Lovin' FALL

I love the Fall season so much, which is why I miss Utah this time of year. But the last couple weeks Calgary has really come through and provided a great Fall. The leaves changing are so beautiful I can't even describe it and we have even gotten some sunshine and warm weather...miracle I know.

Since we will be taking off to Utah for 2 weeks Simone and I went out to get some Fall pictures of the girls before it was too late, unfortunately it had rained all morning but we knew it was our only chance. Thanks Simone for taking such great pictures since my camera is smashed.

As you will notice Blakely is not smiling in any of them, she is on this not smile at mom when she wants you to thing, good thing she is so cute she makes up for it!

 These two are best buddies!

 Leaves taste yummy

 You gotta show off the booty your momma gave you!

 There's that smile!!!

Showing off her new trick...clapping!

Later that day for Family Home Evening we headed off to the Calgary corn maze. When we arrived the place was deserted, it was supposed to be closed but the owners were there and allowed us to go, which in turn led to a fun filled night with the whole place to our three families!!!

 Hank doing his thing!

 SLIDE TIME

 Seriously does it get any cuter?

 Admiring the mini horses

Having way too much fun on the bouncy thing....

  Our new family portrait


Like I said I love Fall, I hope that I continue to have more fall fun while in Utah.

My Best Friends Wedding

Photo Courtesy of ellephotos www.ellephotos.com

LONG POST BUT WORTH THE READ....

Two weeks ago I headed to El Dorado Hills CA to my best friend Brittany's wedding! I was lucky enough to be a bridesmaid with her adorable sisters and felt very honored. Britt and I have been best friends since we first met in Provo back in the day! She is a dear friend and I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

When I first thought about my trip I thought, yeah I get to go to California and hang out with my best friend. Boy oH boy did I realize fast how different traveling is with a child.

This is how my trip started:

Me waking up at 3 a.m. for the day. Blakely waking up at 4:50a.m. to head to the airport. Handling security all my baggage and customs then a 3 hr plane flight where blakely only slept a half hour all by myself. Getting off in time to sprint across the phoenix airport with blakely in the baby bjorn, she is not light. To jump on another two hour flight. I think the tears started here a bit. During the course of this I learned how to go to the bathroom with a baby bjorn attached to me. I also let many strangers handle my baby so I could actually do things and also let any germ phobia I previously had go out the window to survive. This included letting blakely play and suck on just about anything and crawl on dirty airplane floor. She lived to tell about it and more importantly so did I.

Finally arriving in Cali was great but by the time we got dinner and to bed it was past midnight our time, needless to say Blakely was not the happiest camper and I was exhausted. The days to follow came with me going non stop all day, and running on about 4 hrs of sleep a night. To add to the exhaustion Blakely was quite clingy and so I felt like a had a permanant appendage that made everything twenty times harder!!!!

By Saturday night I was so tired I called Hank (no voice....got sick and lost my voice) and said can you please please change my flight I just want to go home, but no such luck. So the next morning I got up and Blakely and I yet boarded another flight to Los Angeles to see my sister in laws. Just my luck L.A. hit record temperatures the days I was there.....115 degrees???? REALLY???? At one point I was lying in my garments on the floor with a fan and Blakely was soaking wet with sweat.

After surviving record temperatures...barely, I yet again endeavored 6 more hours of plane flights arriving home to my sweet sweet husband who took over baby duties for the next couple hours so I could breathe.

Needless to say I will NEVER travel alone for a week without any help AGAIN!!!!

Ok so now you have heard the bad lets talk about the good.....

My favorite parts of the whole trip was being able to be there while my best friend took out her endowments in the temple and watching her be sealed to her husband for time and all eternity in the temple. Their is such a strong spirit in the temple and it is even more powerful when you get to be there with someone for the first time. I shed many tears and will never forget the experience. Yes the wedding and the decorations and the dress and the food were AMAZING, but what I will always remember is standing with my best friend in the temple and seeing her so happy!!!!

Ok so on to pictures...well I have practically none because well here is another good story!

Somehow in the course of getting to the temple my diaper bag got run over by a car resulting in formula everywhere, tire marks on Blakely's dress and one smashed camera. I managed to take some photos but not many so this is what you get. However I do think my descriptions do it justice without pictures!

When someone else send me pics I will post them of the wedding, Britt's mom did an amazing job of pulling off a wedding in their backyard in the VINTAGE theme, it was amazing!!!!

Blakely crawling around at the wedding dinner!

Love this picture because it looks like we are feeding eachother wedding cake

Right before Britt left for the temple!

Beautiful Britt coming out of the temple!

Family Pictures!

Last time we were in Utah I talked the very talented JEN HEREM to do my extended family photos, she doesn't normally do these big groups but she did me a favor. Well the only day that everyone could do the pictures, there were full blown tornado winds and rain off and on so we had to improvise. Despite the day the pictures turned out amazing. A couple days later I had her take family photos for Hank and I and I loved how they turned out.

