and allowed us to think home improvement instead. Hooray! My wonderful, talented, and extremely patient husband buckled down and got to work early Saturday. As always, I can't do anything simply. It would have been too easy to just paint a wall. Instead, I opted for a three color scheme which involved three different episodes of taping the entire room with the help of a laser level and nine(yes, nine) different coats of paint. I love my husband!

Here's the room in the midst of the job. I forgot to take a true before picture, but I think you can kind of gather from this picture how truly ghastly the job of organizing was. This is all of it just shoved in the middle to allow for painting.

The AFTER picture. Keep in mind that this is still all in transition. We're still deciding on whether that dresser stays or goes and whether or not to recover the glider rocker. I don't love gliders, I will not lie. This one was such a great deal on Craigslist that I couldn't pass it up. We may still find something we like better, much to Brent's dismay.

The crib and changing table. I wish you could see the bedding a little more clearly. I'll make sure to get a better picture in a later post. It's an adorable cream, khaki, blue and white stripe.
I still need to get some bins to go under the changing table too and a cute changing pad and cover.

The view from the doorway. Doesn't it just look like such a cozy boy room? I can't wait to bring home our little guy to this super cool room. We're thinking about painting a primitive looking flag on the wall over the crib and using sticker stencils on the wall over the changing table and possibly the dresser. So, there's still a lot of work to do, I'm just glad we got it started!


The view from the corner. I feel like there's a lot of empty space, but I have to remember that it'll get filled up with toys awfully quickly. Our little man will be here in less than 16 weeks.

I couldn't do a post without some pictures of my sweet girl. Here she is in one of her favorite new activities "Hanging out." It means just what it sounds like. She climbs up on a kitchen chair, scoots off of it and onto her belly on the table, then just lets her legs dangle. I'm not sure what the appeal is here, possibly just the heart attack it gives her mother when I look over to see her suspended in midair?

This is how it looks. Really uncomfortable if you ask me. She seems to think it's hilarious and does it all the time. Also, you see her preferred method of dressing--no socks. I freeze to death just looking at that!

Hanging out on Daddy's leg. It doesn't have to be on the table. This girl will hang out anywhere!

Too cute. Daddy, daughter time. She jeopardizes Brent's time as soon as he walks in the door each day. The poor guy doesn't usually even have a chance to change before he's asked to read a book or play a game. What can I say, she loves the guy and I do too!!

Allen Look-alike Meter

Wow!! I didn't expect this result! Thanks, Hannah, for this idea. I've always thought that Maura looked a lot more like me than Brent, but I guess maybe I just got caught up in the blonde hair and blue eyes. I really expected this to be a lot more definitive. I'm hoping that Maura got the best of both of our features and none of our flaws! So, to those in Brent's family who have always claimed that Maura looked like Brent, I apologise--you were right!!

A Few of My Favorite Things

This post is about favorite things--both mine and Maura's. I'm currently enjoying one of my very favorite things--nap time. Although I LOVE being home with my girl, there are few times in the day that I look forward to more than nap time. I love having a few minutes to myself to get something done, nap or just waste a little time. I also love how refreshed Maura is after nap time and how we can go on to enjoy the rest of our day. My other current fav? This flower!! We've had it for less than a month, and in that time period, it's grown from a little shoot to this gorgeous flower with four different flower heads. I'm going to be really sad when it dies, because I've really enjoyed it.

Anyone who has ever had or know a toddler knows how they get stuck on certain things. They love routines and familiar things, and sometimes they just don't want anything to do with anything else. Following are some of Maura's current favorites that I don't want to forget about.


Maura's current favorite lunch is macaroni and cheese and grape tomatoes. Every day I ask her what she wants for lunch, and every day she replies, "macamoni and cheese and matoes with ranch dressing." I figure that at least she's getting a serving of veggies under all that ranch dressing, so we do indulge in this tasty treat pretty often. This child can chow down on some macaroni--she eats almost the entire packet of Easy Mac! Who would have guessed it of my little skinny mini!

