Happy Birthday Grandpa Jerry!

The Allen family celebrated Grandpa Jerry's (he would be John Allen the 6th) birthday in November. He is 80 years young, wow!! The entire family, minus a few, met at the lake house for some relaxing family fun. It was so fun to spend time together as a family and celebrate such a great grandpa!

Halloween Festivities

Our Halloween festivities began early in the month with a trunk-or-treat at the YMCA. We got this costume for Liv last year but we were in AZ and it still fits!! I did some mimi face painting on the girls. I know mom, yours is better:)
Liv was a garden fairy and Kate was Tinkerbell
Livy's preschool has a "silly hat parade" instead of letting the kids dress up (LAME). I didn't know people actually got really into it and made crazy hats so I just gave Liv my witch hat. Which is way too big. I laughed till I cried when I saw Liv walk in peering out from under the hat! And of course baby Kate was scared and wouldn't be put down.

Still not sure why she has to wear a hat or why she is on stage
She decided she did not like her hat so Miss Tiffany gave her her hat.
With the new hat, she was ready to perform. She snuck to the front so she could see me
There she is! My little star


And last week I got to go help Johnny's class with their Fall Festival. The kids go to dress up as super hero's for drug awareness "be a hero, don't do drugs" day.

I just had to add a picture of Seongwon, a boy in Johnny's class. I think he is sooo cute. He's about three inches shorter than Johnny and about twice as wide. He's soft as a marshmallow! Like look at the neck roll and the rubber band wrists. And he's SIX! And he has a laugh like Long Duck Dong from "Sixteen Candles".
Saturday was our ward's trunk-or-treat. Another fun night with candy and dressing up!
This is Livy being funny. She is so weird!
Johnny preferred to pass out the candy instead.
I was a bum and didn't decorate my car
Our ward ended up inviting the whole stake so we had TONS of kids there!
Grams, Papa J, and Greg came over Sunday night for dinner and Grams left her car decorated from her trunk or treat so we took some pics before the kids went out.



The kids were so excited to actually knock on doors in the dark, I think they were sick of trunk or treats.

Big kids can do it all by themselves mom!
The kids were SO excited to have Gramz with us!
And we ran into Cody, our neighbor and friend from down the street!

The rest of the night was hilarious with Livy getting spooked by peoples masks (the "scream" mask was her least favorite), dogs, and little haunted houses. She screamed and we would laugh and laugh. And once their little bags were full, we went home and gave all the candy to the rest of the trick or treaters:)

Random phone pics and some stories...

I got a fancy new phone in late September and it has such a great camera that I stopped using my real camera. My phone is always sitting there so I snap random pictures all day. But then they sit on my phone and never make it to the blog. But I will be doing iphone dumps from time to time to get all of the these cute little pics into the blogosphere.

Livy has finally started to play and color and do things other than follow me around and destroy things. She LOVES to color and read books.

First braids!

I've been using my phone to document livi's sleep issues so this one would be the last ones where she is actually in her bed. But the story begins at school...

I got a text from her preschool teacher in September that said, "Livy's tote was wet when she got to school and it got her blanket and paci wet. Livy said that your dog peed on it so I threw the paci away and put the blanky in the washer, hope nap time goes well!"

I was like, "Whaaaaat? 1: we don't have a dog. 2: do NOT throw that paci away, I'm not ready to get rid of it yet!"

She said that she was doing fin without it and that I should just bite the bullet and be strong.

So we did. We told Liv the paci was gone and she was a big girl now. And then it was time for bed and all hell broke loose.

That very night she decided to climb out of her crib and cried all night. So I was up at every hour putting her back in. The next night we took the front off of her crib and it was worse. So we switched the locks on her door and she screamed so hard she puked everywhere. And she woke up all night again. So the next night (night three) I put the gate back up on her crib thinking she would just cry again but hoping she had forgotten how to climb out. I laid her down and she climbed out of the crib before I could even get to the end of the hall.

I couldn't handle it. I couldn't take the paci away and deal with the big girl bed non-sense all at once. So that fourth night I took the gate off her crib for the second time, pulled out the paci, and she went right to sleep.

But that only lasted one night. She would walk out all night and we'd have to take her back to her bed. I think my kids have sleep walking issues. Big time. And then she got scared of the dark so she wanted lights on, door open, mommy and/or daddy to lay down next to her and hold her hand AND she wanted to play games on our phones. And of course we let her like the idiot push-overs we are and she would eventually fall asleep. Then we would wake up and our little bug would be asleep on the couch. All of our hard work to get her to sleep on the bed and she would prefer the couch. Whatever.

So yesterday we sent her two last paci's up into the sky to the paci fairy on two pink balloons. The wind started blowing the second she let go and they flew down, barely over our neighboor's fence and into their back yard. So the poor girl didn't even get to see them disappear into the sky. But they're gone and now we are pretty much starting over with the crying and fits. But I'm done. And she can be a big girl now.

On Saturday (the third night) I was desperate to get her to like her bed so I took her to Target to get some big girl treats. She chose this outfit and a Barbie. We took the kids to the Greek Festival down town and had fun people watching and eating some yummy greek food. These little honey puffs are pretty amazing! I will gladly wait in line for an hour again to eat them next year.
and the kids go tot wear the shirts Denise brought back from their cruise to Greece two years ago!
Pizza all gone Livy.

Johnny's first father/son date to mini golf

Liv still loves her dance class!
Johnny is totally allergic to grass so I bring a towel for him to sit on (another reason we shouldn't play soccer) and Livy likes to join him and cheer the team on. I believe she is about to do a somersault here. Or maybe she's telling the other team how much they stink!

Johnny's first trip to the dentist. The doc was so nice and friendly, they even had Aladdin playing on the TV above him and he still had a panic attack.


For being such a big boy at the dentist (at least he didn't puke on the guy), I made shrimp pasta, Johnny's favorite.

The October festivities were started with these little gifts from Grandma Betty. The kids have slept with them all month! Thanks Gramma B!