The Allred Family

Ayva's 2nd Birthday

2012-01-07T20:10:00.004-06:00

I can't believe that 2 years ago I had my second little baby girl. Ayva Vittoria Allred was born on January 8, 2010. A day before my brother's wedding.

Ayva has fallen in love with Elmo. The cute little red monster on Sesame Street. She calls him "Memo." She loves watching him on youtube while sitting on the couch. So I decided to make a whole bunch of little Elmo's for her birthday. I made some red velvet cake balls covered in red chocolate. I made his eyes and nose using fondant and then my brother colored in the black eyes and mouth with some more chocolate. Here they are:

This was my first attempt at making cake balls. Not bad, right?

Ayva had fun eating the cake balls. Here she is taking a bite out of Elmo.

We didn't have a huge birthday party, we had my 2nd cousin come over with her beautiful family. This is Brisa and her distant 3rd cousin, I think, Arianna. I'm not sure what the correct term would be. I'll have to look it up some day. The girls loved it.

They decided to take a break from playing the wii. These two girls love playing together whenever they get the chance.

We had fun celebrating Ayva's birthday. I hope you enjoy this nice idea, if you don't mind not have a big birthday cake with the candle.

Raking Leaves in January?

2012-01-07T18:33:00.005-06:00

Well, I heard on the news that La Nina is wreaking havoc and here is what she's done to Houston. We are experiencing warm and lovely weather conditions. Our trees are just barely losing their leaves. So, we are experiencing early fall weather instead of cold, frigid winter weather.

This is Brisa and Ayva's first experience raking up leaves. We have always lived in apartments and have never had to deal mowing our lawns, raking up the leaves, or laying down mulch, and so on. So the girls had fun outside raking up the leaves...

Well, Brisa was raking the leaves while Ayva was walking through the piles of leaves and kicking them up as she walked through.

Can you tell that she is having fun?

Once we gathered all the leaves around our beautiful Oak tree, Brisa decided that she wanted to get buried by all of the leaves. Ayva just wanted to sit in the pile, she didn't think it was much fun when daddy started shoving leaves on top of her.

These are our beautiful girls in January 2012 cleaning up the yard. Naiya wasn't allowed to participate much, she kept wanting to eat the leaves instead.

What's better? The toy or the box?

2011-10-29T15:02:00.008-05:00

I just had to upload these pictures. Ayva is inside of her LEGO box. This is just another one of those toys that you buy because you think your kid is going to enjoy and then you find out that they like the box better than the toy. Every morning she gets up and dumps all of the LEGO's out of her box. Picture a sea of LEGO's on the floor that you have to maneuver through to get into her bedroom.

So here is our wonderful little girl watching Qubo while sitting in her awesome box.

Halloween Trunk or Treat

2011-10-29T14:14:00.009-05:00

Last night we went to our wards annual Trunk or Treat. What is a trunk or treat? Well, that is when a group of people get together in a parking lot with their trunks open and hand out candy while sitting on their trunks or displaying something fun in their trunks. Kids go from one car to the next asking for candy.

A cold front had arrived that same morning so we had to bundle up our girls. For Naiya's first Halloween she wore a candy corn outfit. It kept her nice in warm. Can you tell?

Brisa dressed up as Rapunzel and Ayva dressed up as a lady bug.

Can you tell that Brisa is excited to get candy?

Here is Ayva with Naiya in our awesome double stroller. It was too dark and too crowded to let her run around so she had to be in the stroller or with daddy.

Can you see Naiya?

We were all really cold after we were done. We rushed to the car and turned on the heater for the first time. I love Brisa's expression here, can you tell she is excited. Ayva is looking at her candy. She's probably saying "Hmmm..what is this? How can I get it open?" Turns out that is a sour patch candy bag she is holding. Her face puckered up when she finally had some, it was hilarious.

Our girls are very lucky, they get to go trick or treating twice every year, one at church and again on Halloween. We are going to have so much candy.

Homeless

2011-08-27T18:42:00.018-05:00

Alright, so our lease on our apartment ended on June 30 and we had no place to live after that. We were homeless for the whole month on July. We were finally able to sign on our house on August 5. Here are the pictures from the listing. I will later post pictures of what our home looks like with our furniture. This might take a while with the new baby and me still recuperating from my surgery. We are slowly unpacking our things.

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Ayva's Bedroom - The blue will later be painted some shade of pink.

Brisa's Bedroom - This room will also be painted pink as requested by Brisa.

Hallway bathroom

Half bath in the master bedroom

Backyard - We fell in love with this yard and nice shed in the corner.

Kody is so excited to finally mow the lawn at his own house. The girls love being able to play outside on the deck. We will be getting them a playground set in the fall when it is not so hot down here in Houston.

While we were homeless in July, we spent time both in Dallas and Utah.

In Utah we went to visit the Church History Museum. They had an exhibit for children about the Book of Mormon. We took the girls to go see it and they had a lot of fun.

This is a boat that explained about the trip that Nephi's family took when they left Jerusalem. Ayva was playing with the fish.

Here the girls are playing with a truck filled with animals.

Ayva had fun driving the truck.

This was a fun exhibit that you should visit if you go to Salt Lake City.

While in Utah we went to Desert Star Theatre. If you have never been to Desert Star, YOU SHOULD GO! It is a theatre that creates plays that involve Utah and Mormon culture. It is hilarious and these plays will keep you laughing the whole time. We took these pictures while waiting to be seated.

My In-laws

Our niece, Karli, was also baptized while we were in Utah. Here she is with her dad. (This is Kody's oldest brother.)

The Allred Family (Their oldest son is missing in this picture)

Here Brisa and Karli are standing next to the cake that their grandma made.

Brisa is so excited to be baptized next year after seeing Karli's baptism.

We were able to go to the Draper temple to seal my father-in-law to his parents. Let me give you a head up if you plan on visiting the Draper temple. They do not rent clothing so bring your own if you plan on visiting. We had not brought our clothes. We had packed them up in the move. Luckily they do have some clothes for emergencies like ours. We got to walk into their laundry room to find some temple clothing that fit us.

This is a gorgeous view from the temple. It is up on the mountain side and you can see the whole Salt Lake valley.

In the same month, we went to Hogle Zoo where they were having a Dinosaur exhibit. They had different dinosaurs through out the park. Some of which sprayed water, moved and made sounds.

This is the Triceratops.

This lovely Veloceraptor would spit out water. Brisa was not very happy when this happened.

I am not quite sure what dinosaur this was, I think it is the Alosaurus.

T-Rex

We went to the bird show, it was amazing. Brisa and Ayva loved it. They were entertained the whole time.

Ayva is following the bird that is flying around the auditorium. They were flying really low and close to all the people.

The lovely carousel ride.

Under the elephant.

This one is the Bracheasaurus. It was in the duck pond. The ducks had fun swimming around this big guy.

I have no idea what this dinosaur is. Sorry.

You can't leave Hogle Zoo without riding their train.

If you visit Utah and drive up Provo Canyon you will run into Bridal Veil Falls. This is a beautiful waterfall that has a beautiful trail. You can also play in the water at the base of the falls but let me warn you, the water is COLD! Even in July.

You can tell that a lot of people play in the water. I am not strong enough to withstand the cold water on my feet.

Ayva did like the water at first but...

then decided that she no longer wanted to walk in the water.

Picture of my mother-in-law with my girls in the trees that lead up to the falls.

Here we are walking away from the falls. Look at all those trees. It is a gorgeous walk.

It was an interesting experience being homeless. Luckily, we were able to live with our parents during this process and we were lucky enough to have been in our house before Naiya was born. We had only been in our home for 3 days before Naiya was born.

Welcome Home!

2011-08-20T09:44:00.014-05:00

We would like to present

Naiya Aleina Allred
Born on August 9, 2011 at 9:20 a.m.
Weight: 7 lbs Height: 18 in Proud parents.The girls had a lot of fun at the hospital. Brisa loved holding her little baby sister and Ayva loved running around the room and touching whatever she could get her hands on. Here is little Naiya getting ready to head out and go home after 4 long days in the hospital.Ayva got shocked the first time she held Naiya. She realized she didn't have a baby toy. This baby actually moves and cries.I will later post what we've done all summer long. We have been homeless for a whole month, which is why I haven't posted anything all summer. I will explain more in future posts.

Happy 7th Birthday

2011-06-09T20:41:00.009-05:00

My little baby has turned 7! Brisa's birthday is May 23 but we did not plan her actual party until today. We did something really small on her actual birthday.
We bought Brisa a little birthday cake, and then...
shoved her face in it. You can tell that she was not very happy about it. She does not like having stuff on her face, especially her eyes.
We had Brisa's birthday party at a place called "Jump 'N Jungle." It is a place that has a bunch of bounce houses. We had a private room where all of Brisa's friends were able to play together. Brisa LOVED this.
Don't let this picture fool you. Ayva did NOT like the bounce houses. This was just a lucky shot. She cried any time we tried to get her on
Ayva preferred to try to escape, which she did manage to do a few times.

A sister in the ward took out her iPad for Ayva to play with so that she would stop trying to escape. Ayva really like it, we might have to invest in one in the future.
Here are all the friends Brisa had to play with.
After playing with the bounce houses we went into another room to eat and open presents.
We had an awesome party host who did everything for us. It is so nice to have someone else do all the dirty work.
Brisa had a Rapunzel cake, of course. Thank you Disney for choosing our theme this year.

2011-04-18T20:16:00.005-05:00

We started a new tradition last year in our family, well, kind of. Last year we tried to make egg shaped rice krispie treats. They didn't take shape, we tried to mold them with our hands and it just ended up melting down to a flat treat because the marshmallow didn't cool down enough to hold the shame. So this year we decided to put the treats in a plastic egg shell and voila!

