Happy Halloween!!

Hope everyone had a fun and spooky Halloween.....

On Friday Ella, Mavyn and I hung out at daycare for some fun Halloween activities, including playing with slime! (cornstarch and water).....

We also read lots of Halloween books, played games and ate green mini cupcakes!! It was lots of fun!

On Saturday, we got the kids all dressed up. Ella was Cinderella and I am very proud of myself for sewing her dress myself! It turned out good, although with the time and money spent, I will not do it again - jeez! Mavyn was a pink jaguar (yes jaguar like on Diego, not a leopard! LOL!)...



I took Ella out around the neighborhood along with our neighbor boy Caleb and Jake hung back with Mavyn to hand out candy since it was too cold to bring the baby with (boy Halloween weather in MN sucks most years). Glory came with us and she was shivering, even with her doggie jacket on!



Afterward, our other neighbors came over and hung out for a while. Here's a pic of the girls with baby Brevick.....


It was a nice evening. Ella even stayed up until 10pm! She was soooo tired.

Ella (and maybe Jake and I too) is enjoying her Halloween spoils. Every morning when we get up.."mommy, can I have some candy."

In other news, tomorrow I go back to work.... *sigh*

Until next time!

Love,

The Allens

Spooky Patch Diablo

Saturday October 10th we had to say goodbye to Spooky. It was with very much sadness we made the decision to euthanize her. We had been trying to find a new home for her for over a year for other reasons, but recently she had proven more unpredictable with Ella and we decided not to wait until something worse may have happened. She was truly the sweetest dog with a wonderful personality that endeared everyone that knew her. With the face of a puppy and a tongue to deliver unlimited kisses, she was truly loved by us and many of our friends and family.

This was a difficult decision and a terrible weight on our hearts and we thank all of you who have been there for us.

If there is a heaven, she is there licking everyone to death!

We love you Spookers!

The Allens

Mavyn Olivia

Yay! She has finally arrived!


Mavyn Olivia was born August 10, 2009 at 10:10 am. She weighed 8 pounds 11 ounces (6 ounces bigger than her big sister was!). She is healthy and beautiful!

I had to be induced, but like with Ella, they only had to use the hormone stuff on my cervix. No other drugs or anything and once things got going it went really fast. After my epidural was in place I was very relaxed and had a great birthing experience!

Ella loves her little sister and wants to hold her all the time. She has had some indications of jealousy, but is adjusting well to the fact that mom can't do everything now. Daddy has stepped up in my place and I think Ella will soon be a daddy's girl!

Jake took Ella to the zoo last Friday to get Ella out of the house and give me more nap time. Ella had a blast seeing the animals and riding the rides. She even got her face all painted up and her hair done crazy! I did not recognize her when they got home!

Thanks to everyone for your wonderful wishes and thoughtful gifts. And thanks also for those who took time to come out to see us so far!!

A special thanks to the grandmas for helping take care of the house and Ella while we were in the hospital.

Thanks to those who took some time to cook for us. Although we enjoyed to food, we loved the company as well! Jessica made us anniversary chicken; Meenu and Jim made chicken cordon bleu; Becky and Neil made us a waffle brunch; and Rachel and the girls brought us Famous Daves. Everything was wonderful and we have left overs galore!!

We feel so lucky to be surrounded by great family and friends!!
Thank you, thank you!!

Love,

The Allens

A Few Updates Before the Big Event...

Just wanted to update on stuff up to this point since the next blog will (yes, WILL! I am certain she will come someday!) be about the new arrival. We have an induction scheduled for Sunday evening if she doesn't decide to come out by then.

On July 18th Ella and I attended Adrian's first birthday!! I can't believe how big he is getting! We had a great time at the party and it was nice to see some people that we don't hang out with very often. Sabrina took time to hang out with her and Ella just loved it! They drew with chalk, blew bubbles and she even kicked the soccer ball around a bit (adding to Christmas list - check!).

Adrian was so adorable in his overalls and took a liking to the "Raven" doggie that Ella had to bring a long that day. Ella did good sharing for a while, but eventually we had to sneak it away from Adrian.

It was cute to see Ian and Zack interact with ther little cuz too!

Ella even sat nice for a picture with great grandma Betty.

At this point the camera battery died and I have no pictures of the rest of the day - Boo!

Anyways, after the party we stopped to watch Jake and the Tiff's Two for Ones play a tournament game for Highland Fest. Ella loved seeing the game and trying to pick out all of "her boys" in the field (this included Daddy, Jeremy, and EZ). It was cute.

Then we headed off to the Howland's for their annual BBQ. It was fun to have all the kids together playing and just hang and eat and talk.

A couple weekends later we had another birthday party to attend for Sophia who is now 4!! It was at Lake Elmo beach and the weather was so perfect. We had good food and all the kids had a blast swimming (or trying to learn in Ella's case) and playing on the beach. The girls also dug right into their tinkerbelle cupcakes!! (Somehow I missed getting a pic of Nora! - sorry Sonja and Nate)

Otherwise it has been a fairly typical summer, except for the cooler weather. We have managed to get out and enjoy the nice days when we can!

The dogs have been enjoying the cooler temps for sure...

Glory Girl Frankenstein

Spooky Patch Diablo

Ella has been very insistent on playing with other kids lately so we have tried to hook up with the neighbors more. Here is Ella and Caleb having fun in the pool. It actually wasn't even that warm out by adult standards, but they just kept swimming and laughing with their purple lips!

