Happy Holidays

I love this picture of Jason and Bek. We were in Racine and did the corn maze. Fun Day in October. It's been a while since I wrote.
Cameron Nelson (Sandy's), Brooklyn Wallace (Josh's) and Bekah.

I got to go home and see my family with Rebekah this last week. It was so fun to be home in Idaho and spend time with my brand new nephew and neice. I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful family and to be able to spend time with them. Coming back home to Wisconsin was nice too. I missed my husband and children. Jason worked so hard to manage the kids schedules and his own work schedule.

I love this picture of Bekah. She fell asleep on Jasons lap the other day. She is such a sweet heart. We are just really enjoying her.

Still Here

This is a picture of Bekah in the Morris Chair in her blessing dress. We have a picture just like this of Jason's Grandmother in this chair in her blessing dress as an infant. What a family heirloom. We love this chair, and the baby.

Her blessing dress was made by a close family friend. Thanks, Mary-Ann!

We had some pictures taken of our family about a year ago.

Though they don't include our newest addition,

we think they turned out great.

This is a picture of Jason with Monica Nassif and Thelma Meyer. (She is the real Mrs. Meyer) Jason loved working with Monica and Thelma and all the other friends at Caldrea. He learned a lot there and will really miss them.

We made it through our exciting summer and we are doing good. Life has been so busy for us these days.The high schooler, the middle schoolers and the Elementary schooler, and the baby. Many activities and running all over. We are enjoying our chaos.

We made it to the Wisconsin State Fair this summer where the kids enjoyed a famous WI State Fair cream puff. These things are huge. James' face is no exaggeration.

Jason is serving as our Ward Mission Leader and we are loving having the Elders and Sisters over often. We have 3 sets of missionaries serving in our ward. His job and his church calling are keeping him very busy.

The neighborhood is great and very friendly with many children in the neighborhood. We are finally feeling like our house is getting organized and put together.

Jason enjoys his job most days. He has had a record year for Off! as the mosquitos were out of control this summer. For most people, that is not a good thing, but for us it ROCKS!

We took a trip out to Idaho in August to bless Bekah. We got to see so many wonderful family members who made a trip to be with us on this special day.

My mom made these adorable shoes for Bekah. She wore them for her blessing.

We need to get some more pictures of Bekah, but here are a few of our favorites. I will try to write often now and I am going to make my blog public again to make it easier to access. Thanks for checking in on us.

4 Generations. Grandma Lindsay, Shirley Wallace, Kerri Allen and Bekah Don Allen.

I have been so busy with all the relo. stuff that I have not even thought about blogging, but we got home from Wisconsin last night and I decided to put a quick update on here. I am including pictures of our homes. The one we are selling first, and the one we are buying second. We did find a nice home in Wind Lake, Wisconsin and we made an offer and they accepted. So I got one big item checked off my to do list for this summer.

1. Buy House X
2. Sell House
3. Have a Baby
4. Move to Wisconsin

We had a couple of buyers interested in making an offer on our home, but so far no one has written anything up, and now we are forced to lower our price to near the value our appraisals came in at and that is SOOO Painful! But the company will buy it from us if we don't sell it and that takes the pressure off a little. Here are some pictures of our current Wisconsin home that we absolutely love. How anyone could not just fall in love with it like we did is beyond me. The pictures did turn out great too and I really think one family is trying to put together an offer for us still, so maybe we can sell it this week. Especially after we reduce our price again.

Front ViewLiving Room from Upstairs

Kitchen
Family Room/Computer room

Kiley's Room off Family Room

Our Theater Room

(Newest edition)

Side Yard with Tramp

Backyard with firepit

Our New house

We love our new house too and we were so blessed to find it. It has five bedrooms for our expanding family and 3.5 bathrooms. The backyard is 3/4 acre and has a pond back there for the boys to enjoy. The schools there are so great and we are looking forward to moving in and getting settled this summer.
The neighborhood is also fantastic and has many children of all ages for my kids to run around with. The ward is also wonderful and very welcoming.