They were really fun to make. Brisa loved eating these as her snack.

This year we also took picture with the bluebonnets. Here are some pictures of our family in a bluebonnet field. For those of you who don't know, the bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas. We spent a good while in the field and did not end up with too many good pictures. Why? Well, we realized that Ayva really does not like to be awake during nap time and Brisa is really afraid of bees. There were a lot of bees, but they always kept their distance. Apparently, they weren't far enough away for Brisa.

The one family picture that actually worked out. Ayva does not look very happy.

So if you ever come to Texas during this time of the year you HAVE to take a picture in one of the many bluebonnet fields we have. Many of these fields are just on the side of the road.

We are having a...

2011-03-22T21:38:00.003-05:00

GIRL!We will now have 3 wonderful little girls.

Double Stroller!

2011-03-13T21:09:00.006-05:00

We finally got a double stroller!!! We started thinking about this when we found out we were expecting our 3rd little one, but we did not think we would find one for so cheap so soon. We went to a consignment shop and found this stroller that was marked at $132.99 but it was on sale for $52. When the owner saw Kody looking at it she said "I'll sell it to you for $30 if you buy it today. Kody went outside to get me, I was waiting in the van. The only problem was that it did not have a bar to hold an infant car seat. I was a little disappointed about the bar. But, then I looked down in the carrier basket and saw a crooked bar. The owner had not seen that the infant car seat bar was included, but it was too late to go back on her offer. We took it for $30. Isn't it beautiful?

Do you see that bar on the front seat? That was hiding in the cargo carrier in the bottom. Apparently several customers had looked at it for the last 5 months and nobody has noticed this bar. We looked up this stroller on line and it costs $259.99! I am so glad we found this one, we weren't planning on buying one for a while because we knew they were really expensive. We were blessed to find this.

Ayva really enjoyed the car seat. We took off the fabric we were able to and were washing it. Ayva had fun climbing in the car seat, going from the front seat to the back seat.

She even enjoyed going in the cargo bag.

She LOVED it.

This is a picture I took today as we were getting ready to go to church. This is an outfit that Brisa wore when she was 12 months. I tried to get Ayva to walk towards me to get a better picture but, as you can see, she is standing next to the stroller wanting to play with it.

On the ferry

2011-03-10T19:57:00.006-06:00

Here are a few pictures of when we went to feed the seagulls while on the ferry.
Ayva enjoyed walking around and being free for a while.
We were having a lot fun. But, feeding seagulls doesn't come without consequences. Poor Kody got pooped on. He wiped it off before I got the full picture of the white runny mess. LOL.

Valentine's Day

2011-02-20T20:32:00.005-06:00

I LOVE Valentine's Day. I don't know why people hate it so much with a passion. I have never felt pressure to buy my husband anything and my husband feels the same way about buying me gifts. This year he bought me 2 dozen tulips and had them sent to my work. It was such a shocking moment when I had a box delivered to my room during 5th period Algebra I class. At first I thought they were for the kids because the school had carnations delivered to those who bought flowers. Then I looked at the box and my full name was on there. I opened in front of my students, the girls were saying "aaww.. that is so sweet." I kinda felt bad, their little single carnation looked pretty pitiful next to my 24 tulips.When I got home, Kody had a hilarious surprise for me. Apparently he had hidden my turtles, my favorite chocolates, and a box of Wal-Mart's $1 chocolates in the closet under some of his clothes. He had showered earlier that morning and put his clothes on. Within 10 minutes, he started to feel sharp stings on his legs and arms. He noticed that he had several ants on him. He quickly changed into clothes that were not on the chocolates. When he checked on my chocolates, he noticed that they were fine. The Wal-Mart chocolates did not have the same luck. Take a look:I just laughed. My poor little Kody had ant bites all over his body. The good news, all of my turtles survived. They were wrapped in plastic so the ants never made it in. YAY!

Yes, We're Pregnant!

2011-02-20T19:37:00.008-06:00

The rumors are true, we are expecting our 3rd little Allred. I am currently 3 month pregnant. We had a fun way of announcing this to our parents and to Brisa.

My in-laws found out when they went to Dessert Star, a theatre in Salt Lake City. They made an announcement after the main show. Kody's mom called right after. It was hilarious because after the main show, they do a sing-a-long. We could hear the crowd singing on the cell phone as she was trying to figure out what was going on.

My parents found out when we mailed them some home made fortune cookies. I put red food coloring in the dough to make them red. Inside were little notes.The fortune cookies were really easy to make. Just look up the recipe, it's a good was to surprise people. My parents thought it was just a Valentine's gift from Brisa.

We told Brisa working on a puzzle that I made. It's not the best picture but it's the best I could do. Don't make fun of me and my belly.

We hid the baby at first, we thought that would give the surprise away too fast.So, it took Brisa a while to figure out what the surprise was. She did not understand the puzzle. She kept saying that the baby inside my belly was Ayva. It took 5 video takes to get her to realize that she was getting a new sibling. Here is her reaction.

Brisa still wants a baby brother. She cried when she found out that Ayva was a girl. Let's see what happens. We'll keep you posted.

True Texan

2011-02-11T18:52:00.007-06:00

Ayva became a true Texan today when she strut in her brand new pink cowgirl boots.

Daddy has his own set of cowboy boots as well. Here's my little girl on daddy's leg showing off her and daddy's beautiful boots.

Ayva's 1st Birthday!

2011-01-08T19:29:00.005-06:00

Our little girl turned 1 year old today. I can't believe it has been a whole year already. We found out this morning, on the news, that Elvis Presley was also born on January 8.

We didn't have a party, all we did was buy Ayva a birthday cake and we figured that she would destroy the cake with her little hands.

She had no problem wanting to touch it at first. I had to hold her back so that we could take a "before" picture.

After carefully grabbing one hand full, she realized that she did not like touching the cake and then started to cry.

Uploading a the video did not work.

Go to this link to watch a video of Ayva with her cake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgeDnLcTFN4

It was bath time afterwards. She had some frosting on her feet. She left little foot prints on the bath tub.

After Ayva was all squeaky clean, she opened her present. She wasn't really interested in it until we helped her peel the paper off.

She loved her musical light up butterfly.

2010-12-18T20:58:00.008-06:00

We've had so much fun this last few days. On Thursday, Brisa had a dance performance at a retirement home. We really don't have any pictures of her doing her dance because the room of the performance was too small to fit the patients and the parents.

On Friday we had an early Christmas. We opened presents from our family in Utah. We put on our Christmas pajamas and then got on Skype to talk to my in-laws. I'm sure you can see my mother-in-law in laptop in the picture below. Brisa had so much fun opening presents early.

Ayva tried to open her present, here she is just looking at the pretty pictures on the wrapper. Kody got some new socks for church. His old black socks are starting to look gray.

You can tell that Brisa was extremely excited about this gift.

I thought I could shake my gift and figure out what I got. That didn't work, but I got some cool things for school.

Lovely Ayva doesn't really like our new table because she cannot see what we are doing. She has learned how to put her foot on the chairs and then pulls herself up, we'll have to get a video of this later.

We decided to let her on the table to open her big present. She was more interested in climbing over the big box to get to the lap top on the other side.

Today we went to ride the Christmas Train in Alvin, Texas. There was a porch which had a lot of these rocking chairs. They were very comfortable.

They had a huge setup of a little town with a little train going around the city. This is only part of the little town.

We went inside, while we were waiting for the train, and decided to take pictures with Santa Clause. Ayva went first, I'm sure you can tell that she did not like sitting on Santa's lap.

Brisa LOVED seeing Santa. I'm sure she's thinking "Didn't I already tell you what I wanted?" We had seen Santa already this same morning at church for a primary activity.

Here we are waiting for the train to load up.

After the train ride we went to the little Nativity scene where you could pose as Mary and Joseph.

Fina's Early Christmas Gift

2010-12-12T18:47:00.007-06:00

So Fina and I have been married for 7 1/2 years and not once in that time period have we owned a new dining table. We have had used and abused ones, but never a new one. We have also lived in our apartment for nearly 2 years and have not had a dining table to eat on. Fina has been hinting for about 2 months that she wanted one for Christmas...so I delivered ;)

Behold the beauty that is our new dining table (covered with gifts from my parents because, thanks to Ayva pulling on everything, we don't have a Christmas tree up.)

It has seating for up to 7 people because we bought a breakfast bench for 3 and then 4 additional chairs (the bench is up against the wall under the table).

"Daddy, look how big I am getting! I look so cute in my big sister's camp shirt.

But ya know what Daddy, I don't like this gate...so watch what I can do!"

SWAGGER WAGON

2010-11-07T19:03:00.001-06:00

I've been asked about the phrase "swagger wagon." If you don't know what this is then you NEED to watch this video. It will make you feel better about owning a minivan. Enjoy!

Our New Baby

2010-11-07T15:51:00.010-06:00

Name: Nickname "Big Red" (To be named at a later date)

Date of Birth: November 6, 2010

Time of Birth: 7:30p.m. after 7 hours of hard labor

Length: 201 inches

Weight: 4,275 lbs

Ssssooooo.... Yeah, we did the unforgivable thing. We went out and bought a swagger wagon (No, it is not a minivan, that is a houshold curse word).