I finally managed to remember to get a picture of Ella with my big belly....

..and then Ella had to play photographer as well....she didn't do too bad!

Last night we found Ella had an enormous splinter on the bottom of her foot! After a couple ours of negotiating, trying, failing to get cooperation, then negotiating again we finally just held her tight and got it out. I am sure our neighbors were wondering what the hell we were doing to our child to make her scream and cry so much (the noise began as soon as we grabbed her foot). Jake was the surgeon and I was the restrainer. She flailed the first time, but after saying her other option was daddy holding and mommy being the surgeon, she grudgingly succombed. She cried and it must have hurt a lot, but she managed to not kick and Jake finally got it out. She was really brave in the end and it was hard to see her in pain, but it had to be done. It was a quarter inch long....

Soon after she was blissful again with a baggie of gummy worms and a cup of ginger ale!

Hope everyone is well and we shall be talking to you again very soon!!

Love,

The Allens

Summer is Here!

I know it may be late to say it, but it seems summer is in full swing the last few weeks.

We have been busy going places and visiting friends and family, as usual and trying to get out and enjoy the great weather when it decides to show up.

For once we left town for the Fourth of July! I found a great little resort in the middle of no where thanks to the neighbors. Since I am preggo I was not willing to tent it and cabins tend to be pretty spendy, but this place was not. It is call Crooked Lake Resort. Its on crooked lake about 20 miles northeast of Finland, MN. There are only 11 cabins and some camp sites so it is nice and small. all cabins are on the lake or lake view and most have their own dock.



We borrowed Tom's (my mom's husband) boat and it was fun cruising around on the lake. Ella loved going fast!


We didn't get much for fish, but Ella reeled in her first fish ever, with daddy's help.



The cabin was nice and had electric and a gas stove. The only amenity missing was water, but it wasn't too far to walk to retrieve that. Ella had some misgivings about the outhouse, but she seemed to get used to it quickly.


The area was beautiful and it was just nice to relax with no schedule or technology to bother us. The weather was absolutely perfect, so we couldn't have asked for a better weekend! We will definitely be visiting again in the future!


Last weekend we visited Dr. David and Leslie, I had worked for them several years back. We still keep in touch and like to go visit them in WI. They have added some livestock to their place this year so we were excited to see the new additions!

Emily the donkey was so sweet and did such a great job with letting Ella ride on her a bit.

They also have a horse (a Canadian) name Camanche, he is big, all black and just gorgeous! Ella refused to go near him most of time so I neglected to get a good picture of him. By far Ella was most obsessed with the chickens! They were still young and some were friendly so she got to pet them and feed them some yummy veges!!


We had a great day there with the animals and taking a nice walk around their property. The weather couln't have been better.

We have a busy two months ahead of us, not including the new addition!! I am due in less than 3 weeks so we hope to make it to most things that are going on, but we will be missing some of them unfortunately.

Hope you all are well and look forward to seeing you yet this summer!

Love,

The Allens

Long time......

.....no blog!

Quite a while since I have updated here. We even have a computer at the house now and it still doesn't seem that I get to things! Its been a busy year so far......

Ella accomplished the feat of potty training with flying colors several months back. I finally just forced her to try when I asked her to for a couple days and its been easy cheesy since. She is even dry 98% of the time overnight and wakes up to go sometimes! Its amazing what candy and consistency can bring!!

Ella attended her first horse expo and rodeo at the Mn State Fair grounds April 24th. She had a blast and loooved all the horsies! She also sat enthralled through the two plus hour rodeo performance!

Here is Jake and Derek at the expo...looking particularily red-neckish....



The next day Ella turned three years old!! I cannot believe how fast she is growing! We had fun celebrating with her and we even managed to get the moonwalk set up for when we had friends over with their kids...it was a blast (Thanks Joe and Rachel!!).






May flew by, but Jake did good for mother's day and set up a vegetable garden area in the yard!! It was nice to have him around for mother's day for once too! Since he went on a Boundary Waters trip the week after he skipped fishing opener this year! Ella had fun helping too! We did lose some plants because I apparently planted too early and we had two nights of frost after that Sunday - jeez! Uh well, we figure this will be our experimental year to learn some lessons....lesson 1 learned!


Jake went to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) for over a week with Erik, Jeremy, Jim, and Dan. Apparently they had a good time, and Ella and I did ok without daddy around. Ella did miss him though and so did I (I hate doing the dishes!).

While Jake was gone I managed to finally get some photos of Ella as her official three year photos. I used my old(er) non-digital professional camera in the back yard. I got some nice ones...






We are starting to get ready for baby number two and I got all the clothes washed and in the drawer (how did I end up with so many onsies?!). We know its a girl, at least thats what the ultrasounds indicate. We have decided on the name Maven Olivia...I know its different, but we love it and I think we will call her Mae for short. I am now 33 weeks so under two months left!! I do get another ultrasound tomorrow...I am measuring small so the doctor will double check the growth - not really worried, I measured small with Ella too and she was above "average" size everytime they checked!

Ella is excited to be a big sister, this being perpetuated even more by big sisiter books that we have been reading. They really did the trick to get her to think about it more and identify herself as the big sister. She talks and sings a lullaby with me to Maven several nights a week before bed....too cute!

Hope everyone is having a great summer so far and I will hopefully bring updates on a more regular basis.

Love,

The Allens