The kitchen

The backyard

Jason has started his new job in Racine now so the kids and I will be on our own during the week days here in MN. I am still feeling pretty good and trying to keep up with the kids and the house for showings. Jason is able to come home for weekends this month and

we are scheduled for a c-section on June 30th. YEAHHH!

I am getting very excited about having a little baby around. I can't remember if we posted the name we have (probably) chosen, but we are thinking of naming her Rebekah.

(Like from the Bible)

So all in all it should be a pretty exciting summer for us. Just hoping we can get this house sold soon and get one more check mark made on my to-do list.

We love you guys. Thanks for checking in on our life now and then.

Kerri

Walnut Grove

Over Spring Break we took a day trip to visit Walnut Grove, the famous town in Minnesota where Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her stories. I grew up watching the Little House on the Prairie and a while back I bought the DVDs for my kids to watch. So we wanted to visit this place while we live so close. Along the way, we stopped and took a little hike to see these Petroglyphs. There were thousands of pictures carved in the rock. My camera battery died, so I just have a few pictures of the things Kiley snapped along the way...

While in Walnut Grove, the kids bought this slate and a slate pencil as a souvenir. They had fun pretending they went to school with Laura and Mary.

We also passed this town called Sleepy Eye, which I remembered from the show. I was surprised that it was a real town.

We stopped at this park for a picnic lunch.

Basement is Done and Yes we are Moving...

I know it is crazy, but we are finally done with our basement and as usual, with the excitement of finishing this project and the anticipation that comes with enjoying the theater room, now we have discovered that Jason's job transfer will happen sooner than we thought and we will be leaving our hard work for someone else to enjoy (again). So here are some pictures of the finished product. It turned out wonderful and I just want to hang out there all day.

The storage room turned out great too, complete with my can sorters, which I have not stocked yet...

These are the can sorters that Jason made for our food storage a few years ago. I love them. You drop in the cans from the top, and pull them out the bottom and they rotate so you are always using the oldest can. He made several sizes for all kinds of cans that we store. I just love this and think he is the best.

Jason is super excited about this job. It is a promotion and to the brand that he has been wanting to work on. The only trick is that he starts his new job in Racine on June 1st and our baby is not due until June 30. So he will be most likely commuting back and forth on the weekend so the kids and I can stay here and finish school and have the baby here before the move. It will be tricky to get the house sold and find a house there in Wisconsin during this last trimester of my pregnancy, but I think everything will work out for us. We are hoping to make the move around mid-July. My parents and my sister Tracy are going to come and help during the really tricky times. (When the baby comes and during the move).

The kids are pretty excited to be reunited with their friends from Racine. We have not decided where to move exactly, but we will be going out to look at schools and houses soon and narrow it down a little. We all have mixed feeling about leaving this house and our friends in Minnesota. We have really enjoyed out short time here. But we knew we would be going back eventually and we are looking forward to being back in Wisconsin.

I have some great pictures of our little wanderings during Spring Break, but I will post those next time.

Happy March

We are so excited to be done with February, even though this February was very mild. I am needing a change in scenery and ready for this snow to melt!

We snapped a couple pictures of these icicles just outside our living room window. They were growing right above our air conditioner out back, so we were afraid that when they fell they would destroy the ac and we covered it with a big board. Sure enough, just a day after taking this picture, they came crashing down on a warm day. The ac survived and I was glad we got a picture of these icicles. The longest one measured over 7ft, 6inches.

We had a nice Valentines day. Jason took me out on Saturday and we went to the stake dance, we had a great dinner at a very nice restaurant. Then we went and saw "Valentines Day" in the theater. I was worried that it would be a dumb show, (usually when they pack that many stars into one movie, the plot is extremely thin), but I enjoyed the show and we desperately needed a night out after all his work in the basement and with the High Council lately.

