More Mother's Day pics...

Mother's Day with the gang!

Happy Mother's Day! I hope everyone had a really great day! We had a really nice and relaxing day over here...very simple but nice. Maddie absolutely loves the holidays and Mother's Day has proven to be no exception. When I picked her up from the Kids Club at the gym yesterday morning, she gave each kid a great big hug goodbye and enthusiastically yelled "Happy Mother's Day" to every single one of them! The teachers and I couldn't stop laughing because most of the kids just looked at her with these blank looks in their eyes, not having a clue what she was so excited about, but there were a few girls about Maddie's age who shared her enthusiasm because as Maddie went to hug them goodbye, they all got in a circle and huddled together, excitedly whispering, "What are YOU doing for Mother's Day?" and each of them telling the others about their special plans. Maddie told them she was making me a cake. I couldn't have been more proud. Her enthusiasm is definitely contagious!

Well, I knew this one was coming...it always does. Maddie and I ran over to Costco and we were walking along, talking about nothing other than Mother's Day when all of a sudden, she folded her arms, got a pout on her face and said, "Hmph...." in the most indignant voice I've ever heard. It was hard not to smile but I pretended to be very concerned and asked her what was wrong. She said she'd been thinking and that it just didn't seem right that today was Mother's Day and that Father's Day is coming up soon and that kids just don't EVER get a special day for themselves. Why don't kids ever get presents or treats? IT'S JUST NOT FAIR!" at which point she broke into about a 30 second round of tears. You HAVE to love the drama, AND the reasoning, of a 4-year-old, don't you? (Keep in mind this is right after I just placed a swimming pool into our shopping cart!) They just don't understand when you try to tell them that pretty much every day is "Kids Day"..that one just goes right over their heads. It cracked me up so bad!

Anyways, Josh left Moab early this morning so that he could be home for Mother's Day and then Justin came over and we had a really nice dinner, just relaxing and spending time together. Maddie's new thing is telling jokes and she captivated us all for about 10 minutes with jokes that went something like this...."Why did the peanut butter and jelly sandwich cross the road?" "I don't know, Maddie. Why did it cross the road?" "To get to the garbage can!" after which she would break out with the biggest case of the giggles. It was great....she had us rolling because absolutely none of her jokes made one bit of sense! Oh, and one of the best parts was that after dinner, Maddie made me a beautiful pink princess cake, just like she'd been telling everyone, so that "you and me can be princesses together FOREVER, mommy"....now if that doesn't make a mom's heart melt, I don't know what does. It sure did mine... Anyways, here are some pictures from tonight's antics. Again, I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day. You were all in my thoughts even though we may not have spoken....

Our first customer!

A few weeks ago, Maddie and I were at Home Depot and ran across a cute hummingbird feeder and decided we wanted to get one of our own. We had gone to Michael's a few months ago and bought birdhouses that we're still in the process of painting (yet ANOTHER unfinished project we've got going on!) so we decided to get the feeder so we could get some immediate gratification of watching the birds visit our backyard. We have a big palo verde in our backyard that attracts alot of birds, especially the cactus wrens that Grandma loves so much (just kidding...they drive her crazy!) so we thought a hummingbird feeder would be perfect. We hung it from our palo verde (if you look real close, you can see it!) and the other day, we were standing by the back door and Maddie happened to look outside at just the right moment and see a hummingbird at the feeder. She got so excited and yelled as loud as she could, "Hey, Josh. Look outside! We've got our first customer!" It cracked us both up! She kept track a few more times, screaming out, "Looks like our third customer's here for dinner!" but then finally gave up and has moved onto bigger and better things, like the lizards in our backyard... stories for yet another day.

A few more pictures of the princess...

Princess Maddie

Well, I finally got around to washing the princess dresses Maddie got for Christmas. They were too scratchy for her to wear so they've been sitting next to my washing machine and every time I did a load of laundry, I always thought to myself, "one of these days I have to wash these". Well, that day finally came. It only took me 4 months to do it (but who's counting?)! So, once the dresses were ready, Maddie pulled out all her princess gear and started dressing up like all the different princesses (I won't mention the fact that we played hookey from church today because she woke up sick...you'd never tell by looking at these pictures!) and then asked me to take pictures....lots and lots of pictures. I'm only putting a few of the pictures on the blog so here we go...

Introducing, your royal princess... Madelyn Grace Allred.....

Soccer season continues...

So, soccer is in it's third week...2 more to go. Maddie cracked me up this past Wednesday. The coach gathered all the kids into a big group and bless his heart, he was trying his hardest to teach these kids this new soccer move. He had gone through the move about 3 times and all of the kids had this blank look on their faces, eyes wide, mouths hanging open, having NO clue what the coach was trying to teach them. Finally, the coach gave up and asked if any of the kids had any questions or comments. Nobody moved and then I saw Maddie look around and her hand shoot up into the air. The coach got excited, thinking she had something to ask regarding the soccer move he was teaching the kids. He asked her what she wanted to say and very seriously, she held up both her hands and said, "Look, my mom just painted my fingers and toes and they're all sparkly with blue and silver sparkles! Do you want to see them?" It cracked me up! You can see in two of the pictures that the dance and cheer classes she has taken have not been a waste of money...after she scored a goal, she stuck out her hands and legs and did a cheer move...all she's missing are her pom poms! I guess tomboys and princesses can live together in harmony after all!

