Part One of the Kitchen Makeover!!!!

I LOVE LOVE my kitchen!  I have tons of counter space and cupboards for days!  It's awesome... except the carpet.  That must and WILL go.  Still waiting for that to come to fruition though so in the meantime I got a titch bit antsy and we decided to paint the cupboards.  I was super excited but pretty nervous at the same time, there would be no turning back from this once we started.  The initial color we picked for the bottom turned out to be way to blue (to light) but we picked a different color and I absolutely love how it turned out.  I seriously couldn't be any happier with it!  YAY!

It was quite a project, we have 67 doors and drawers so it was a lot of time spent on Codys part removing handles and hinges.  Good thing he is patient :)   Cody's parents were absolutely amazing, they let us dump the kids on them for the weekend.  We NEVER would have been able to do it with them here, it was so immensely helpful to have them out of our hair and know that they were having a blast!  They got to meet their new cousin Laycie, and Taylor was beyond excited to hold her.  She tells me everyday how she can't wait to take care of Ollie (babies nickname).  Hayley was awesome and let Tay hold her and she loved every second of it.

                                       All the Allen cousins!!  Until July anyways... :)

                 She's going to be such fun with this baby.  Isn't she adorable!?  Both of them actually! :)


My parents and Brianne helped us paint and we couldn't have done it without their help either.  There is literally no way we could have gotten it done by ourselves in those 2 kid-free days we had.  It ended up being too cold for the paint to dry on the doors in the garage so we had the whole living room floor full of doors.  I really wanted to help but Ollie was posing a bit of a problem for me, so Cody got some Respirators and masks from the safety guy at work.  I was able to help with the whole project, yay!  But that also meant that I had to wear those stupid things for 2 days, it sucked big time.  Really it was quite terrible but at least I got to stay and wasn't banished from the house :)

 

I was 100% frustrated with myself that we forgot to take a legit "before" picture!! No!!! :(  So this one will have to do!  Cooking disaster leads to need for new paint job??  Important thing to remember here is this mes was actually my fault...

Life with the Littles

Some days these Little People of mine just drive me absolutely crazy and by the time it's 5 o'clock I am glued to the window waiting/praying/hoping for Cody to get home and save me.  But.... :)  Luckily that's not the majority of the time haha.  I love these crazy Little People!  I love life with them, I love watching them learn, I LOVE watching them be friends and best buddies and I am so thankful for every moment and every day that I get to spend home with them!! Here's the month that you missed in picture form - including the good, the bad and the ugly! :)


 
Markers are not chapstick...

 

This is the morning after we had a living room campout.  Tay is tucking Buddy in and rubbing his back.

 This kid LOVES talking on the phone!!! He is always wanting to call a grandma or grandpa!

                 Bath tub painting, my favorite kind!  And they love it, win win for me!

                    Could this girl win a mullet competition or what?!  Check that beast out!!

                                                         Our little Ray Charles

Happy Valentines Day!

We had a great Valentines Day!  It was full of awesome homemade Valentines made by the kiddos and fun colorful food.  My mom used to make food colored for the appropriate holiday when we were kids and I couldn't wait to do that for my babies!  Ya know stuff like pink scrambled eggs... yummy huh? :)

One of the highlights for me was something Cody did.  Far outweighing the beautiful flowers he got  me was what he did for Taylor.  Sweetest Daddy Award!  He gave Tay a beautiful pink Rose and she was so excited, she loved it so much and it just warmed my heart and made my day.  What a lucky girl I am, I feel like I am blessed beyond belief with my sweet little family!

(Ignore Tays pained look here, I promise she is ecstatic she just refuses to cooperate for pics!)

 

On Friday I got out a bunch of my craft/scrapbook stuff and let them cut, glue, paint and create Valentines for Daddy to their hearts content.  It was awesome - it kept them entertained for hours!  And they are some priceless pieces of art, let me tell you :)

We have been continuing to enjoy this awesome Spring-ish weather!  Today after church we went for a walk and the Little People melted my heart when they decided to hold hands and walk down the road giggling together.  I am one lucky mama!!!!