Jason's Birthday was really fun too. We managed to surprise him with several unique gifts, but, the thing he was most excited about was the 5 bags of Plackers I found for him. For those of you who do not know what Plackers are, they are Dental Flossers. We bought a bag a year ago and he loved them. They were the only flossers that didn't break when he used them. We could not find any more and I discovered where to buy them and stocked up for his birthday. He was stoked!

This is a shot of our storage room, but only about 1/2 of the room is in the picture. I am more excited about this room than the theater, because I love having room for storage. Jason is going to build shelves for my big storage bins and some smaller shelves for food storage and stuff. Also, there is room to hang my can sorters, which I have been living without for almost 5 years

Now an update on the basement. Things got a little slow because our friend that is doing the taping and texturing was out of town for longer than he planned, but Jason finished sheet rocking and found a great cabinet for our theater equipment. And now, this week Mark is here taping and texturing and painting. Next week we can get the doors and trim on and then we can get someone in to do carpet. I am still hoping to have everything completed in time to watch New Moon down there on the 20th. I am embarrassed to say that I love the Twilight Saga almost as much as my 13 year old. Jason was not thrilled about watching that as our first movie in the theater room, so he wants to have it done on the 19th, and watch something more manly, like "Man from Snowy River." I think I can make that compromise, as long as I get New Moon on the 20th.

This is the unfinished Theater room and the big wall there will be where the movie will play. The doorway there is a small hall at the bottom of the stairs and a door into the storage room too.

Jason has been keeping busy at work too and he had a wonderful chance last week to meet with Elder L. Tom Perry from the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. What an experience! Elder Perry was here in Minneapolis meeting with the Stake Presidencies and the High Councilors over Missionary work in each stake. Jason was pretty thrilled to be there and be trained by him.

The kids are all doing great and wishing we could get away for Spring Break, but it looks like we will be staying here and hoping for good weather. I am feeling good still, but getting huge. We are looking forward to summer and the baby.

It's a Girl

We had our ultrasound a week or so ago and we were excited to find out that we are having a baby girl! The kids are happy about that ( the boys joked that we would have to just keep trying for a boy). She looks healthy and everything is going fine with my pregnancy. I feel great and I am not sick anymore.

The basement is coming right along. Jason is working on sheetrock now and it is looking really good. We have a guy coming to tape and texture and paint in a week so we have to get the sheetrock hung. Jason passed off his framing and electrical inspection so we can work toward the final inspection now.

The kids are doing great. Kiley is keeping really busy with the choirs she is participating in and her voice lessons. She has festival coming up and she has been working really hard on her songs. She has been babysitting a little too and saving up for her trip to DC this summer. She can't wait for that.

Will is doing great and loving school this year. He is taking advanced Math and just can't get enough of it. He has a great teacher and always comments that math is the best and most fun part of his day. He definately does not get that from me.

James is doing good in 4th grade and enjoying the recorder and phys. ed. He is growing and probably soon to pass up Will in height. James is enjoying the snow pile out in the middle of our cul-de-sac. He loves going out there and climbing and sliding down the hill after school. He is also loving scouts.

Kate is still spunky and very opinionated. She loves to wear lip gloss and sneaks into Kiley's makeup at least once a week. She loves kindergarten and loves to read. She is learning fast and a whole new world is opening up to her because of reading. She is so boy crazy and I don't know what to think of that. She is not shy about the boys she is crushing on and even drew Caleb's picture on her Valentine bag for school and wrote his name above it. I asked her why she drew his picture on the bag. She said she wants him to know she likes him, just incase he likes her too. YIKES! Any advice? Isn't that a little forward for kindergarten? She is normally so shy and all my other kids too. I don't know how to handle her sometimes. I do love that she is very bold and says what she thinks.

I have been busy with the kids and house and we are all looking forward to spring. We are hoping to get the theater room finished in the basement in time for the release of "New Moon" which I think is March 20. I think that would be a great time to try out the projector in our new basement.