The view of 2009

For those of you who faithfully read my blog you will notice that my view has not changed all that much. However, I promise, we are moving forward in life and progressing. we have even really started to look for houses with a real pre-approval under our belts. 2009 was a fun year being preggers, then not being preggers, living with the in-laws, then not living with the in-laws... a lot has happened... really..


I like this picture of Grady because his smile is real and not forced... he giggled while I wrestled his finger from his nose..


here are a bunch of pictures from Christmas at the Allreds this year:


Grady getting his stocking


Grady being told to look happy about it.


Madden under the tree: Mommy's present... awww....




Merry Christmas everyone?

The December Update

Well I thought it might be time to update all my loyal readers on the Allred official business. I always think it better that you hear it straight from the horses mouth because those tabloids tend to portray us in less than flattering lighting.

Madden is almost three months now! It feels like it was just yesterday that he entered our lives but there is also a feeling that he has always been with us. He already has quite the personality and smiles more than any other baby I have ever met. He also continues to be a great eater, pushing 15 pounds at his two month check up, I'm sure he's gained a few since but I'm too scared to find out!

It was Grady's second birthday on October seventh and we decided to get him fewer gifts this year and he was none the wiser. His favorite seemed to be the balloons the Batemans gave him. at one point they got stuck to his foot and followed him through out the house.


For Halloween Chris went all out and dressed up as a Footzone employee. I long for the day when I can burn all of his work shirts...


Grady was a lion and did not want to have his picture taken, but I tried my best anyway. No wonder the paparazzi always take such bad photos. It's not easy when you have an unwilling subject. I have new found sympathy for them.


Madden was a Monkey and the pictures do not do him justice. He was adorable and a little freakish as the Monkey costume had a tendency of looking too real sometimes.



I liked how Madden wanted to keep up the tradition of crying in costume for the pics. Grady would be proud.


We blessed Madden on the first Sunday in November. He was wearing the same blessing outfit as Grady did. However, since he was three times the size that Grady was, Mom ended up cutting up the back of the outfit so we could fit all of his chub in.



We went for a walk one day and I just thought Madden looked so cute in this hand-me-down hat that I had to get a picture, and yes I'm in the bathroom, where all the best pictures are taken...right?


Mid November I once again tried to sell my wares at the Holiday House Boutique in Boise. I would call it a success at I actually sold something this year! yay! I think I made close to 300 dollars which doesn't even begin to pay for what I spent making it and earns me a comparable 1.50 an hour. People keep asking me if it was worth it! Jury's still out...



Here is my booth


Here I am modeling a few of my items


I even put child labor into practice having both Madden and Grady Model my onesies.




While we were at Emily's house, Grady got his first fat lip by falling off a bench right onto his face. I was so proud!

The New Addition!

Baby Madden is here!

Born September 3rd 2009, our newest addition to the family couldn't be more perfect. He weighed 8lbs and 3 oz, and was 21 inches long. He has already gained a pound and an inch since birth. He is quite the little feeder! Madden was born sunny side up, and the doctor was impressed because that usually means hours of pushing, but I pushed the little angel out in 15 minutes and I have the hemmorrhoids to prove it. I'm quite proud of myself and tribute my core strength to all the vigorous walking Chris and I did to try and coax the fetus out. Recovery has been a little strange though. I feel like everything has healed pretty well but I have gotten sick several times. I'm pretty sure the colonic known as "swine flu" snuck in there somewhere.... all I can say is yikes!

Here is Madden straight from the uterus. I guess it's hard work being pushed out a tiny canal. He slept for a long time.

I think that our baby boy likes his new home already. He marked this rug as Madden territory buy puking all over it after I took this picture. Is that a smile on his face?


Grady seems to like being a Big Brother! he loves to give Madden kisses and hugs and pats. The other day I even caught him shoving a Gold Fish cracker in Maddy's mouth! what a generous brother.

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!)

Our new home! via photoshop.... plus a shameless plug for dough

Well here it is! the future household of the Allred legacy! (we hope) this house was just put on the market about a week ago. It's a bit of a fixer but its priced right, we still have a few months of saving left to do. (unless some one has about 5000 dollars to lend us... anyone? if we buy this house before june 30th we will get a tax credit for 7500 dollars so we'll be able to pay you back in a year. That's not bad, right? We will also except multiply loans from several people.. anyone! We are a little afraid that this house will be sold before we can save up the money. That would be really sad because after looking at houses for over a year now it's really the best deal out there, and its got unfinished space so we can grow into it! So search your hearts and send some money our way. think of all the good Karma you'll get!

The Boise blues

So recently my mom and I joined the 3rd annual Boise Holiday House boutique... in Boise. We only gave ourselves two weeks notice so our days were filled morning to night in crafts and sewing... (I crafted.. mom sewed) I made necklaces out of clay that, at first, I was quite proud of. But let me let you in on a little secret... if you make a hundred of anything you will undoubtedly be sick of them in the end. the one thing that kept me going was the dreams of other crafts I would fund with the profits I would surely make. I didn't want to sound braggy so I mostly told people that I would be happy to simply make back the money I spent and I was only doing it for the fun of it, blah blah blan... But in my heart, I had already bought myself a new Bernina sewing machine and a small jewerly kiln. Then I had to make a display! (this ended up being more costly then the necklaces themselves) My theory was that the display was what would attrack the moths (costumers) to the flame (necklace bounty). I figured the more shiney stuff and lights the better so that you could literally feel the heat of the bulbs like a welcoming camp fire. (I could have marketed my sign as a space heater). After days and nights, nights and days... and the other time in between, my mom and I finally had to drop what we were frantically trying to finish and make the trip to Boise. The first day of the boutique was a little slow for us. not a lot of merchandise was moved... correction.. none merchandise.... none. Emily encouraged us saying that the first day was always slow and surely the next day we would have more luck. That night the kiln was scratched off of my wish list. the next day went much like the day before.. except there were three more hours of rejection. and in the end I won't mention the profits except to say that they ended some where in the negatives. I did however convince some of the other ladies working the boutique to feel sad enough for me to trade with me. I'm sure their necklaces will end up somewhere in the bottom corner of a childs toy box. ... or in the trash. But I made out like a bandit! and got great stuff in exchange for blood sweat and/or tears. My mom, as it turned out, was equally successful!

On a lighter note I have begun taken orders for clay necklaces. So get your order in fast as these babies have a tendency to fly off the shelf! and stay tuned for next years boutique where I hope to spend more hundreds of dollars all in the persuit of driving myself insane.

p.s. you will notice that there are no pictures on this blog as I forgot to bring my camera. This may have turned out to be God's tender mercy as I will not be needing to hold on to and cherish this memory.

Grady's 1st haircut!

If you asked my husband to tell you five words that described me I bet you that "impulsive" would be somewhere near the top of his list. I like to think that, most of the time, I make well thought out decisions, but, I have to admit that, even I have my moments of spontaneity. So a few nights ago I decided that it was time to give Grady a real hair cut! luckily it worked out. I think he looks very handsome.

I thought I'd take a picture of his discarded hair to showcase how much was really cut off

On A side note, Redmond had a freak hailstorm today. (biggest hail I've ever seen in real life but I doubt the discovery channel will be down here to document it anytime soon) and I thought my family would enjoy some shots. It was a bit terrifying and really loud, but mostly exciting.


Look how huge those things are! I felt like I was in a life size snow globe.