We never thought we would ever buy a #$%&*@! but we did. We travel too much to continue driving in our Hyundai Elantra. We just had to get something bigger. It took us 7 hours to get this vehicle, the car dealership was packed. The salesman didn't even have time to talk to us. We told him what car we wanted to look at and then he went and got it and said, "I'll see you when you get back." So we test drove it and got back and started looking for our salesman. We were directed to fill out an application for a loan and an application for trade in. The computer did everything, we talked to our salesperson for less than 10 minutes. I liked that part, I usually hate feeling pressured by a salesperson about buying a car but he just told us what to do and left. Luckily, they had a childrens play are with a playground. There were a lot of people buying cars that day, the loan officers were overwhelmed. We got to the dealership at 12:30 and we didn't leave until 7:30. We knew we were buying the car by 1:30 but we were in line to talk to the loan people for financing. Brisa had a blast, she got to play with a lot of kids while we waited and Ayva had fun crawling everywhere and seeing how fast she could out run mom. So, like we said, after 7 hours of labor we finally received our beautiful swagger wagon. Here she is:

Mandy and "Big Red"

Trunk or Treat

2010-10-29T21:42:00.005-05:00

Today was our ward's Trunk or Treat day. We had loads fun. Brisa designed her own pumpkin, daddy drew it on the pumpkin, and Brisa carved out her design.

This is her pumpkin at night. It has a mouth with teeth and a chin along with some beautiful cheek circles and lovely eye lashes.

This is Kody's pumpkin. He won "best decorated pumpkin" and scariest trunk, I didn't get a picutre of the trunk, sorry.

Kody and I had a cute idea for Halloween. Kody dressed up as a washing machine, if you look closely you can see the blue water inside.

And I dressed up as the dirty laundry. Ayva rode in my basket after about 30 minutes in the stroller. She enjoyed riding in the basket with me. Ayva was dressed as a pink fairy pumpkin. The wings weren't working with her so we had to remove them.

Brisa was princess Aurora.

More pictures of our lovely family.

Our Weekend in San Antonio

2010-09-24T20:03:00.020-05:00

We had a fun weekend in San Antonio this month. We went to go see the famous Alamo in downtown San Antonio. There were a lot of people visiting when we went. All of our pictures are of the outside of the Alamo because apparently the Alamo is a considered a shrine so no pictures are allowed of it from the inside. There are signs on the entry doors and people on the inside to let you know to not take pictures; and if you do take a picture, they kindly ask you to delete the picture. Kody was also asked to take his hat off as well while inside the main building. We were not expecting this when we got there.

There is a monument in front of the Alamo depicting the famous Davy Crockett and the Colonel, William B. Travis, in charge of the US side.

The grounds of the Alamo were gorgeous. It was covered in huge trees and greenery.

This is a fountain that is next to a building in the Alamo property that has now been remodeled to be a modern library that houses history books.

Little Ayva was so good. She enjoyed being pushed around.

This is one of the big trees on the property, there are some others that were a lot bigger than this one. These huge trees helped us keep cool, there is a lot of shade on the grounds.

Crockett's name is written on the side of the fountain above.

After the Alamo, we walked over to the famous Riverwalk. It was about $9 per person and I think it was worth it. You get to ride on open boats with a tour guide who tells you the history of the different buildings next to the San Antonio river.

These are the Riverwalk guide tour boats.

The glass building on the right is the Riverwalk mall.

There are many things to see while on the tour. This is an island of plotted flowers that you can see from the inside of the mall. If you look at the background of the picture you can see the glass windows that belong to the Riverwalk mall. It is a gorgeous view.

I think these are bells that belonged to an old Catholic church.

Beautiful staircase to the main floor of downtown San Antonio.

We were really lucky on this day. As soon as our boat docked under the bridge, it started to pour. Luckily, a store next to the boats sold ponchos. We waited for about 30 minutes before the rainstorm passed. There was still some rain, but not as much. At the end of the day we had to walk back to our car and on the way there we took this picture of Brisa and I at the Alamo in our lovely ponchos.

We stayed at the Sleep Inn hotel about 20 minutes away. We have to mention them because they had an awesome breakfast; well, from what we've had before this has been the best.

We've always had hotels say they have free breakfast, but they've only offered bananas, muffins, and packaged fruit bars. At the Sleep Inn we had the choice of real orange juice and apple juice, biscuits and gravy, hard boiled eggs, cereal, bagels, and waffles. But not just any waffles... TEXAS shaped waffles.

My waffle didn't turn out as good as Kody's did, but I still thought it was really cool to eat Texas, and so did Brisa. We had a geography lesson while we ate breakfast.

On Saturday we went to Sea World. This was Brisa and Ayva's first time there.

Brisa loved the shows, you can see in this picture how she is concentrating on the animals. Ayva loved the huge TV screen. She stared at it the whole time.

Believe is the name of the Shamu show. It was amazing to see these huge animals jump out of the air. They were beautiful. We even got to see a baby Shamu (yes, I know they are called killer whales but I'm going to call them Shamu's). The baby Shamu was born on January 7, a day before Ayva was born.

A picture right outside the Shamu stadium.

Ayva fell asleep after the show. She was exhausted from an early morning and from all of the excitement.

We also went to see The Cannery Row Caper, which features two silly seals, a river otter, and a huge walrus.

This show was hilarious. I recommend you go see this if you go to Sea World.

Well, once again we were lucky. While we were watching the show, it started to sprinkle a bit. We had left all of our ponchos in the stroller outside the stadium so we had to improvise a way to keep Ayva dry.

Kody was giving us a kissy face. Ayva had no problem with this new arrangement. She enjoyed being inside daddy's shirt.

The last show we saw was the Azul show. This one featured dolphins, beluga whales, parrots, and amazing acrobats. There were many stunts during the show. My favorite one was before the show even started. Here's an insider tip. This show starts earlier than what the flyer says. There is a man dressed like a tourist who basically acts like a clown. There is a fountain that squirts water out and he just seems to get in the way of this fountain everytime and splash everyone around him.

Now, the only reason there is a splash zone in this stadium is because of the "tourist." The beluga whales and dolphins don't really splash the audience. This "tourist" started his act about 15 minutes before the show. He then was also in the show still pretending to be a tourist and not knowing how to act around the animals. It was very amusing, especially for the little kids. Brisa was laughing the whole time.

The stars in the show are not only the animals, but the acrobats as well. They did some amazing jumps from high above, and amazing flips as well.

After the show we went to go feed the dolphins. You could buy fish to feed the dolphins.

We did have a down pour but we were luckily in a show. Ayva's stroller got a personal pink poncho as well. The hole for the head was in the front where we could peek through to see Ayva.

We took some final family pictures to remember this fun day.
And right before we left, we found Shamu walking around and got to pose with him.
That same night we went to my cousins quinceanera. We left Sea World at 5:30, made it to the hotel by 6:00, showered the girls and ourselves, and got ready for a party in less than 45 minutes. I never thought it could be possible, but we succeeded.

There were two girls celebrating their quinceanera on this day, my cousin is the one in the bright pink dress and my uncle, her dad, is dancing with her in this picture.

(Tiffany and Tio Pepe above)

(Tiffany and her Chambelan below)

The next day, Sunday, we spent the day with my family and my grandparents from Mexico. I had not seen any of them in 6 years. It was nice to see them again. This was a long, busy, and fun weekend.

Scootin'

2010-08-08T18:14:00.003-05:00

We've enjoyed seeing Ayva learn how to crawl. From our previous post you saw that Ayva first started by doing push ups. She then found out how to get on her knees and shake back and forth. She then got on all fours and ended up pushing herself backwards. Well, now she has learned how to move forward but it's more like a scoot. Here she is:

Summer 2010

2010-08-05T18:58:00.019-05:00

We had loads of fun this summer. Our summer started out by a visit from our niece, Brianna. She flew down from Utah to stay with us for a week and then rode with us to Utah. We did a lot of fun things while Brianna was here.

We went on a tour of the Galveston Bay. We rode in a boat that had two decks. Even though the day was really hot, you could not feel it because there was always a breeze. The weather was really nice once you got out into the bay.

While on the tour we passed the Del Monte boat. The captain of our tour boat told us that this ship comes in every Monday from Central America with a full load of freshly picked bananas. We could definitely smell them as we passed the boat. We were able to see those huge cranes lift out huge crates of bananas. Brisa had fun looking through her binoculars to find the dolphins. You really didn't need the binoculars, the dolphins were popping up all over the place. Some came really close to the boat.

Here's a video of a family of dolphins we found.

We also found some shrimp boats. We saw one coming in from the ocean being chased by seagulls. Later that week we went to visit downtown Houston. We went to the JP Morgan Chase tower which is the tallest building in Houston. You can up to the 60th floor which has an observation lobby. On the way up you can ride this lovely elevator and have fun with your reflection on the elevator doors.
The view was gorgeous! We were able to see all of downtown Houston. We could see so many building and freeways. We could see for many miles.

We were also able to take a picture of the downtown aquarium, which was our next destination.

We went into the aquarium which had many beautiful exhibits. I thought it was interesting that the aquarium had a Bengal Tiger exhibit. I guess their just trying to help these beautiful creatures. The exhibit was beautiful, there was only a pane of glass separating you from the tiger and the tiger kept walking by. We were able to see it up close.

They have 4 tigers but only one of them was interested in Brisa.

Kody was having fun fighting with this tiger.

Right outside the aquarium you can find some fun rides and games. We rode the ferris wheel which is next to I-45. When you go up you are next to the free way.

We were able to see the cars drive next to us.

There is also a train ride at the aquarium. It was really fun, especially when this huge shark jumped out of a little pond. We were not expecting this nice recreation of "Jaws." We got splashed with water at the same time. It was really fun.

After a long day in Houston we played in the water fountains at the aquarium. It felt really good since the day was really hot. Even Ayva got a chance to play with the fountains. She kept trying to catch the water.
Well, we went to Utah for the month of July but you will notice that there are no pictures of this trip. Well, I guess I would be at fault for no pictures. I ended up getting pneumonia in Utah so we ended up staying home. I was basically quarantined to the basement by my lovely husband because he did not want me to get anyone else sick. So no pretty Utah pics this time.