Josh's Rock 'n' Roll Marathon

Okay, I need to apologize here because since I am so behind the times, I am posting alot of these things out of order but better late than never I hope! Back on January 18th, Josh ran his very first half-marathon, P.F. Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Half Marathon. It was crazy...if I remember correctly, they started out in Phoenix, ran through Scottsdale and ended up at ASU. I'd never seen so many people in one place at one time...there were something like 22,000 people who ran the half-marathon and 6,000 who ran the full marathon.

Waiting on the finish line for Josh to cross was one of the neatest things I've ever experienced...it was incredible. Josh had run that race for Doug and I definitely felt his presence there that morning. The second Josh crossed the finish line, I called Grandma on the phone and neither of us could stop crying for the longest time....it was incredibly emotional for all of us. I had never in my life seen such determination on someone's face as I did when I saw Josh about to finish. And, somehow, in the midst of trying to finish the race, he had still managed to send me a text to let me know when to expect him at the finish line... talk about the ultimate multi-tasker! His official time was 1 hour, 59 minutes and 35 seconds! This was really something to be proud of, Josh, and believe me when I tell you this will not soon be forgotten.

Maddie's first hike to Flat Top!

Maddie went on her first hike up Flat Top today! It was SO much fun though the only wildlife we saw was a lizard which probably suited Maddie just fine. Flat Top is what we have nicknamed the mountain that is directly across the street from our backyard because it actually is flat on top (which is an intentional coincidence because if I remember correctly, Doug used to also hike a mountain called Flat Top when he was growing up in Round Valley as a kid!) Josh has been hiking it for a few weeks and I decided Josh shouldn't be the only person around our house having so much fun so off we went and it turned out to be a great little hike to the top! What an incredible view! For some reason, it never fails to amaze me just how many mountains we have here in the desert. Absolutely gorgeous! In one of the pictures, you can see our house from the top of the mountain....it's the fourth house to the left (the one with the BBQ). Now that Maddie is 4 (and going on 14, it seems!), I'm starting to look for some hikes she and I can do together. She was a total trooper the whole way. I kept expecting her to get tired and wanting to be carried (yeah, that's going to happen on the uphill climb!) and then I kept trying to grab her hand to keep her from falling but she kept pushing me away, telling me she's totally got it handled and that she wanted to be the "line leader" coming down the mountain! Something tells me we've got a nature lover on our hands!

You'll probably notice I'm wearing an ASU shirt in one of the pictures...that's to celebrate that I was just accepted into the Speech and Hearing Science program at ASU for the fall. I'm pretty excited! Emily, you know what that means, don't you? Consider this advanced notice that I'll probably be constantly calling you for help, advice and support! :-)

Here are a few more pictures after the sealing and from the BBQ.....

The Allred Family Sealing

These pictures were taken this past Tuesday when Kacin, Kyler, Laura and Eric were sealed together as an eternal family at the Mesa Temple. What an incredibly special day. We are all so happy for you! Following the sealing, everybody headed to Fitch Park for a BBQ....it was a total blast! The kids went crazy and had so much fun playing together. Like usual, there were too many cousins to count! Rumor has it that Eric and his gang were heading to Disneyland for a few days.....we'll all be waiting for pictures! We can't wait to see the smiles on the boy's faces :-)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful day with your families and enjoyed all of the fun Easter festivities! We had a great day....actually, a great weekend! On Saturday, Grandma, Maddie and I kicked off the festivities by going to an Easter Egg-stravaganza at church. It was raining pretty hard so we didn't know how it would turn out but they brought it all inside and it was awesome! They had a great pancake breakfast and lots of games and activities for the kids. Maddie kept doing this easter egg obstacle course over and over. It was so much fun and gave us all a chance to meet alot of new people in our ward. Maddie even got some pictures with the Easter Bunny (did you know that the Easter bunny actually lives in our ward? ha ha!) I'll hopefully have some pictures of that posted soon.

On Saturday night, Maddie and I colored eggs and she had a total blast! It must be a girl thing because she is so much fun to do these types of activities with (sorry guys...honestly, you were fun when you were little, too...she just gets so EXCITED when she does these things!) I even learned something after 22 years of coloring eggs with my kids. I can't believe I'm even admitting this but here goes...you know those plastic sleeves that come in the Paas coloring kits that go around the eggs? I've always wondered what the heck you're supposed to do with those things because they never really stayed on too well when I put them on those easter eggs. Well, after taking about 10 seconds and actually reading the directions at Maddie's insistence, I learned that after you put those plastic sleeves on the eggs, you are supposed to blow dry them which will, in turn, cause the plastic to melt onto the egg, creating a beautiful easter picture. DUH...do I feel stupid! (Guess I better think twice about going back to school this fall!)

Anyways, Justin came over and we had our traditional all-out, every-man-for-himself easter egg hunt. Both Josh and Justin thought they had won but as predicted, Maddie kicked both their butts. Better luck next year, guys! We ran into a little problem, though, when Maddie searched and searched but wasn't able to find her basket anywhere! Luckily, we live in this incredible age of technology so I did what any attentive parent would do. I whipped out my cell phone and called the Easter bunny himself. It took a few tries to get through because he was obviously busy but I finally got to talk to him and he was able to give Maddie some clues as to where he had hidden her basket. That's what I call a close call! All in all, we had a great day relaxing, eating, playing and just hanging out together. We hope you all had the same.

V is for Victory!

I can't resist one more soccer post. As you can tell, I'm having as much fun as Maddie (if not more!) so I wanted to post just a few more pictures from her second day of soccer. It cracked me up because she was trying so hard to make a goal and when she finally did, she threw her hands up in the air and yelled "touchdown"! She then high-tailed it over to me to make sure I was watching and she was so excited that she did her version of the "happy dance" (princess style, of course!)