Monday, November 21, 2011

Kid Update

I know-its been forever since I've done an official update on my kids and its long over due. I am constantly thinking of the little things they've been doing and telling myself I need to record it before I forget it. So here it goes.

I'll start with Miss Cambree. She is officially reading. She is doing amazing in school. I am so proud of her. Well that is, beside the hair cutting incident. Yep- she cut another girls' hair at school. Proud moment for me ;) She said they are good friends and she's not sure why she did it...not a good day in the Allen house. She was star student last week and decorated her own poster all by herself. She's one talented little girl. She can almost do a full back walk over by herself. She performed in her first play last week and did amazing in front of everyone. Her dance moves are more and more amazing. I still can't figure out where she gets it. She is such a little model. I can't get over how gorgeous she is. I know I am biased but she is a very pretty little girl.


Mr. Ridge. Ridge officially knows all his alphabet and sounds and can write his full name. We are still trying to figure out if he's left handed or right handed. He constantly is switching hands. He's going through a phase of not wanting to eat ANYTHING. Drives me CRAZY!! We put waffles in front of him and he freaked out. He even threw it all up when we made him try it. But its anything. He is always hungry until you actually give him his food and if he doesn't want to try it-he's amazingly no longer hungry. He is huge into break dancing right now. Again I am not sure where he gets his moves but its hilarious. He did his first primary presentation a little ways back and he was great. No nerves at all. A natural performer. He is in the phase of also asking for EVERYTHING for his birthday or Christmas. It could be a toy he sees another kid has, or a commercial or anything. At least he'll be easy to please come Christmas morning....right? He is our straight and narrow boy. Sometimes we'll slip and say 'stupid' and quickly chimes in, you're not supposed to say that. Or if we sneeze into our hands, he will correct you and say you're supposed to sneeze into your elbow. Quite funny.

Miss Brecklynn. Oh Miss Brecklynn. What a challenge she is right now. Love her to death but she is living the 'terrible two' title to the fullest. She is a natural bully to her siblings. For no reason at all she will walk up and punch Ridge or pull Cambree's hair. My mom recently took her for a week and I cannot tell you the difference it was. There wasn't nearly the amount of fighting or whining or problems. She is into everything!! She loves to do hair so she is always in my bathroom getting into trouble with lotion, lipstick or whatever she so happens to find. She gets away for 2 seconds and she's done so much. She throws fits about EVERYTHING and No is her new favorite word. But on a happier note, she's starting to come out of her shy shell a lot more. She can count to 20 and is close to counting to 30. She can pick out her name. She sings her alphabet and jingle bells and twinkle twinkle little star all the time. She loves to dance with her siblings. She is a coloring fool. She loves to color all the time and pretend to write. I think she watches Cambree too much :). Should be fun to see her this Christmas season-that's for sure.

And last but not least my little Brielle. I just wrote a short update on her just recently so there's not much to add. But she is 14 pounds. She loves table food and not baby food. She's fully crawling everywhere and its hilarious to watch. She is still the happiest baby and shares the biggest smiles all the time. She still looks 100% like Ridge...no joke. But I love her to death.

So there's the update on all the kiddos. I took their Christmas pics this year. I have a lot to learn still, especially with editing but at least I got a couple. 4 kids are hard to take pictures of but so worth it!


Saturday, November 5, 2011

Brielle is 6 months!

Today Brielle is 6 months old. I cannot believe how fast time is flying by. She is such a great baby.

So some new things...we haven't measured her yet-her appt isn't until the 10th so we'll see soon. But as of last night, she's officially mobile. She isn't crawling per say but does the inch worm which is hilarious to watch. She gets so excited over things in front of her now and goes crazy trying to reach for something in front of her. She's interested in table food and watches intently as we eat. She had her first french fry about a month ago and she loved it. We've attempted baby food and just like all my other babies, doesn't like it. So we'll have to see what happens.

She is a great sleeper. She is now sleeping all night and even sleeps in till about 8. I wish my other kids would take after her :)

She has yet to laugh...I know weird right? I don't get it. She wants to and loves to talk and squeal but do anything to tickle her or make her 'laugh', she just gets a huge smile on her face like she might...and nothing comes out.

She makes this grunting noise all the time now that sounds like she's constipated. Its hilarious because people that don't know just think she's making a diaper all the time..when nope that's just her.

She's very close to fully sitting up by herself. She just still gets too excited at times and falls over but she's almost there. She loves her siblings and they love her so much. Brecklynn especially loves Brielle. Almost too much at times. We will find Brecklynn in Brielle's crib in the morning or after naps a lot. She's just talking to her and 'keeping her happy'. Very cute.

So she's still an amazing baby. We are so lucky. I think back to now 3 months ago to where she was and how she cried all the time etc. and can't believe how she is now. I love her so much.

Here's some fun pics of her at Halloween. Still as happy as ever!


Halloween Night!

Here are some pics from Halloween night. We didn't go trick-or-treating house to house this year. We just hit family members houses. Kids still had fun. Brecklynn however was in rare form so I got no pictures of her in her costume. I am glad I got what I did from the Halloween parties.




See...there is Brecklynn as happy as can be!

With Great Grandma Dowdle
With GG

And finally with Aunt Tesia

This past week Tesia asked me to take some pics of her and her roommate. So I took advantage of the moment and grabbed some of the kids. Nothing great but still fun. I am hoping to get their Christmas pics done sometime this next week if the weather permits.




Thursday, November 3, 2011

Halloween Parties

This year-since we are finally in our house and have space, we decided to host a Halloween Party for some close friends. It was a lot of fun and I had a blast putting it on. Whitney Romney co-hosted it with me and helped plan and put it all together. It was fun having someone else get as excited as I do about these kinds of things.

We decided to hold it Saturday when our ward Trunk-or-treat was supposed to be. So we planned it for 4:30 to 6:00 with a potluck style dinner and some games for the kids.

Here's sweet Brielle playing in the grass. She wants to crawl so bad. She's so close. She just can't seem to figure out how to make her hands move forward. I give it not too much longer though and she'll be a crawling machine.

Here's the other cuties all dressed up. They were so excited for the party.

As part of the fun, Whitney found an amazing deal on a jump house in town. We had to get it. It was worth every bit of it. The kids LOVED it!


It was a huge jump house too...

Here's the set up outside. We scrambled to get tables for 40 adults but the funny things is, none were ever used :) You live and learn.


We had fun making these juice boxes for each kid. Took time but they turned out pretty cute.


Our first guests....Chace and Rachel. Yep that's Chace. Hard to tell huh? I couldn't stop laughing at him.

Here's a couple other guys that dressed up, McKay and Michael.

Captain America enjoying his mummy juice




We are planning on doing this again next year as an annual party but we'll open it up to anyone and everyone probably. We had 15 families confirm and I think we counted on maybe 7 that came so it will just be easier to not have formal invites and just let everyone come. We learned a lot from our first year :0 So next year should be much better-


This year for the preschool Halloween party- it went so much better than last year. We did have the same ol' wind issue but we survived ;) The kids had a blast and it was a lot of fun. I had 4 parents come this year to host a game or craft and it was perfect.



This was one of my kids with his mom and sibling. So stink'n cute. I couldn't resist sharing.

Then of course we had them all sing their Halloween songs for everyone.