Since I haven't gotten the disc yet these pics of our family are from Jen's blog (I made her blog them so I could see them) then I stole the big family ones from Bekah's Blog...I can't wait to print them all.

Thanks again Jen for putting up with us Allen's we can be a handful!!!!

 THE ALLEN CLAN

 THE GIRLS

 THE BOYS

 Seriously I love this photo, all the 2010 babies and we get another one in less than 2 weeks. YEAH!!!



On the Move

Does this picture scare you or what????

It scares me too and it has now become my life. Yes I have a gate and yes I am watching her but she is on the move and there is no stopping her now.

At night when I get Blakely in her pj's I let her wind down by just playing for a half an hour. The other night I took these photos of her getting into just about everything. This was all in the span of like 10 minutes.

****LARGE DISCLAIMER, these pictures are horrendous. Seriously most of them are blurry or bright but she doesn't stop moving so that is what you get.

Doesn't she look like such a big girl in this one?

My child has now started to look like she is beat, no I am not a child beater but Blakely seems to think that she can stand and walk on her own and well she can't...so she will pull herself up on something and then just let go. This in turn leads to some falls and so bruises on the nogan. I want her to learn but at the same time I want to protect her poor head, what do I do?

Anyhoo I found it comical how fast these kids learn how to move and how your life changes in an instant.

8 Months!

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Utah

Well we did it, we made our first long trip in the car with Blakely and survived. I guess not only survived but survived with flying colors. I have no war stories to report. Considering she does not like the car it was amazing! I think at points I was having a harder time then she was.

Like always our trip was WAY TOO SHORT! Especially with all the driving I was not near ready to leave, but I guess that is always the way it goes. In short we accomplished a lot.

The main reason we made the trek is because my brother Judd who is in medical school was doing his rotation in Utah and we needed to meet his new beautiful baby girl Caroline. In addition to that we were able to get family pictures, and attend my neice Emmie's baptism, go to the cabin, and of course see plenty of friends and family. Hank and I always joke that we need a vacation after visiting Utah, and once again that proved to be true. We are simply exhausted. We also joke that we see eachother more at home than when we go because we are both running in opposite directions.

I loved all the time spent with my sisters, making bows with my cousin Sara and Sis in Law Jackie, (blakely is stocked up for a while) and running the moonlight Half Marathon with Bekah and Sara. So much fun!!! IN fact I should dedicate a whole post to talk about how great it is but I am too lazy, therefore you get a few snapshots we took before the race!

I can't wait until my next trip back when I will get to be there while Adrien has her 4th baby girl!!!

Tired eyes after driving till 2 a.m. then being take into a random hotel room to sleep!

Amelia and Blakely enjoying their biter biscuts

Probably not the safest toy but she was having fun getting in the sack~

My mom and sisters at Brighton for Whit's B-day

Cutest neices ever!

Amelia

Doing a little hiking in beautiful Brighton

We don't call Blakely the attack baby for nothing

Beautiful Caroline, seriously she is the best cuddler. I wanted to take her home!

Bath time

MOONLIGHT HALF MARATHON!!!

Ok so here is a little more on the race. The purpose of the race is to start whenever you think you will finish at midnight, you aren't aloud to wear any timing devices or watches. SO you have no idea how fast you are going or what time it is. For someone like me who always wears her Garmin running it was quite hard, but so fun. Everyone was covered in glowsticks and dressed up and having a blast. Sara and I missed midnight by 6 minutes. We had a blast running in the dark and Sara even got to enjoy the likes of my singing.

The highlights of the race included us being late and not picking our race packets, driving to the top of the race figuring someone would drive us back up. Wow were we wrong.. .finally at 1 o'clock in the morning some man and his wife (a story of its own) drove us back to our car so we could get home to bed. At the end of the race there was Magleby's chocolate cake, so good! I was the only one that enjoyed my not ONE but TWO slices of cake because both Bekah and Sara got sick....which later resulted in Bekah puking into her race bag on the way home.

Oh the joys of running!

Until next time Utah...Farewell!

Summer Wrap-up

I know I know I fell off the blogging bandwagon again. I can't believe summer is coming to an end, especially since we really never got summer here. Oh well....I will try not dwell on it. So I have some fun pictures but nothing too exciting to write so therefore to wrap up summer I will give you a photo montauge instead. 

ENJOY!!!

The lake with the Dahls

Showing how she can crawl and get into everything including drawers!

Giving the stink eye (her new favorite face)

MELISSA and RANDY'S WEDDING!

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful setting

Attack babies

My bestie Simone

There's that stink eye again

The Allen Clan

The beautiful bride and her dad

I hope you all had a wonderful summer!