On our road trip back home I took this funny picture of Ayva watching Dora and drinking her bottle. We hung the DVD player from the car seats handle. This didn't last long because she kept trying to grab the characters on the screen which caused the DVD player to slide off the handle. There have been many changes this summer with our little girls.

Ayva has finally found her knees. She kept doing push ups, like so. She would go up on her little does but now she pulls up her knees and rocks back and forth. She still hasn't figured out how to crawl. Instead she pushes herself back with her arms.

Ayva has also started eating better. She likes her foods and doesn't fight us much anymore.
Brisa has also grown. We went shopping for shoes and found that her foot grew 2 shoe sizes over the summer. In May her foot size was a 10, she is now wearing size 12. What happened to 11?

And in these last 10 days Brisa has managed to lose 3 teeth. The tooth fairy is getting tired of visiting us. We also realized that the tooth fairy accidentally gave Brisa $5 for her last tooth. We were surprised to see the $5 the next morning. Oh well, the tooth fairy will be a little short on money for grocery shopping.

Poor Brisa, she has a hard time eating foods. It will be nice once they all come back. She is currently missing 4 teeth in the front and has lost a total of 7 teeth 3 of which have grown in completely and 1 still working on coming out.

Well, that was our summer. I hope everyone else had fun as well.

Graduating Class of 2022 & A Trip to Firehouse 1

2010-06-18T17:37:00.013-05:00

Our oldest daughter, Brisa, graduated from Kindergarten this month. She is in the graduating class of 2022. Can you believe it? Her teacher presented them as the future class as 2022 and I could not believe it. You just don't think about things like that; it's amazing how quick they grow up. This is a picture of Brisa with her teacher, Mrs. Hopper.

Mrs. Hopper's Kindergarten Class

Pictures of the award ceremony.

Today we had an activity with our play group. We went to visit the fire station and we got to get on the fire trucks and see how the firemen get all dressed to fight fires.

The wheel on the fire truck is almost as big as Brisa is.

Brisa and her friends had so much fun climbing on and off the fire trucks and being able to sit where the fire men sit. She had fun posing for these pictures and pretending that she was driving the trucks.

Here are a few cute pictures I thought were cute. These are just for fun.

Ayva has started to suck her thumb to soothe herself when she is sleeping. It's really cute.

Beautiful Brisa on the swing.

Playing tug-o-war with the primary on Memorial Day.

My wonderful girls and me.

Mother's Day

2010-05-09T14:25:00.004-05:00

Happy Mother's Day to everyone. This is what my husband got for me...he's so thoughtful. The yellow rose came from our church ward but the red ones are from Kody.

Kody bought me a beautiful picture of the Dallas temple. I love the antiquing that was done to it. It looks beautiful . Bit by bit we are decorating our house.

Here is a close up...whoever made it did a really good job!

My poor poor Mandy

2010-05-04T17:48:00.002-05:00

So my poor "Mandy"(that's what I call her) got a boo boo today...more like a black eye. I was minding my own business trying to take a left turn and then some MO-ron decided to race his light and smashed right into me. She's been a loyal servant for the family for 6 years now and she's been through a lot. It's now going to cost more to repair her than I can trade her in for...oh well, at least I'm not the one flippin' the bill because it wasn't my fault. She's gonna get a few upgrades so it makes it bitter sweet.

Brisa's Dance Clinic

2010-04-24T22:01:00.003-05:00

So Brisa had a dance clinic at Fina's school today. The above video is of her performance.

This video is of the Finale, there were a few technical difficulties, but all in all it was fun. Brisa loved it even though she was a little nervous and pretty scared before the class, but she had a great time.

Ayva's Blessing Weekend

2010-04-13T17:43:00.015-05:00

This last weekend we had family from Utah and Dallas come over. Kody's parents, brother, and niece came from Utah and my parents came from Dallas to spend a fun weekend exploring Galveston Island. The first thing we did was go to Seawolf park where they have a submarine, USS Cavalla, and a destroyer escort ship, USS Stewart, both of which were used in WWII.

To get in the submarine you had to go to the very top and go through a small door with very steep stairs.

The first thing you would see if all of this machinery...

with the following sign:

I wonder how they figure out if something had been moved, there are thousands of knobs and buttons all over the place. Does anybody really know how to fix the problem if someone were to play with the knobs. Is there still a submarine expert who can figure out the problem? Interesting thought? I wonder, how long it would take?

Anyways, these are the bunk beds where all the sailors slept.

Some of these bunks are right on top of the missiles they stored.

Inside the submarine we had to go through small and narrow doors. Here is a picture of Brianna sitting on the little door.

The hallways were also very narrow. You had to be careful when you passed someone in the hallway because it barely fit two people. Now this was not really a problem, not until we got to the end. There was a room that had a REALLY small hallway. Ayva almost did not make it through. I tried to get her through but she got stuck with the electrical boxes at the bottom so I had to hand her to Kody. He had to pick up Ayva up high and tilt her car seat so that she could go through this narrow hallway.
After seeing the inside of a submarine we went to go see the inside of USS Stewart.

The toilets were not the prettiest things. These sailors had to poop into a trough. There was absolutely no privacy. How could you go in front of another person? Wow, these men really were brave.

After being at Seawolf park we went to the aquarium. I have shown pictures of this previously so I wont talk too much about this. Here are some cute pictures of our adventure.

Torey had a lot of fun being in the shark cage. Doesn't Brianna think her dad is cool?

Last time we were here Brisa was not as tall as the Emperor penguins. She has now grown to be as big as the Emperor penguin. I would not like to bump into them in the wild.

We also went to the beach, near Murdoch's. Murdoch's is an awesome souvenir store. Things are really cheap. I thought that things were going to be overpriced but everything was affordable. So, if you ever come to Galveston you have to stop at Murdoch's and get yourself a little something to take home.

After a very busy day we had to wake up very early the next morning to be at church at 8:30AM for Ayva's blessing. We had a beautiful morning. Ricky and Carmen joined us at church, they were staying with Carmen's family in Houston so they were not able to join us in Galveston.

Here are some beautiful pictures of our amazing family.

I love Brisa. She keeps me active everyday and keeps me talking.

Our Family

The Allred Family

The Rodriguez Family

The dress that Brisa is wearing is her flower girl dress that she was unable to wear at Ricky's wedding because I went into labor the day before his wedding. So, instead of just hanging it in the closet we decided to have her wear it for Ayva's blessing.

Strawberry Pickin'

2010-03-27T14:38:00.009-05:00

Today we went to Froberg Farms in Alvin, Texas. This is a vegetable and fruit farm that lets people come and pick their own strawberries. The grounds were beautiful and the people there were very friendly. Here is a video that Kody shot of the farms.

There were a lot of rows of fresh strawberries. The farm was packed today because the news showcased them that week and several radio stations talked about them too.

Brisa had fun searching for the red strawberries, which was not hard because there were a lot of them.

She had her own bucket and mommy and daddy shared a bucket together.

Ayva followed along in her stroller. She enjoyed being outside and looking around. She is strutting new clothes, isn't she cute?

Brisa and Daddy

We filled two buckets full of strawberries, this one is my bucket. (below)

And this one is Brisa's bucket. (right)

Brisa was very proud of her full bucket. She actually wants to eat these strawberries. For those of you who don't know, Brisa has always said that she does not like strawberries. We'll see what happens tonight when we make strawberry shortcake.

I just had to put this picture of Ayva in her new clothes. She is now wearing pants instead of pajama onesies.

When Little Ones Get Sick

2010-03-13T11:20:00.004-06:00

Ayva got sick this week because of me :( We took her to the doctors and she told us that Ayva had a lot of flem in her lungs and so she needed a nebulizer to help her get rid of all that flem. Well, last night we put the nebulizer on her and the infant mask was very cute, here are some pictures.

We have to hold her straight up while on the nebulizer. This is me holding her and the mask at the same time.

Isn't the fish mask cute?

Yet another reason not to buy soda pop

2010-03-08T09:30:00.005-06:00

So this post is really for my mom (Kody's mom) but I figured some of you out there might get a kick out of it as well.

We never buy pop but my mom came to visit us at the end of January to see Ayva and she just had to buy some Diet Coke. Well, unbeknownst to me, she left one at the back of the fridge...the video pretty much explains it all...anyways, enjoy!

Ayva

2010-03-05T19:36:00.005-06:00

Just posting a video and pictures of Ayva

This is the "new" swing that we bought Ayva because she did not like the forward facing swing, she likes to be swung side to side.

Fun on the Ferry

2010-02-08T15:13:00.012-06:00

(February 6)

Today we went to ride the ferry that connects Galvestone Island to Bolivar Peninsula. We love riding the ferry, this is something you can do for FREE!! You drive your car onto the ferry and then you can get out and walk about.

You can go up stairs and look down onto the ocean and cars. There are always families of dolphins swimming around.

At the back of the boat you can feed the seagulls. They know that they can get a good meal if they follow the boat. They come in huge packs, as you can see in the following pictures, and they have no fear of coming really close to you. The seagulls will even eat out of your hand when you hold up a piece of bread or cracker. Here is a video where Brisa is holding a cracker in the air and a seagull snatches the cracker out of her hand.

Beautiful Brisa

This is my mother-in-law, she spent 10 days with us. She enjoyed the ferry as well. She was surprised at just how many seagulls chased the ferry. She was worried about getting bird poop in her hair.

A trip to the Health Museum & Ayva's first bath

2010-02-01T22:29:00.008-06:00

(January 30, 2010)

This week my mother-in-law flew in to stay with us for a week. To start the weekend off we decided to go to the Health Museum.