Maura with her mato. What is really funny about this being a favorite is that neither Brent nor I care for fresh tomatoes. I know that at some point she's going to figure out that we NEVER eat them with her and she'll probably decide against them, but for now she loves them. I took this picture to document her tomato addiction for proof in the future.

THE PACI!! I always thought I would try to avoid these in my kids because I've heard so many horror stories about how hard it is to break kids of them, but several sleepless nights when she was a newborn changed my mind. It's been a love affair ever since. Now that she's older, she's only allowed the paci at night and naps, but it's amazing how she finds them around the house and is always popping up with one in her mouth. She was much more finicky about her paci when she was younger, rejecting all by one brand. She's much less selective now, and will suck on any one that she can find. Not sure how we're going to get rid of this one. Right now, I'd rather tackle potty training than getting rid of the paci, so it may be awhile that she gets to keep it!

Maura loves her Noah's Ark. It's her current favorite toy. She takes all the animals out and lines them up two by two and says all their names. This one was a hit on Christmas Day and she's not stopped playing with it ever since.

Maura has a lot of "favorite books." This child LOVES to read and will ask for books at any opportunity, especially before bedtime. I will have to say that this one is her current favorite. She's fascinated with Thomas lately, which is funny, because she's only ever read about him in this book. I finally rented a Thomas video from the library so that she could see what it was all about and she loved that too. We read this every single morning, sometimes multiple times in a row!

Maura's favorite pets, Luna and Thea. She LOVES these cats and talks about them all the time. She keeps up a running commentary about where they're going, where they're sitting and what they're doing. She says, "Awwww, very nice kitty!" when she pets them and puts her head down on them to feel their fur on her face. She pretty much mugs Thea whenever she sees her because Thea isn't smart enough to run away! We do have to closely supervise her with the cats to make sure she doesn't love them a little too much.

Two of Maura's favorites combined. She loves bath time and I have a hard time keeping her from climbing in before I take off her clothes. She just gets in there and swims and splashes and pours water. She's holding up one of her other favorites, a Little People boy that she's named Matt(presumably after my brother-in-law.) She takes this guy everywhere and he tries out all kinds of crazy things, like going down slides and falling down steps!

And, last but certainly not least--Maura's Blankie. This child is a blankie LOVER. She would take it everywhere if she could. I try to limit the blankie to nighttime and naps because I can't stand the thought of it dragging all over the place and then going into her bed, but she begs to get up in the crib so she can be with Blankie. It's the first thing she asks for after bath each night and she bunches it up and lays down on it in the middle of the floor. She hugs and kisses it and we have a lot of convincing to do to keep it in the crib most of the time! Whenever she gets tired or hurt, though, it's the very first thing she thinks of! She calls it her "soft, purple blankie." I have a feeling that this one is going to be with us for a very long time.

New Year Celebration

We are truly enjoying our new year. There's lots of promise of fun things to come this year. Maura is loving her first pet. She already has two cats at home, whom she LOVES, but this fish is the first pet that solely belongs to her. My sister, Emily, gave it to her for Christmas, and Maura thinks it's wonderful. She loves to sit and watch it swim around and especially loves "feeding" it. Actually she only thinks she's feeding it, because I make sure the fish food is closed before I give it to her. Otherwise, we'd have the fattest beta and the dirtiest tank in the world. She calls it "Maura's fishy" whenever we ask her what it's name is, so I guess that's the name! Brent has been so paranoid that we're going to accidentally kill the thing, because she'd be heartbroken. It does worry me too, because this fish will literally rest on the bottom for most of the day. I'm constantly walking by and shaking the tank just to make sure it's still breathing! Please wish us good fishy luck!


Another first--Maura has taken up drinking paint. Just kidding. It was her first finger painting experience with some new art supplies from Christmas. The safety tab was still firmly attached to the bottle when this pic was taken!

The artist at work. She loved putting the paint on the paper. She did not love having the paint on her fingers. In fact, every few minutes she'd come to me to have her hands wiped up. What a priss. She even does this at mealtimes, which is good because it encourages her to use her utensils rather than her fingers. She does NOT like messy hands.