So Happy Valentines Day from our crew!  We hope that you guys all had a great week!

Audios Winter, We Will Not Miss You!!

We are absolutely loving this weather!  It is ridiculous, delightful and amazing and we hope it doesn't go away.  To celebrate while we were outside the other day the Little People decided to get muddy and then sandy and.... mostly just get super dirty but they had a blast!  I was picking up after months of Gizmo potty breaks (and it was so delightfully fun, let me tell you) and they were just running around screaming, giggling, and enjoying the sunshine.

 After awhile I realized it was sort of quiet and I looked over and see them both sitting underneath the swingset.  "How cute!"  I say to myself, "They are just playing together and entertaining themselves".  So I didn't go over right away.  Oh self.  You are so naive.  When I did wander over I saw that they had found sticks and had dug up a mud puddle and were making "Mud Soup".  At first when I saw the mud all over their sweatshirts and boots I wasn't happy.  That lasted about 5 seconds, because then Wyatt let out the purest happiest little giggle and I said Good job babies!  Make a mess and have fun!  And they sure did!

 

   

 

Then we got to go to Declo for the weekend and the kids had a BLAST!! Seriously a great weekend, the weather was great and it's calving season and our newest little niece Laycie was born! She is so tiny, perfect, beautiful and holding her made us so anxious to meet our little one!

The kids played outside the whole time.  They ran on the grass, played on the swingset and their favorite part was going on the fourwheeler to check on the new calves and help feed all the cows. 

 

 We also made a giant batch of pumpkin bread that ended in a tiny bit of disaster.  But just for a moment, it was an easy fix.  I hauled the mixer over to the bar so the Littles could help me dump in all the ingredients, as I was reaching across awkwardly to turn it on after adding the flour.... I turned it on full speed instead of low speed and we had flour everywhere!  Wyatt thought it was hilarious and Tay was mildly mad at me for a min and then we all giggled and vacuumed it right up :)

Oh yeah... regular life...

So now all the Holiday craziness has passed and we have just been home and adjusting to regular life.  Ya know, stuff like remembering nap and bedtimes do exist, our house does need to be cleaned... all that fun stuff! :)

But it's been good, we have been busy making new friends and having lots of play dates and fun new adventures together.  It has been good for me, as I seem to not be able to function as a social person on my own.  I need prodding haha!

Taylor gave her first talk in Primary a couple of weeks ago and did awesome!  We kept trying to practice with her and she would say "No momma, I am a big girl.  Big girls do not need help.  I will just go talk about Jesus in the microphone all by myself".  So needless to say I was a bit worried she would rebel when I got up to help her read the short talk we had prepared.  But she spoke clearly and with appropriate volume level (always a concern for a first time microphone experience)  and she did great!  It was super sweet, wish we could have recorded it for you all!

She is also a Potty Champ now!  Just what everyone was dying to know :)  We have been struggling with her for 8 long long long months... we walked in the door from spending New Years with Codys parents, she ran to the bathroom (not wanting any help) and she hasn't had any accidents since.  WAHOO WA-FREAKING-HOO!!!!!!  She earned a trip to Lava to go swimming and a campout in the living room, this weekend we are planning to take her to the theater (Theater here is amazing, they do a free family matinee on Saturdays!)

Wyatt is ready to be potty trained and goes on the toilet a couple of times a day. Yay!  So sorry I know no one else cares about this but as you can tell, this is my life!!  He also enjoys streaking around after a trip to the Potty. :) Pic to follow.

We also had quite an epic cereal couponing run.  We scored 18 boxes of cereal, 8 boxes of granola/cereal bars, and 6 big boxes of PopTarts.  Retail cost was $119 and we paid just $39 (including tax) .  We saved $80!! Wahoo and we love cereal and PopTarts so I would say we are set for a while.  They had a blast stacking them like giant blocks, it was seriously like 30 mins of entertainment!