The Health Museum had an exhibit about "Backyard Monsters." They made these backyard bugs HUGE and they moved. I thought this was a fun exhibit for children. Here are some pictures so you can see just how big these bugs were.

Ayva slept through our trip, she wasn't interested in what was going on around her.

There was a huge exhibit that talked about the human body. This is a skeleton riding a bike. When Brisa pedaled, the skeleton also pedaled. It let kids know what their skeleton looked like when they pedal bikes.
Today was also Ayva's first bath. We've been waiting for umbilical cord to fall, well Brisa has been waiting. She's been praying to Heavenly Father to have Ayva's black thing fall off her belly. So after a long day out at the Museum and the store my two lovely daughters took a bath together. Brisa's been waiting to help mommy with this duty as a big sister.

Ayva enjoyed the bath. She did not cry when we placed her in her bath tub. She was calm when we poured water over her body and just sat there patiently.

Ayva finally cried when we poured water on her head. She did not like that very much at first but then she calmed down and enjoyed the rest of her bath.

Brisa helped mommy wash Ayva's body with soap.

Here is little Ayva nice and clean and wrapped in her little towel.

Funny and Surprising things our children say

2010-01-24T19:50:00.003-06:00

Today after church, Brisa asked me a question that I thought was really cute and hilarious. She asked "Mom, is today fast Sunday or slow Sunday?" I could not help myself. I had to laugh at her question. Our bishop hands out candy every Sunday except on fast Sunday and so I'm guessing that this was the reason why she asked about fast Sunday. We'll have to work on helpin her understand exactly what fast Sunday is.

Today during sacrament, Brisa was coloring a page in her Friend magazine about Adam and Eve. The person giving a talk, while she was coloring, talked about Adam and Eve. Brisa pointed out to us that the person talking was talking about Adam and Eve. I was surprised that she was listening to what was being said while she was coloring. Children really do pick listen to everything that is going on around them. It may not seem like they are paying attention, but they really are.

Good Bye Kiddie Kandids :(

2010-01-18T19:11:00.015-06:00

Well, we found out that Kiddie Kandids shut down immedietly on January 10, 2010. We were SO sad to find this out. They were the only portrait studio that we could afford and that would take the cutest picture of children. So we decided to take our own pictures at our home using our bed sheets and this is what came out.

Kiddie Kandids needs to come back. Who else will take cute pictures and have them ready to pic up within an hour for less than $100? If you know of any other company that's like Kiddie Kandids, PLEASE let me know.

My little brother's wedding

2010-01-14T20:34:00.014-06:00

For those of you who don't know, my little brother, Ricky, was married on Saturday, January 9 2010. The day AFTER I gave birth. This was not supposed to happen. I was supposed to make it to the wedding on Saturday because I still had 10 days until my actual due date. My blog was supposed to show me in a beautiful dress with these lovely people at the Dallas, Texas temple:

I was feeling fine on Thursday night and I had no contraction pains, I was uncomfortable but that was because of the stomach size. Everything was going fine up until I reached the door at my work. My water broke right as I reached my job. I had to hurry into my classroom so that none of the students would see me with wet pants. I immediately called the front office and had them get me a substitute for the day. I had several teachers come into my room to keep me company and my principle came in to check on me as well, which I thought was nice. Kody came and picked me and then took me to the hospital. I did not have any contraction pains up until my water broke, so you can imagine how surprised I was when my water broke. When I got to the hosptial I was contracting every 3 minutes. My doctor had told me on the phone that she would do the C-section around 1 in the afternoon but this changed when they found out how close my contractions were. My little Ayva came out at 10:06AM and once again, I seemed to have blanked out a few minutes after she was born. When I awoke I was in my recovery room with Kody waiting for me to wake up.

I was not in pain for long, I got to the hospital and got prepped right away for surgery, which was nice because I have very low pain tolerance. The only bad thing about this birth was that Kody was not able to stay with me all 4 days at the hospital. The new hospital rules are that no children under 12 are allowed past the lobby. .Here is a picture of Brisa waiting down in the lobby on the 3rd day after I gave birth, the day they finally let me go down to the lobby. She was excited to see her mommy.

Poor Brisa was having a hard time understanding why she could not see her mom or baby sister. Kody said that she cried at home asking "why?" a lot. It was very hard for me to talk to her over the phone and keep from crying. I must say that that was a very hard experience for me, to have to tell my child that I can't come home and that she can't come and see me.

We surprised Brisa on Monday by not telling her that mom and baby Ayva would be home waiting for her. When the door opened she saw us and her mouth actually dropped with surprise. She saw her sister for the first time, she has asked to hold her every day after school. She loves her so much.

Thank you to all of who have left loving messages, it's nice to read these after a long time alone at the hospital.

Brisa met her little sister for the first time today

2010-01-11T20:08:00.011-06:00

Today we brought Ayva home from the hospital and we also welcomed Fina back as well. Here are a few pictures and videos of Ayva's trip home and also her first meeting with her big sister, Brisa.
Getting ready to leave the hospital
Fina holding Ayva as we left the hospital

First time in her new bed Brisa meeting her new sister

Sisterly bond

Baby Ayva

2010-01-10T07:37:00.004-06:00

Here is just a brief snipet about the new baby. World, meet Ayva Vittoria Allred. She was born on Friday, January 8th at 10:06 in the morning and weighed in at 7 pounds 10 ounces with a length of 19 inches.

Christmas Eve and Christmas morning

2009-12-25T10:00:00.007-06:00

Here are just a few pictures of Christmas 2009!

The family party on Christmas Eve

Santa Clause Came!

Santa left Kody a white Christmas

Some Tommy Cologne from Fina

a book from Brisa (even though it's more for Brisa than daddy)

Fina got containers from her parents (a DVD and PC game and a Cricut from Kody, not pictured)

a recorder for Brisa

This is a bath time book so Brisa can help bathe the baby when it comes

Now Brisa can take her own pictures instead of break mommy and daddy's camera ;)

the total haul for Brisa

Christmas Eve Snowstorm!

2009-12-24T17:30:00.004-06:00

I (Kody) was hoping for a white Christmas and when we realized that we weren't going to be able to make the trip to Utah for the holidays, I didn't think there was any chance that it could happen...oh how wrong I was. We are in Dallas this year for Christmas and lo and behold, a snowstorm came roaring through and left us with a little of heavens dandruff. Prayers really are answered :) Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight! Check out the video at the end!

Dickinson Light Show

2009-12-12T13:36:00.005-06:00

We had the wonderful oportunity to go and see Dickinson City's Christmas lights. There were A LOT of lights. You will also see some strange animals showcased here in Texas that we thought were funny to show during the winter season.

There were about 5 different colorful tunnels to go through. Brisa loved running through these tunnels.
We were so happy that Brisa was able to sit with Santa and smile. We were afraid that she was going to get shy and not want to sit with Santa.
Where else would you see an armadillo showcased for a Christmas light show?

How about a mariachi?

...or what about a Santa Clause riding a crocodile?

The deer looks normal but the lobster and crocodiles look out of place for this time of year, don't you think?

Who else would show a rocket during Christmas season? I guess it's gotta be displayed since NASA is so close.

Our Future Little One

2009-12-12T13:21:00.004-06:00

Yesterday we went and got a 3D ultrasound of our future little one. It was so much fun and interesting to get to see what our baby looks like. Here are the pictures we got.

Don't you think he* has Kody's chin?

* I refer to our little one as "he" because I do not want to call our baby "it" or "the baby" over and over. We do not know if we are having a boy or a girl and we won't find out until the due date. This message is intended for our parents who seem to think that we are hiding the sex of the baby.

Snow...in Houston???

2009-12-06T10:57:00.002-06:00

So, this is my (Kody) meager attempt at a blog post. Fina didn't want to post one so I thought I'd give it a shot. When we moved from Utah to Houston I didn't think that I would have a chance at seeing snow during the winter...I was wrong (sort of). I was watching the news on Thursday morning and they said that a snow storm was going to hit the region on Friday, I didn't believe it. Friday came and lo and behold, a "snow storm" had arrived in the area. Little did I know that these weird Houstonians get FREAKED OUT at the sight of anything that resembles snow. Government offices closed down, school district cancelled classes, bus systems had limited routes, etc. I was in the library at the University of Houston trying to do my research paper at 9:45 a.m. when the librarian came over to say that the university would be closing at 11 due to the inclement weather...I was shocked. Anyways, here is a video of the "snow storm" of the century (just as a little side note the news anchor said that it had snowed 35 times in Houston since 1895 so you are witnessing a rare event...enjoy!)

Baby Shower

2009-11-22T18:23:00.005-06:00

Thanksgiving week started off with a baby shower for me from my parents. I had fun getting things ready for the party. I decided to make small red velvet cupcakes because we are having a little Allred baby. I had fun making these cupcakes. I had never had a red velvet cake before and I LOVED it. They were delicious and they looked so cute.

Here is a picture of our lovely food.

Here are some pictures of the baby shower.

Don't you just love Brisa's smile in this picture. This is what happens when we tell her to smile.

Here is the diaper cake that my cousin made for me. The first time I saw a diaper cake was in Utah and I thought it was awesome and so cute.

I received exactly what I wanted, diaper and wipes. Since we do not know the sex of the baby we asked for the one thing we knew the baby was going to need, diapers and wipes, so that is why you did not see any other pictures of presents. I want to say thank you to everyone who came to the baby shower and thank you for all the gifts that I received.

Halloween 2009

2009-11-13T21:15:00.011-06:00

This year we had Halloween in Dallas, Texas. Brisa spent the last two weeks before Halloween counting down the days until October 31. She could not wait because she was going to be dressed as the Little Mermaid.

We decided to carve pumpkins the day of Halloween because that was the only available day that we were able to. This was the first year that we allowed Brisa to actually use the knife utensil and carve her own design out.

