New Year - New House

It's official!  After 10 years of marriage and living in 8 other apartments and houses, Bryce and I have purchased a home of our own.  It's a 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in Ogden, Utah.  It is only about 15 minutes from Bryce's work, about a mile from Owen's new school, and it's only about a half hour away from Bryce's Mom and Grandma & Grandpa Christensen.

It has a nice big fenced yard for the kids to play in, and plenty of inside room for them to play as well.  It has a storage shed, garage, and covered parking in front of the garage.  Each of the kids will get to have their own bedroom and there is plenty of storage space.  It's not too big, and is a perfect starter home for us.  So, welcome home Allen Family. Let's work together to make this house our home.

Merry Christmas

Christmas was wonderful! After the kids got everyone up, we had a fun time opening presents and spending the morning as a family.  River loved the walker that she got from Grandma and Grandpa Royer (and I loved it because she was able to be happy without being held for a while).

The girls and I each received a special doll from Grandma Christensen, Owen got Legos and a telescope, and MayLynn got dress-ups and then was able to have a super-hero tea party.

And since one of the best parts of Christmas is enjoying and sharing your gifts, MayLynn made sure that we all had a chance to be a princess just like her.

And not be left out, Mommy and Daddy are getting the biggest Christmas present of all - this year we bought a house and will be moving to Ogden in just a couple of days.

Once There Was A Snowman

Bryce and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this year.  To make it a little more special, we scheduled a couple of days at our resort at Wolf Creek.  We had a couple of days with just the two of us and the baby, but the other two joined us for the last day and night, and while we were all there together we had a pre-Christmas snowstorm.  MayLynn had been wanting to make a snowman for quite some time, so I helped the kids pile up the snow balls, and then they gave him a face and some arms.  Here they are with their cute little snowman, and here's the view from our back deck:

The Allen Family - December 2014

It seems like the Holiday Season brings out the best in our family pictures.

Here are a couple pictures of my cute little kids:

And here are the pictures that we took for our Christmas card:

Learning & Socializing

With colder weather keeping us indoors more, we try to find ways to keep little hands and minds happy.  We do a lot of reading - with even River getting into the action. And I try to find activities that are both fun and educational whenever possible.  This time we made some play dough and practiced forming letters with the dough.  MayLynn thought that this was a good idea.

We've also had fun playing with cousins.  Emma and River have been friends since day one and MayLynn has fun showing Jack the "right" way to play with the toys ;).

Here Comes Santa Clause

Our Realtor had a Christmas party last night, so we decided to go and let our kids visit with Santa Clause.  Grandma Allen, StacyAnn and Jack came with us too.  My kids all did pretty good and none of them were scared by Santa this year, but poor Jack didn't understand who this scary man in the fluffy red and white costume was.  Here are the pictures of the kids with Santa: