Everything but the Kitchen Sink! Part 1

The title of this posting, and the 3 other postings preceding this one are appropriately titled, "Everything but the Kitchen Sink!" I neglected to blog about the happenings of our lives and have now just caught up. I could have just said "Forget it. I'll start blogging from here on out," but this blog has become our family history, a record of us, the Allee Family, so it wouldn't be complete without including the last two months of our lives. Hence, you will see a whole gamut of happenings from our lives from parties, to outings to fun stuff done at home. The order in which you see the pictures for this posting and the others with similar titles are from the oldest to the most recent, therefore the last picture of "Everything but the kitchen Sink! Part 4" is the most recent picture of all these postings.

So, little Ellary leads off with a video of her rendition of "Dancing with the Stars." She's clearly the pro and...if she had it her way, the star as well!

I got to go with Kourtney on a field trip to the Zoo. The Zoo in the winter time, you say? Yes. It was a chilly morning, but after we got walking, and talking, and looking, there was hardly a complaint about being cold.

One highlight when Koco goes on a field trip is that she gets to ride the bus. Here we are on our way to the zoo.

This is one of Kourtney's best friends in her class. They play so well together!

The penguins were the highlight because they were there to see animals that live in cold habitats.

Here is the view of a penguin nest from behind the scenes.

This tiger's cry could be heard across the whole zoo. It was relentless...and well, the zoo isn't that big, but still, it was pretty neat to here him roar.

I know it's way overdue, but here are some pictures of Alyson and Kourtney during their class Valentine's Day Parties. Ms. Fisher and Ms. Cherry, our girls love you!

The kids and I saw Kris play in one of his intramural basketball games at MSU this year. I thought, "Hey, let's take the camera and get a couple pics of Kris playing." Well, Ellary got a hold of the camera and that was it. Thanks to our little gal, we have her press, and turn the camera around quickly maneuver documented quite successfully. After deleting a lot of Ellary's pictures, here's the score of the game she thought was more important...Pictures of Ellary11. Pictures of Kris 3.

Everything but the Kitchen Sink! Part 2

We went to the Kid's Bowl-a-Thon for the Max Foundation in February. We watched the kids bowl 2 games and have lunch. What a good time for a great cause!

Keegan is sitting pretty, or I guess you could say handsome in his bumbo. Sorry kiddo for the color but we weren't sure we would ever have a son so we just kept buying pink and purple things before we knew we were having you! Well, Keegan loves the bumbo and has been sitting in it for about a month and a half now. These are pictures of his 2nd or 3rd time sitting up at bird's eye view.

Kris is one volunteering machine! First it was the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation (Jerry's Kids) in September, then he grew a mustache for a month to raise money for (could you really even call it that because it was hardly noticeable due to his blond/grey facial hair), and he volunteered as a griller at B.D. Mongolian Grill for the Special Olympics. May I mention he goes all out for these fundraisers. He even researched what someone needs to do to get better tips and used these skills while grilling to raise even more money. Talk about gong the extra mile!

The girl's school has an annual dance around Valentine's Day, so our whole family went and had a great time. Kris set the tone for the whole thing by being the first parent to dance with their kids. If you are ever at our house you know that our girls like to dance, and the youngest, Ellary, is the dancing queen, except for at the dance she nearly got ran over by a bunch of rowdy boys just running circles in the gym so she was always on her guard.

Although it's beginning to look a lot like spring now that the snow has disappeared, I still wanted to share some pictures of the girls playing in it. The first picture, however, is of Alyson and Mr. V digging the snow away from our mailbox (Kris was at work when Mr. V tackled the mound.) A city plow tried to maneuver around our culdesac taking more snow than he should at one time and got stuck right in front of our mailbox, leaving a massive hill of snow behind.

This was Ellary's first year to really enjoy the snow. She wasn't so keen on sledding but sure helped build our start-off mound.

Everything but the Kitchen Sink! Part 3

Alyson's class performed a play called "The Mitten". She was a narrating snowflake. We are so proud of how hard she practiced. Alyson even memorized her lines, which was an undertaking all on her own. You can see her narrating and singing a song with two other snowflakes in the pictures below.

Alyson sent her flat Alyson (she's holding her in the picture below) to Nana and Papa. They took Flat Alyson with them on several adventures in Colorado including to Gold's Gym, on a hike along the Colorado National Monument and then for a walk downtown G.J. Then they sent Flat Alyson back to Aly with pictures, brochures, stickers and maps. Alyson put all of these things in a memory book and then had the chance to share it with her classmates. It was a great experience! Thanks, Nana and Papa for making it special.

We have some friends who really know how to throw a party! These are the same friends who invited us to their Christmas party where Santa made his magical appearance. This occasion marked their daughter's birthday, and wow-what a fun tea party she had. Thank you for the invitation. We really enjoyed ourselves.

We began Kris' spring break by going to the zoo with some friends from Alyson and Kourtney"s classes. It marked one of the most beautiful days of the year. I thought that since you've all probably been to a zoo before, you'd rather see our smiling faces than another tiger, some penguins, or a camel. Enjoy the pics!

Everything but the Kitchen Sink! Part 4

Last year we spent spring break at Myrtle Beach. This year we stuck closer to home and went to Splash Universe in Dundee, Michigan. We spent two days swimming indoors-goodbye cool weather, hello 85 degree temps and refreshing water! Alyson and Kourtney spent most of the time on two really tall slides, one of which was pitch dark. Ellary stuck mostly to the kidee pool and went down the little blue slide a bunch of times until I took her down some larger slides and then that was pretty much it for the little blue slide. There was also a lazy river to float on and monkey bars and floating objects to hop on that Aly and Koco liked as well. Kris and I had some fun of our own, but by the second day we were pretty much swam out (didn't do much swimming really). Oh, what it would be like to be kids again and have the energy and desire to play all day, every day! Kids just don't know how good they have it!

Keegan had his first taste of baby rice cereal on Saturday (March 13th). It's always funny to watch babies take their first bites and then see how they respond to it. As you may recall, Ellary's first experience with rice cereal was priceless. She puckered her lips and scrunched up her face. Keegan on the other hand was his happy go lucky, go with the flow little self and accepted the cereal, although once it was in his mouth he didn't know exactly what to do with it!

Before

Here it comes!

Here it is!After the fact

Sugar and Caffeine

I (Kris) have to share this story with you. Jessica and I are mean parents. We don't let our kids have a lot of things that I used to get as a kid (I can't speak for Jessica). One of those things is soda pop. However, I still drink it relatively frequently (a lot less in Michigan because of recycling deposits, but that is another story entirely...see Seinfeld).

So when one of my kids asks for soda Jessica and I usually have three canned responses (pun intended). Either it 1) has too much sugar, 2) has caffeine, or 3) is diet soda and diet soda is bad for you because of phenylalanine - which it actually isn't under 99% of circumstances (see here), but you can never be too careful as a parent...right?

Sorry, one last thing to clear up before I get to the actual story here! I rarely get regular Pepsi (usually I get caffeine free and most often diet), but because Pepsi decided to reintroduce the original Pepsi - even in the original cans - I bought some of the "hard" stuff. Anyway, the kids have been asking to try it since we got it and last week they got some. They liked it and usually ask for it, but it is when I get home (Jessica almost never drinks soda, so it is seen as Daddy's to give away in our home). Obviously, when I get home it is close to bedtime and I say, "No, it is too close to bedtime and that Pepsi has caffeine and sugar which will keep you up too late."

So (finally) tonight before the kids went to bed (around 8 PM) I asked Kourtney to get me a Pepsi. Her exact words were, "The one that has too much caffeine and sugar and will keep you up?" I replied "Yes" with a smile. Well, it is 3:23 AM and I have tried all night to sleep, but to no avail. It is probably because I have a lot of things on my mind and because I really do rarely have soda pop with caffeine and sugar (especially late at night), but I just had to sit down with my time and do something "productive" tonight. I hate laying in bed trying to sleep.

I wish I would have listened to Koco. I am really, really tiered...just not sleepy. As you can tell by my rambling writing style at 3 AM - sorry about that. Good night y'all - I hope!