Kody's hand barely fit into the whole in this pumpkin. He had to be careful to not break the top.

Brisa was also able to help her cousin carve her pumpkin that same day as well.

We had planned the pumpkin carving as a fun activity for our lovely children but my husband and my cousin-in-law had WAY more fun than the girls. They decided that they would carve a pumpkin with the University of Utah logo on it. They spent ALOT of time on the pumpkin. They even put their pumpkin in the bathroom, which they could get pitch black, so that they could see what their pumpkin would like like with the candle on. They did this many times until they were able to perfect the logo.

The hardest part was carving the circle around the letter U. They wanted the light to shine through the pumpkin. This is what it looked like in the end.

Here are out pumpkins in the dark, you can't really see the circle around the U in this picture. And, for some reason, Brisa's pumpkin isn't lit here.

We went and bought her outfit at Party City, which was extremely busy when we went. We thought that all we would have to do was buy her the costume and be done, but Brisa said that she needed to have red hair like Ariel and wigs were just too expensive so colored hair spray, which cost $2, was the better alternative. I can't believe that she requested this already at such a young age. I wounder what she'll demand next year. I had to spray her hair red, this was the fun part, and she had fun getting this done to her.

This did stain my hands at first but the paint washed off really easy. It also washed out of her hair really easy too. I would definitely recommend the colored hair spray for anyone who needs a quick hair color change.

And here is the finished product. Beautiful red hair.

Here is Brisa with her costume on.

Brisa and Arianna

The surprising thing to us was that after about 45 minutes Brisa said that she was tired and that she wanted to go home. Trick or Treating did not last as long as we thought. We ended up being out for only 1 hour and that was because Kody held her for the last little bit because she was tired of walking so much. We barely covered one block of my parents neighborhood. I hope everyone else had fun on Halloween.

6 Months down 3 to go

2009-10-16T22:27:00.005-05:00

For those of you who do not know yet, we are expecting our second baby. I am currently about 6 months pregnant. I decided to let everybody see how big I was since my family in Utah isn't able to see me. Kody took the following picture.

I am so excited for our new addition. We currently do not know what we are having. Kody will not let me find out. He wants to go old fashioned and wait until the baby is born. This is making things harder for me, like picking names and buying clothes and explaining to Brisa that she may not get a baby brother like she wants.

Brisa is currently 5 years old so our little ones will be almost 6 years apart. This is not what we wanted but we had some problems with getting pregnant. Kody and I planned on having a second child about 2 and a half years ago. For some reason I was just not able to get pregnant. We were not able to see a fertility specialist until after we both graduated. These doctors are very pricey and as students we could not afford to go see one. With my new job we were able to afford to go see a fertility specialist. After just 2 months we were able to get pregnant. I was SO happy. We had been waiting for 2 years for our baby and we finally got to have our wish. Our baby is due on January 19, but we'll see when he really comes. We are not sure of when exactly I got pregnant. Our doctor took some measurements of our baby for several weeks at a really early age, we started, I believe, around 3 weeks and then by about my 6th week we were able to get a good measurement which helped in estimating the due date. So we may have a baby a lot earlier than expected or a lot later. We'll just have to wait and see.

So far, my pregnancy has gone well. There have not been any problems. I can feel the baby move all the time. He is extremely active and can give some hard kicks already. For some reason my students didn't hear me say at the beginning of the year that I was pregnant, so for several weeks they had been talking about it to their friends. Finally, two different students in two different classes asked if I was pregnant because no one in their class wanted to ask. I had to laugh at them, apparently they weren't paying attention when I announced that I was pregnant. Now they're all taking bets on whether it's going to be a boy or a girl.

I guess we'll have to wait until January to see what we're having, unless anyone can change Kody's mind. So far, I haven't been able to succeed.

Our Month Long Trip to Utah in July

2009-08-11T22:16:00.011-05:00

This last summer was SO much fun. Being a teacher is so awesome becaue I get to have 2 months off for vacation. So guess what we did? Yep, we went to Utah. But before that we went to Dallas and spent 2 weeks with my family. I was able to spend my birthday with my friends. (I left these pictures in Dallas, I will update them when I go back to get them) I must brag on my husband. He made my birthday extremely memorable. My birthday cake was not an ordinary birthday cake, I had a cake made out of cocunut covered chocolate donuts, 25 to be exact, piled on top of each other with 25 candles poking out. This was really fun to blow out. You'll have to see the pictures later. He then bought me a watch, which I really needed, and bought me my first piece of actual jewelry, other than my wedding ring. He bought me a neclave and a pair of earring with rubies in it. I have always wanted to have jewelry with my birthstone in it and he remembered that I had said that like, maybe 5 years ago. He is so awsome in remembering what I say. We had some friends come over and we played the Wii and Catch Phrase.

Now about Utah. We spent a whole month in Utah with Kody's family. We were lucky enough to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. Brisa was able to go inside and we were able to talk to her about the temple and get her excited about one day getting married in the temple. Here are some pictures of the temple and of our family.

This fountain is out in the front of the temple. Brisa was asking for money to throw into the fountain. We had to explain to her that money did not go into that water fountain.

While we were in Utah, we were able to go back to Wymount and visit a few of our old friends who still lived there. We even went to an ice cream social where we got to see Bishop Hicks.

We visited the Nicoll family and we went to Hogle Zoo. Brisa had loads of fun playing with Allie. Brisa had spend January through May being bored at home and she was finally able to go out and play with other kids.

Tyler had to sit with Jacob on a non-moving animal.

Somehow Kody did not pass the camera so we do not have a picture of him on the carousel.

You can't leave Hogle Zoo without taking a picture with the big brown elephant. As you can see, Kody too full advantage.

The Zoo was loads of fun. It was nice to go out and do something with people who are our age.

Every year, we go on a family camp out. This year we went to Moon Lake. I must say that Moon Lake is gorgeous and really far, but I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves camping. I'm sure these pictures can speak for theselves.

This is a picture of the mountains. You can see that there was a storm coming. These storms wouldn't last longer than 15-20 minutes. It was nice to have some rain, it kept the weather nice and cool and not too hot.

While at Moon Lake, we rented a small motor boat. We went out into the lake and saw fish jumping out. Here are some pictures of my nieces and nephew and my mom-in-law.

The boat had some oares, which Brisa insisted that we use. Kody would stop the motor right in the middle of the lake and then Brisa and I would start to paddle. All we did was go in circles. She didn't understand that she had to follow me in order to move in a certain direction. But she really didn't care. She was happy just moving the oares.

The lake did have a sandy shore, which surprised me. My nieces enjoyed playing in the sand.

The weather really wasn't cold, but for some reason I'm always cold no matter what. I always make Kody pack up his hoodies because they fit me beautifully. I am able to pull my legs up and curl into the hoodie and stay warm at any time.

During the camp out, Brisa kept following Kaden, her little cousin. She kept telling him what to do and making sure he stayed out of trouble. I think she is completely ready to be a big sister. Here she is giving Kaden a massage on the shoulders.

This was a cute picture. Out of nowhere, Brisa and Kaden had their arms around each others back. I think they were looking at the little squirrels running around.

Baby Allred

2009-07-09T19:37:00.002-05:00

In case you didn't know, Kody and I are expecting our second child. We have been trying for over 2 years. We were finally able to see a fertility specialist and were able to conceive. I am due on January 19, 2010. That is all, short post today.

Brisa's 5th Birthday and A First Experience for Kody

2009-05-31T20:02:00.007-05:00

Well, Brisa finally celebrated her 5th Birthday. Now, I say finally because she has been asking for her birthday for a LONG time. We had her birthday in Dallas, Texas with all of her cousins. We had a pool party first, I don't have those pictures because my brother is being a jerk and he refuses to give me those pictures. I guess I will have to steal them from him the next time I go visit him. We had a Barbie ballerina themed party, although the pinata ended up being Ariel from the Little Mermaid. It's funny how children don't like to match things up. Well, here are a few pictures of the party.

Kody had a lot of fun swinging the pinata in their faces.

All the children freaked out when it finally broke in half.

Brisa had two birthday cakes, we created a Barbie cake and a regular cake because we thought that we could make her take a bite out of one of them but she did not want to.

Kody got her by rubbing cake frosting on her face... she did not like that very much.

In the end, all the kids played with the play dough. Looks like Arianna really likes the camera, she is a natural model.

And a first for Kody. We went to the beach again this last weekend, we noticed that there were some jelly fish but they did not have tentacles and they did not sting, because Kody stepped on one and realized that they didn't sting. So we decided that it would be alright to go into the ocean since everyone else was. But, as anyone who knows Kody, his luck ran out as we were knee length in the water. YES... Kody got stung by a jellyfish. Here is a picture of the jellyfish that stung him. We know which jellyfish it was because when we got back to the shore, we noticed that there were a couple of jellyfish with foot long tentacles. Poor Kody, the tentacles wrapped around both of his ancles. He described it as "being shot with a hundred needles."

Kody wants you to know "Peeing on it doesn't work, just in case you were wondering."

First good storm in Texas

2009-04-18T15:24:00.012-05:00

So, as I was making the last post we had a huge storm surge hit us and Kody decided to have a little bit of fun with the camera. It's a pretty bad storm, just watch the videos :)

Here is a picture of the local radar, we live in the pink area where it says "extreme" and the yellow box is the path of the tornado warnings. We are in the thick of it! Here is another video of the storm, enjoy!