"How dare you look at my unfinished work!" I need to point out my awesome garage sale find. I bought this easel at a garage sale last summer for $2!! I can't wait for the weather to get warm enough for garage sales to start back up.


The rest of the pictures for this blog post are from New Years Eve. Yes, I'm a little behind, but we've had major technology issues. I hope to finally have all issues resolved this evening. We finally have a new computer, and a new camera. The last step is to download my photo software to the new computer but Brent has to bring it home from school first!! Hint, hint, honey!!

This is Brent and Maura enjoying the UK/FSU Bowl game. My poor, long suffering husband was pulled away from the game to come to my parents house for their annual New Year's Eve party. Unfortunately, they don't have ESPN, so Brent was reduced to listening to the remainder of the game on the radio. Maura kept trying to turn OFF the radio because it has a big, nice off button right on top. This was so aggravating to the poor guy, but he remained in good humor especially after UK won!

Maura and Grammy. Maura LOVES coming to my parents house and whenever I mention we're going, she begins to list through all the people and pets that she might encounter there. She can't wait to see Grammy and Pappap of course, but she also looks forward to seeing Molly, the dog. I think she's almost as fond of Molly as she is of her grandparents!!

Just playing games, waiting for the ball to drop. As you can see, it was a lively gathering.

We really had a great time at this party--how can you not have a great time when chocolate fondue is on the menu. I consider it my last big splurge of the old year and indulge in whatever delicacies that I can get my hands on!

Last second of the Old YEAR. Goodbye 2007! It was a great year, but we're going to enjoy 2008 even more!!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!! We're so excited to welcome in 2008. We have so many things to look forward to this year, not the least of which is the birth of our son. That's right, the Allens are going to have a boy! We found out on December 18th that we were expecting a boy. We are still getting used to the idea because we're in girl mode, but we did go looking for boy clothes the other day and had some fun doing it. We hope that all of you have a blessed New Year too and that you have wonderful things to look forward to in the new year.

We're really enjoying Brent's Christmas break and are sorry to see it come to an end tomorrow. There is some snow in the forecast, though, so it's a possibility that we might get a bonus day after all. We've had a lot of fun while he's been off work. On Friday, we went to the Children's Museum with Maura. We went ahead and purchased a season pass to the museum, so I take her a lot, but Daddy doesn't get to accompany us very often. It was a special treat to have him there.

I think that Maura's favorite thing is this gravity exhibit. You spin the center thing and it demonstrates centripetal force. Maura just thinks it's a really fun ride, and she holds on as tight as she can before she's thrown off, then stumbles dizzily back. It amazes me how kids don't get sick doing those things. She probably spun around for five minutes straight!


This one is Brent's favorite exhibit. It's a model of the Kentucky River that you can dam up and float boats down. Whenever we go, Brent spends a long time playing with this one. Maura loves it because there's water, of course.

Here's Brent "showing" Maura how it works. I always have to tear him away from this one so that we can actually spend time at the rest of the museum. We always have a limited time to spend at the Children's Museum because of their hours. They don't open until 10:00, which is only two hours before nap time and they close at 5:00, which is only three hours or so after nap time ends. So, we always feel a bit rushed while we visit.

We spend lots of time in the water play area for toddlers. I always forget how soaking wet she gets despite the smock that I make her wear. Maybe someday I'll remember to take a change of clothes with us. This girl is a water baby. We have a hard time keeping her from drinking this and all water.

Maura making a moon walk. She loves the craters of the moon. Isn't this a cute outfit? I couldn't resist it at Gymboree, one of my few actual clothing purchases for her this winter. It has horses all over the shirt and skirt. So adorable. I'm going to miss girl clothes when my little boy comes along. They're just not as cute!!

Brent and Maura exploring the moon. As you can tell, she's much more interested in exploring the other exhibits.

Maura riding her Derby winner. She wants to sit on each horses back for at least .2 seconds. Other things to do, Mom and Dad!!

We hope you had as much fun this holiday season as we do. We're looking forward to actually buying that computer in the new year!! Someday, I'll have access to all my programs, pictures and even my scanner, just not now! Wishing you all health and happiness this year. God Bless!

Julie, Brent and Maura