The Big Ten Months Update!

The Allred Family Summer 2009

As I get farther and farther away from the last blog I realize how much work I have to do to update all three of my blog readers on what has happened to us. This, of course, has just pushed me to let the time lapse more and more until today, ten months since my last blog, where I have finally persuaded myself to get my large pregnant butt in gear. I think I will let pictures do most of the talking as we wander down memory lane and revisit this past year.


Let us start with Christmas 2008...

At least I can always count on Grant to look at the camera. Due to Grady's ridiculously extravagant birthday party, Santa limited his gifts. I think he ended up with a ball and some small cars. It was all he could ever want.

Santa put Grady's name on this gift, but we all knew it was more of a throw back gift so mommy could revisit childhood. I loved every minute of it.

Megan and Chris, so happy, little did we know we had a tiny fetus brewing...

The next few months went pretty much undocumented with pictures as I was constantly puking in between having a root canal and taking classes to be a graphic design artist. I may or may not finish the program but I learned a lot about pictures and photoshop, so that was nice. (blog motivation at an all time low)


I did have to take some pictures for my photography class which is where I snapped this little gem. All the ladies in the class couldn't stop their "ooohs" and "ahhhs." This picture was taken in March. At the end of this month we decided it was time for a trip to the beach.



Here is Grady on the beach of Seaside, OR enjoying the beautiful sunset.


Papa came with us a day or two early to escape the pressures of the leisure life style he had started since being laid off. I was glad to see that he went all out in the name of fashion. What a charmer! Nana and the Clark family joined us on Friday night. It was fun to get together with everyone. Dan Clark was in shock to see me in my delicate condition (apparently Emily hadn't told him that I was pregnant) Timidly he asked me if this was the case, he didn't want to offend me because he said, "I know that you like to eat."



On our way back to Nana's and Papa's we stopped at the Juanita beach Mall to have to food and ride the horsies. As Grady would say, "Neigh!"


Here is Grady's first Easter egg hunt. You may think that including Grady in an egg hunt was an after thought after noticing that his Easter basket is one of Gran's mixing bowls. You would be right. Grady would not collect more then three eggs and then decided to put the eggs back in there hiding spot. Luckily, mom retrieved most of them and promptly ate the candy inside. Grady was happy to share.



On of our favorite activities is to go to the train park in downtown Issaquah. Unckie Spence was fortunate enough to join us on his last visit. The look of terror on Grady's face is actually his attempt at a smile.


That same weekend was the Fourth of July. Here we are at the Issaquah Parade. I will probably skip this one next year as I don't think strollers with streamers constitutes a parade. That could just be me though...


You can't have a July fourth with out sparklers! Grady's favorite, though, was the pop-itz where he developed a sweet stradegy of gently putting them on the ground and stopping on them.


July fourth is nothing with out fire works! But, since they are illegal in Issaquah, Chris and I had to go out of town to purchase them. Notice how we watched them in the day light to accomadate bed time for all the kids. I still say it was worth it!



Another fun activity.. the Seattle zoo. Here you see Chris and Grady observing the animals. If you look really closely you might see an elephant.


One of Grady's favorite activities is swimming. He could chill in his floaty literally all day. (side note: check out mom's sexy belly! whoa).


At the end of July we went to Nana's and Papa's again to have another family vacation and see new member of the Williams fam, Collin, Ryan and Lindsay's little baby boy. What a cutie! Even the clarks were able to come, making it a mini family reunion, Sans Mal who was soaking up the sun with Jose in Puerto Rico. We did a lot of fun things like touring Portland's Japanese gardens and playing cards of course! Here we are on a leisurely fourth of a mile hike, I mean three mile up hill hike to a beautiful waterfall. I'm not sure how I made it there with out having a baby, but I was proud of myself. (Consequently, at my next doctors appointment I had lost two pounds. ) I wasn't sure what was harder, hiking up the mountain or having to pee the whole way down.


I thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of all the grandkids while we were all in one place. That's a lot of blondes!, but they are soooo cute! I just want to eat little baby James' cheeks!

So that's pretty much getting everyone up to date. This blog took serveral naptimes to complete so sorry for the delay. Now we spend our time waiting for baby Madden to be born. (the sooner the better!)