This is a picture of the aftermath of the storm. The pond at the golf course rose about 3 feet in an hour and a half and the whole course is just flooded.
Hope you enjoyed this storm as much as we did :)

EASTER

2009-04-18T13:43:00.004-05:00

I know Easter was last week, but I did not have time to post our pictures. We are currently in League City, TX. We don't have family here so we decided that we would go to a city event for Easter. We ended up going to the Pearland Egg Drop event. This was literally and egg drop event. They had a helicopter fly into the football field and drop 20,000 eggs. It was a very crazy event. There were A LOT of people. I'll let the following clip explain it all.

Did you see where Brisa and Fina were?

Here is a picture of the helicopter as it's dropping eggs.

There were also a lot of bounce houses and different little activities to do.

I got to race Brisa through one of the bounce houses.

Brisa won.

This is the Texas Roadhouse Armadillo, Brisa got a 2 free kids meals out of this. We ate there after the egg drop. It was delicious.
Some more free stuff... Brisa got a free meal at Chik-fil-A. We were excited for all the free meals that were offered. We will be having family home evening at Chik-fil-A soon.

After the egg drop we decided to make rice crispy treats. I have to thank the rice crispy cereal company for this. Brisa saw their lovely commercials on TV and asked to make the same egg shaped rice crispy treats.

We weren't able to make the egg shaped dessert so we flattened it out on a pan and drizzled melted chocolate on it. Brisa then sprinkled pink sprinkles on the rice crispy treats. I must say, they were VERY delicious.The final product. Doesn't that look good?

Mardi Gras and Valentines Day

2009-02-14T21:10:00.011-06:00

So my husband has been bugging me about updating my blog. He keeps telling me that it's like a journal and so having 3 weeks of nothing counts as beeing VERY far behind. Well Kody, I hope you enjoy this.

Over Valentine's weekend my in-laws came to visit us. Coincidentally, Galveston was starting their early Mardi Gras celebrations. We went to the parade they were having right next to the ocean. We collected so many beads. I have to say that my mother-in-law had more fun than I did. She was out on the street with her hands up trying to get the people on the cars and floats to give her some beads. She collected more beads than me! I took some pictures of the lovely floats, AND FOR KODY I took the following picture of the awesome jeep that he would love to have someday.

Kody and my in-laws also went to the Battle of San Jacinto location. This is where Texas declared their independance from Mexico. This is where they defeated general Santa Ana. I always thought that it was the Alamo where Santa Ana was defeated, guess I should have paid more attention in history class, oops. I didn't get to see this place because I was at school teaching students about the lovely world of geometry.

So apparently there is an elevator that takes you to the top of this monument and then you can look out through the windows to see out into the channels of water. It's a great place to go to see the whole city we live in.

This is the USS Texas, it's the only ship that fought in WWI and WWII that is preserved. WOO HOO go Texas.

It's so awesome when we have parents come and visit us becaue we get to go out and have so much fun. We went to the aquarium in Galveston at Moody Gardens. This aquarium is inside a big blue pyramid. They had a cute activity for little kids. They gave Brisa a little book and they had her look for different sharks around the aquarium. At each station they had a stamp for her to put into her little shark book. She had so much fun trying to find the different stations, I highly recomend this aquarium.

Can you believe the Emperor penguin can be as tall as 3 1/2 feet tall? Well, look at these life size pictures.

On Valentine's Day we went to eat at original Joe's Crab Shack at the Kemah Board Walk. We had some awesome seafood that they get locally from the vendors. The most funiest thing was watching Brisa dance, she had so much fun with the music, here is a video of her dancing. We had to be careful and not let her notice that we were watching.

This is a picture from the top of the parking garage of the Kemah boardwalk. There are a lot of restaurants and different games and rides that you can enjoy. We weren't able to do too much this day because it was packed, obviously because it was Valentine's Day. Can you find the Joe's Crab Shack restaurant?

Well, I hope you enjoyed this blog. Is this good enough Kody? Did I miss anything?

A New Year and a New Life

2009-02-09T19:13:00.005-06:00

We realized when we were unpacking that we had A LOT of books. We had several boxes that we could not unpack because they were filled with books. We didn't have enough money to go out and buy a bookshelf so Kody decided to build one, which was cheaper. It turned out gorgeous, you can't really see the nice wood color, but it is a gorgeous natural looking wood color. If you were to come and look at it you would think that it was store bought. We now do not have any more boxes to unpack... WE ARE OFFICIALLY UNPACKED!

I was finally able to go to my school and take a couple of pictures. I teach at Clear Creek High School, home of the wildcats. The sign looks red but the colors are Maroon, White and Black, the same as my high school.

This is a picture of the front of the school, it looks really little in this picture, you can't even see the 2nd floor but it is a huge school, this school only holds 10-12 grade, the ninth grade center gets a different building.

This next picture is of Brisa with her hair straightened. Yes, we were playing with hair do's again. I think she looks better, what do you think?

I have to announce that my brother is getting married. This is a picture of them at my parents house. Her name is Carmen Ruiz Arguello, she is from Nicaragua, and I've known her for a long time. We grew up together in church and I know her to be an awesome woman, I think she will make my brother very happy, I can already see changes in him.
My brother is planning to get married on January 9, 2010. I hope to see everyone at the wedding, I will be posting an invitation near the end of the year.

Our New President

2009-01-18T00:07:00.004-06:00

In honor of our new president, I decided that i would change my background for this week. For those of you who don't know, both Kody and I are Democrats. Kody was able to vote in November but I was not available to vote because I am not yet an American Citizen. Can you believe it? Well, if you would like to hear me vent out my anger, just call me. Well, we're really happy about our new president and are excited to hear his inaugural speech since his acceptance speech, when he found out he won the election, was really good.

At the Beach

2009-01-12T22:06:00.010-06:00

For those of you who have not heard we have moved to League City, Texas. League City is 25 miles south East of Houston and 25 miles North West of Galveston. I have a job as a high school math teacher at Clear Creek High School. I love my job, it's been fun teaching the students and not having a professor analyze every word I say and analyze the way I've set up my classroom. I am currently teaching 5 Geometry classes and 1 Algebra 2 class. I'll give you more information about this when I have pictures of my school. What I do have pictures of is of our new apartment.
This is the kitchen, I love all the counter space and cupboard space I have. It's huge compared to what I had at Wymount.

From the kitchen you can see the dinning area, which is currently storing some of our boxes and our air mattress since we don't have a bed yet.In the living room, which is right next to the kitchen, there is a TV nook which fits our entertainment center just perfectly. Now all we need is a bigger TV, our TV looks so small and out of place.Here is a picture of me on our lovely sofa, donated to us by my parents. In front of me is the entertainment center.

This gorgeous picture is of my huge walk-in closet. Kody and I actually have our own sections and there are 4 different levels to hang clothes from, 2 for Kody and 2 for ME! We also have plenty of room for storage. Something that we did not have at Wymount.Our bathroom has 2 vanities. I took the biggest one, but that meant that I had to share with Brisa. I'm sure you can tell, Brisa's yellow stool stand in front of the sink, so she can brush her teeth, and her fish are in the corner.Across my vanity is Kody's vanity, his is smaller. He likes it because he has a small medicine cabinet where all of his things fit perfectly. And next, on the left, of Kody's vanity is some more storage space. I have so much storage space and not much to fill it with. That means that I have to go shopping! I don't know if any of you noticed, but Kody put his U of U trash can in here, I'll have to get rid of it soon.And this is a picture of our shower and through those double doors is the washer and dryer.

That's all for the apartment pictures.

I wanted to show everyone the beautiful Galveston beach. We wanted to take Brisa out to know the real beach. Before this visit, Brisa's definition of "Beach" was the Seven Peaks water park in Provo, UT. She wanted to wear a bathing suit and didn't understand why she had to wear jeans and a jacket. The temperature on this day was a gorgeous 60 degrees and it was slightly windy. I know the people in Texas thought we were crazy for being at the beach while this cold. When we got to the beach we quickly saw all of the sea shells, Brisa picked these for her brand new fish we bought her the day before. She had loads of fun doing this. She collected the sea shells in a paint bucket that we bought an hour before at Wal-Mart. We weren't able to buy a bucket and shovel, apparently they only sell those during the summer. You'd think that they would sell beach supplies here in Houston where you can still have 80 degree weather in the winter.
After picking sea shells we decided that we would build a sand castle. The sand was slightly hard to get, we had to dig to get the sand to fill our buckets.After building our sand castle we decided to take a family picture. This is usually really hard and impossible when you don't have another person there to take the picture for you, but luckily we have a tri-pod and were finally able to take a family picture.Well, the sand castle didn't last too long. After the family picture Brisa and I decided that we would destroy our castle by stomping on it. This was so much fun!
We had fun at the beach, we finally had to leave because it started to rain. We tried to get all the sand off of our clothes but that is impossible. Our dryer had sand in the lint collector, it was hard to clean. I'm going to have to find a different way to get rid of the sand before taking the clothes in the house, if you have any suggestions please let me know.

Okay, so Kody is making me make this one comment. When we were on our way to Galveston we passed by a cemetery and we noticed that you can smell all of the dead people. You could only smell the cemetery while you were right in front of it. Kody thought that this would be something funny for all of you to read.

