Halloween Crafties!

I love decorating for holidays. It was one of my favorites things growing up. Changing decorations to fit the occasion is always exciting to me. I love the fall and decided I needed a few more Halloween decorations. And since Billy was gone all last week on a clinical I decided to put my lonely time to use and make something. I found a pattern for this cute little swag on the internet and thought I would give it a try. They had a pattern for the shapes you could print out and everything. It was a pretty simple project but very very time consuming. You have to cut out all the little shapes (even the eyes for the ghosts) and then sew them together and stitch around the edge of everything with different colors. It took me quite a while but I think it was worth it. It turned out so cute! If anyone wants to make the attempt here's the web site:

www.holiday-crafts-and-creations.com/homemade-halloween-decorations.html

A close up. The decoration on the internet only had two pumpkins and three candy corn but I thought the pumpkins were cute so I did three of them. But I realized that they are the hardest to put together so that's probably why they only made two.

The complete project

Then I also bought these thin cardboard

letters and bought some halloween scrap paper

and ribbons and voila! another decoration!

And what's halloween without carving pumpkins?
Johnny, Callie and Mandy came over for the annual carving.

Billy's and my pumpkin all lit up. Mine's the dopey one.

We all decided that Johnny won the best pumpkin award with his elk bugling. Even though I gave him the idea, he still gets all the credit. Pretty cool huh? I couldn't get a good pic of it in the dark with a candle because it didn't show bright enough in the picture.

Great News!......

WE ARE PREGNANT! No beating around the bush here. We are now expecting and could not be happier. I am due April 7th so I am 3 months along now and everything is going great this time. A couple weeks after we found out we decided we couldn't wait till my first doctor's appointment so I went and had an ultrasound done by a lady who does it for free cuz she needs so many sessions for some kind of certification. So we were able to see the tiny little babe in there! And we were able to see the little flicker of the heartbeat inside. It was so awesome. And such a relief to be able to see that. This made me not so anxious for my first doctor's appointment. Billy took a little video of the heart beating on his phone:

So my first appointment went great and she said everything looked fine. My second appointment was last Wednessday. And this time I got to hear the heartbeat. It was amazing. I will look forward to hearing it again next time.

Now being almost 13 weeks I will be glad when the sickness starts to wear off. It hasn't been to bad cuz I've still been able to go to work, but at the same time hasn't been any fun at all. Everything still makes me gag. But being sick is such a good sign.

So we just wanted to get our good news out there! And we can't wait until November when we can find out if we are having a baby boy or girl! AH!! SO HAPPY!

Lately...

I have a little bit of catching up to do. First of all, a couple weeks ago we had our first ever Mckell Allred family reunion. It takes callin it a "family reunion" to get everyone together now I guess. This was the first time we were all together at the same time since Billy and I were married. We all drove to Oxbow Oregon where Kory and his family live. For once they didn't have to go anywhere and we came to them! We all drove/flew a total of 8,890 miles to be together. But oh it is so worth it! We all caravaned it from Boise to Oxbow and all arrived there at the same time to invade Kory and Lisa. Here's what we did for the weekend...

• Went on a tour of Hells Canyon Dam
• Went to the Visitors Center
• Made felt hats that the kids decorated
• Played with the Kittens
• The guys went shooting
• Had races
• Played badmitten
• Went for a hike
• Picked Blackberries
• Swam in the river
• Painted pet rocks
• Had a manicure/pedicure for the girls
• Had a water ballon toss
• Finger painting
• And took tons of pictures and laughed and ate in between everything

It's always so sad that wonderful times like this can only last the weekend. But we will take what we get! And Monday morning we all left for our long long drives home. Here is the new family picture we got (which will be out dated in October when baby Daxton arrives).

Couldn't leave this unblogged (hope you can enlarge it)

Then the next weekend Clay and Joni and there two little girls came for the weekend. We went camping by Alcova on Friday night. And to our surprise didn't even get wet! We left after a rainstorm, decided to go anyway, and were lucky and came home just before another one hit. We got to go on a little hike Saturday morning.

Macy and I were pooped by the time we got to the top

Summer seems to have gone by so so fast. As it always does. Billy will be hitting the books hard again starting on Tuesday and won't be stopping till he is completely done. He has had a good break for the summer though and is ready to get going again. Well I think thats the latest with us. Hope everyone is great!

The Wild, the Wet, and the Wonderful!

Wow, what a weekend. Mom and Dad came down since they wouldn't be having any company for the 4th this year. We are so glad that they came. We had a blast! We definitely made some long lasting memories thats for sure. They came Thursday night. Billy had to work for a few hours Friday morning so while he was gone mom, dad and I went on a little walk on the river. This is Mom at the edge of the water.

cute cute

Then after lunch and a nice nap we went miniature golfing. Miniature golfing is a perfect activity because it doesn't matter your age or how skilled you are at golf it is always fun.

Billy and his lucky blue ball.....notice the clouds....hmm

Dad pointing at his ball which has somehow ended up in the water. Thats wierd.

Mom and I both got a hole in one on the same hole. Fun!

I like this picture. Again notice the threatening clouds. We had a few more holes to go and it started to rain so we ran inside to take our clubs back. Then it started raining harder and harder so we waited inside for it to quit. The building we were in was flooding. Water was coming through the tops of the doors and through the bottom of the doors and was creeping along the floor everywhere.

So when the rain died down just a little,we decided to make a run for it. Billy ran to get the car and we came after him. We couldn't BELIEVE the HUGE puddles there were already!

This was one of the holes that was completely filled with water. We had quite the crazy drive home. We tried going one way but there was so much water going under the interstate that we couldn't get through. We turned around and tried a different route.

We were in downtown Casper and the drainage in the streets couldn't keep up with all the water. It was insaine. Never been in a flash flood before.

Tons and Tons of water. At one point that water was coming up over the hood of the car. Thats when it got a little scary. But our car made it through. Some others we not so lucky. While we were going really slow at a light a guy in an avalanche came zooming right by us and his wake covered our car and scared me and mom to death.

So that was quit the adventure but it turned out all right cuz since we hadn't finished golfing they gave us rain checks and we went back the next day for free! :)

If you go to http://tribtown.trib.com/post/Groups/WyoWeather/blog/flash_flooding_in_casper.html

there is a slide show of other pictures taken of the flooding in casper.

Day 2 and mini golf. Billy won the first day and Mom won the second day. Ya Mom!

A cool tree outside the golf course.

Then after lunch and another nice nap we went to the park and while me and mom read, Billy and Dad played catch.

Saturday night we went to the minor league game. Casper Ghosts against the Ogden Raptors.

Dad was just like a little kid in a candy store. He loved it! Then we drove to a good spot and watched the fireworks before another rainstorm came with warnings of a flash flood. What a fun and enjoyable weekend we had with them! We just did whatever we wanted, when we wanted. And if we wanted to take a nap then thats just what we did!

Love you Mom and Dad!

Water World!!

Yay!! We FINALLY got to go to Water World in Denver! We tried going last summer and got all the way down there and it just rained and rained. There was only a 10% chance of rain for this Friday so we weren't going to pass it up! It was storming like crazy Thursday night when we drove to Denver though.

We couldn't have asked for a better day to go. It was prefect! We got there right when they opened and only left 30 min before they closed so we could beat the rush. Since I couldn't take my camera all over, I got some pics off the internet of some of the rides.

This is the revolution. It was pretty fun. We had to wait for 45 minutes and here I am getting all nervous like I do before every ride and we could hear everyone screaming as they go down. But the ride was probably under a minute and I'm not sure it was worth our precious time. but not bad.

This was one of our favorite rides. You can race with six people on mats. We LOVED it! The line went fast so you could just keep going. Billy and I were getting competitive. I would always beat him out of the tubes but then somehow on the way down he would cruise right past me laughing. We were talking about how we could see Dad, Kory, Aaron, Dal, Kelly, and Billy having a major tournament with this slide. Maybe next years reunion. :)

Billy went on one of these crazy slides that I think is more of a free fall then a slide.

Some rides were more relaxing,

but only after you hauled your huge

tube all the way to the top of it. hah

These are the only pictures we got of us for the day.

This is in the parking lot all excited and ready to go go go...

And.....

This is after. Amazing what 7 and 1/2 hours

of sun water and lots of walking can do to a body.

But we had an awesome time and hit almost

every ride there.

Mmmm...even got my cotton candy. I will always love that stuff.

Saturday we woke up and went to the temple and while we were there we saw my best friend ever! Josie! We were so surprised to see each other there!

So now our long awaited weekend is over but we had so so much fun and are glad that it didn't rain on us!