New Years Party

2009-01-01T19:00:00.006-06:00

I really enjoyed the New Years Eve party. I LOVE to dance. I grew up in a Spanish ward my whole life. I went to a ward that loves to dance, our ward is known for coming up with excuses to have a party, we'll do anything to be able to dance, we even had a DJ in our ward who would play the music. It was like going to a club, with lights and loud speakers and a fog maker. We knew how to party. Well, Subeck has lost it's DJ, he moved to Brazil, but that didn't keep us from partying. We had a New Years Dance where I danced about 98% of the songs. Kody had fun dancing too, I've been teaching him and he has been doing really good at learning how to dance the various Latin dances. Here are some lovely pictures of us at the dance.
This next picture is of me and my dad. We both love to dance. I love my dad, he is always ready to party and to have fun. We had so much fun dancing, we were even coming up with dance steps to music we didn't know how to dance to.
So, I must let everyone know that Ricky, my little brother, FINALLY danced with me. He never danced with anyone, that I know of. He always sat at every dance and would never dance with me or my mom. He actually said yes to me!!! But I thought that this picture was hilarious. The whole time he was dancing he was annoyed. I Kept teasing him so he was unhappy, can you tell in the picture?
This is a picture of my lovely husband and me, taking a break from dancing.This is a picture of me and Alma, one of my best friends. Yes, I do believe that you can have more than one best friend, did you hear that Kody? I don't care what you say, lol.
I had loads of fun. I missed going dancing. I was able to see alot of my old friends, they all came back to visit. Here is the best New Years picture of the Allred family, Brisa managed to be doing something different in each picture, this was the best one.I hope everyone had a good New Years Ever and New Years day like I did. I hope that 2009 goes as well as all of my previous years of life. Both Kody and I have graduated from Brigham Young University, I have a job as a math teacher at Clear Creek High School in League City, Texas (near Houston) and Kody will be applying to the University of Houston for graduate school. We're finally starting our real lives, lol. Yeah, I don't count college years as real life. I hope all goes well. I will be posting pictures of our new home and my new work place soon, hopefully.

Christmas Party in Texas

2008-12-25T21:18:00.011-06:00

Alright, so this is the 3rd Christmas party, and last, that we went to this month. This party was in Texas with my side of the family. Let me give you some background as to where this party was held so that you better understand the images.

We had our Christmas party at my uncle's house. My uncle lives on a plot of land that is owned by a farmer, Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan owns a HUGE piece of land in Lewisville, he has allowed about 10 families to live on his land. They basically bring in a trailer and live on the assigned piece of land. My uncle, and the other families there, do not have an address, they must get a P.O. Box to receive mail, and they don't get their garbage disposed of, so they just burn their trash in big barrels, it's very interesting. Email me any questions you may have. Anyways, there is a decent sized piece of land between my uncles trailer and his neighbor, which is his cousin. This is where the party was held. They have created a personal bar-be-que made out of bricks so that they can have parties outside and not have to worry about the bar-be-que getting damaged.

Here you see the Bar-be-que, at the moment it has menudo cooking inside the pot. Now very often, like during this holiday party, there is not enough room on the bar-be-que, and in the stoves inside the homes, to cook every single food that needs to be cooked. When this happens, my uncle creates a small bonfire and sets a grill on top of it to cook whatever needs to be cooked.
Here you can see a pot of tamales being cooked. I told Kody that what my uncles do out here would scare the fire marshall. They don't really clear room to make a fire, they just build it and hope to not start a fire.

Now, this was not the only makeshift fire that was built. Christmas Eve was a cold day in Lewisville Texas so we had to warm up without having to go back inside the house, so... my uncle decided to build a bonfire again.

Here I am, with my back turned to the fire so that my back could get warm. Can you see the fire in the background? There are several of us standing around it. We were trying to stay warm. In my hand is a mug of warm fruit punch. I'm sure you can see that the fire is just laying there on the ground with no rocks surrounding it, like they teach you to do in boy and girl scouts, I think it's funny how unsafe we are. I put a video in here, I hope it works, where you can see the fires and see the shack, that my uncle build this year, so that we could have music playing loud enough for all of us to hear while we ate and partied. (Sorry if the graphics are bad, I used a camera phone to do this)

This video was taken before everyone got there so there aren't that many people and many who were there already had taken up the seats inside both of the homes we were using to cook.
There were many things that you could eat at the party. There were beef tamales (red and green), briquette with mashed potatoes, menudo, bunuelos, Mexican beans, pineapple upside down cake, and chocolate cake of tres leches (three milks). Let's just say that there was too much to eat in one night.

Here's Brisa eating a Bunuelo, it's a fried tortilla with sugar and cinnamon.

You just saw, above, some of the food that was served. There were two big pots, like the one shown above, full of tamales. My mom alone made 8 dozen tamales. The only bad thing was that the cold weather made the food cold so we had to eat quickly.

Here is Brisa with her first cousin, once removed, Jazmin. (Jazmin's mom is my cousin) They are wearing jackets AND have a blanket AND are sitting right in front of the small bonfire.

Near the end of the night we celebrated my cousin's birthday. Gabby was born on Christmas Eve. We had a Mickey Mouse pinata and a star pinata which I did not get a picture of.

At the end of the night Brisa was so tired she fell asleep. She was so tired she did not want to open her Christmas pajamas gift at night. She just stared at the gift next to her. We had to open them for her and then get her dressed because she kept falling asleep.

Sledding Fun and Another Christmas Party

2008-12-19T00:49:00.006-06:00

So this week we have been packing up and getting ready to move to Houston. It has been a stressful week but we found some time to go sledding, well, at least Brisa did. She saw several of her friends sledding so she decided that she would go sledding too.

Brisa had loads of fun sledding but she did not like climbing back up the hill. She kept slipping and falling on her face. Her hands got cold, even though she had gloves.

One of her friends that was sledding was Suzy, the girls decided that they would sled together. It was more fun that way for them.

Silly

After an hour of sledding Brisa go really cold. The snow had seeped through her gloves and the snow was frozen to her pants and her shoes. Her shoes and socks were wet when we took them off, but she enjoyed her last day sledding for 2008.

Later, the same day, we had Brisa's Christmas party at her school. They had different types of crafts that the students could do. The first thing we did was go cookie decorating. Can you tell she enjoyed herself?

After cookie decorating we went and did reindeer antlers by tracing Brisa's hands.

We also did a snowman and a gingerbread man.

We then went and saw Santa Clause. For some reason Brisa did not want to talk with him. This year she asked for 2 Wall-e toys. That's all she's been asking for, she always makes sure to emphasize that we wants 2.

This is just an art picture that Brisa drew. We just wanted to post this up because we thought it was beautiful, she's getting better at drawing different things. It's interesting to see how much detail kids pick up. They can always point out things in a picture which we, as adults, can never tell what something is sometimes. This picture is of a princess castle.

The Allred Family Christmas Party

2008-12-19T00:17:00.007-06:00

The Allred family had their Christmas party early this year so that Kody and I could see the whole family before we left for Texas. It was a wonderful party, we were able to see everyone, which is really hard to do with all of the busy schedules. I want everyone to get to know my wonderful family. This first picture is of my awesome nieces and nephews, they all like to make fun of my height, I think that the oldest 4 are all taller than me and they make sure to point that out when possible.

From the left back: Bo, Kaden, Brianna, Ashley, (left front) Karli, Alexis, Jessica, Joelle, and Brisa holding her baby.

We were able to take pictures of the different families, all of Kody's brothers and sister along with their wife and children. We haven't taken an official picture, you know the one where we go get it done professionally, because several of us will still be having children which will make the official picture outdated quickly. Before anyone starts asking, NO, we are not pregnant, yet.

This is Torey, Kody's oldest brother, and his wife Sandra. Their children, from oldest to youngest, Bo, Brianna, Jessica, and Karli.

This is Shaunte, Kody's oldest and only sister, Don, her boyfriend. These are her three lovely daughters, Ashlee, Joelle, and Alexis.

This is Justin, Kody's 2nd oldest brother, and his wife Heather. Their only son, Kaden, the youngest grandchild in the family. (Note to Justin and Heather: This was the best picture out of all the ones mom took. Kaden just kept moving so much, I think they were all blurred by all the movement, sorry, I can change it if you would like)

And of course, everyone knows Kody, and his lovely wife, ME, Fina, and our beautiful daughter, Brisa.

And.... This is THE Allred family, including Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa.

I hope that everyone has enjoyed my family. They are awesome and it has been so much fun living with them in Utah. Let me just tell my family that I promise that we'll come back to visit EVERY summer that we are gone and several times in between, I have enjoyed Utah's snow a lot, something that I haven't seen in Texas for several years.

BYU 110th Ward Christams Party

2008-12-11T22:47:00.003-06:00

On Tuesday, December 9, we had our ward Christmas Party. It was amazing. The party was at Aspen Grove, which is up by Sundance. The place was gorgeous. We had a delicious dinner, which I did not take a picture of. But I have to tell you what Brisa enjoyed. She enjoyed the little butter tubs that were given out with the rolls. She spent dinner time twirling her finger inside to get every last bit of butter.
At one point, Tyler handed her a new butter tub. All we heard of Brisa was a huge gasp "OH" We all laughed because she was so excited for some more butter. I don't know who she got this from, I never ate butter out of the tub.

Brisa by the chimney at Aspen Grove

At the end of the night we sang "Jingle Bells" and then Santa Clause showed up. Brisa kept telling us what she was going to tell Santa Clause and when she finally got to talk to him she did not say a word. So now she has to write him a letter to tell him what she wants for Christmas.Here's Tyler with Allison. Alli did not want to go anywhere near Santa Clause, she cried when he would move her to his other lap. If you can't tell David Gardner played Santa Clause. He was a very good Santa Clause. I hope everyone enjoys their Christmas holiday.

Fun with Pictures

2008-12-07T14:31:00.001-06:00

I am having way too much fun.

Blog Night

2008-12-07T02:56:00.003-06:00

So tonight we went over to the Nicoll's again and I had the best time... again. My good friend, Julie, taught Christi and I how to use other websites to make our blog better and I learned ALOT. So if you are wondering why my website keeps changing you'll know that it is because I'm trying out all the new things that Julie taught me, like the following picture.

And the picture up top, used for the title. I had alot of fun. It's now 1:58 AM and I have to go to bed. I hope everyone enjoys the different changed in the next few days. I'm sure I will.