Iowa Visit

This past weekend I made a solo trip to Iowa to visit my sister Angie, her daughter Sara, and my new-found brother Gordon, and his kiddos: Courtney, Drew, and Kade. It was an awesome visit. I arrive late Friday evening just in time to join Angie and some co-workers for dinner and drinks, then we headed back to her place where I met her significant other...who happens to be named Josh...and we managed to "throw dice" (pretty much played Yahtzee) and managed to down three bottles of wine between us. We had a blast! Then Saturday the three of us met Gordon and his kiddos at a park in Des Moines for our first meeting. We had a blast! The kids are great, and Gordon is such a great guy. We all got along wonderfully, and it was such a comfortable environment. It didn't take long for us all to be joking and teasing around just like brothers and sisters...the way family does :) We played games and just hung out. We all had separate dinner plans, we we parted by around 5:00 p.m. That is when Angie, Josh, and I went to Shoe Carnival to harass Sara while she was working ;) She is such a good kid...I say kid, but she is now a whopping 20 years old! I cannot believe I have a niece who is the big 2-0! We went out to a fab dinner and enjoyed each others company. We got up Sunday, did breakfast at IHOP and then was on the road again to come home to my boys. It was a great visit, but I was ready to be at home with my favorite two men :)

Me, Gordon, Courtney, Kade, Drew & Angie

Sara...at dinner :)

Me, Gordon, & Angie - three siblings

Me, Courtney (my niece), and Angie

Gordon & his two boys - Kade & Drew

Angie and I being silly :)

Courtney and I with Angie's nasty feet ;)

Circus comes to Town!

This past weekend we went to the Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus. WOW, what a show that was. I had done some search online for reviews, and had heard some very unpleasant reviews, so I was very skeptical of what we were going to get…but then again, A LOT of the skepticism was from PETA and the likes, so I should have know that it would live up to its GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH title! It was definitely a fabulous show. We were able to join in on the preshow festivities down on the floor. Braden was able to see all of the clowns and performers up close and personal to get autographs, and to assist in a juggling act. It was so cute to see him get chosen as a volunteer for one of the floor preshow activities. He got to join one of the jugglers in the ring as they stood in the middle of two other jugglers throwing bowling pins back and forth in their juggling act. He was nervous he said, because he “didn’t want to get hit by one of those pins”. We got popcorn, and cotton candy, and warm soft pretzels, and lemonade, and soda…all to enjoy while we watched the show. It was a two and a half hour show, but it was full of fun and packed with color and excitement…we just kept saying to each other “How do they do that!”, and Braden’s face would light up each time he saw something amazing, which was a constant thing the whole two and a half hours. So much fun, we had a blast, I love our family outings!

Braden and Daddy down in the middle of the preshow...Braden wasn't tall enough to see everything, so daddy made sure he didn't miss a thing! :)

Here is Braden standing in between the jugglers throwing pins...hard to see since I was so close, but I didn't have time to scoot back, and if I did there would have been way too many people in the way to get a decent shot...so this is what I ended up with.

Braden and Josh's favorite part is when they put 7 motorcycles in this steel ball, and then they started going crazy driving all over the place in it...WAY cool they thought! :)

Here is a shot of the motorcycles in action...hard to keep up with the camera!

I love the tigers...could you imaging THIS massive beast jumping at you?!?

Ahhhh, I loved the elephants too :)

This was a "HOW DO THEY DO THAT" shot, can you tell :)

G-O LS Titans!!!!

For the past several weeks, the Allee's have been spending our Saturday mornings at the football fields. Braden loves it, and we enjoying spending our time watching him run the ball down the field, or run his butt off to get to the flag of the opponents. Terri and her kiddos joined us for the game...she is such a great Aunt, she has made it to every one of his games and plans on coming to tomorrow's game too :) I am quite the cheerleader, it is in my blood, so I wasn't really getting too many good shots with the camera, I didn't want to miss anything by looking at the screen on the camera...which I think was bothering Terri because eventually she took the camera away from me and took the pictures for us :) It was a beautiful morning, and the Titans played a great game :). I hope you enjoy some new pics of our little man playing football!

Hard to tell because I didn't zoom in, but this is a picture of Braden running the ball down the field - GO BRADEN!

Our favorite spectators...the Ham's with all their game day gear :)

Back To School Bash Fun

Last Friday, Braden has his Back-to-School Bash at Prairie View. He was stoked to go and play with all of his friends! I was a good mom, and did my duty of parent volunteer and ran one of the activities while Josh performed his fatherly duty by following Braden from one bouncy house to the next, and to the games and so forth...all with camera in hand :) He had a blast, played until the whole bash shut down. I love this age, we have so much fun together and operate so well as a family - LOVE IT! Here are some pictures Josh snapped of Braden while trying to keep up with him!

A Girl for the Allee's

Now before you go and get excited thinking Josh and I are having another baby or something crazy like that, keep reading!!! I follow a blog that has all these cute little blurbs about motherhood and funny stories about being a mom and whatnot. The other day she did a post about this "make me babies" website and posted pics of what the site proposed her children would look like with certain celebrities she had chosen. I don't want to know what my kiddo would look like if I had one with Brad Pitt or with Tom Cruise or anyone like that, I was curious to see what it said a little girl would look like conceived by my hubby and I. So, I went to the site (www.makemebabies.com) and followed the directions...and this is the result. So, for all you people out there thinking that Josh and I should have a little girl, low-and-behold I present to you: McKenzie Michelle Allee (our girl's name if we would have had one instead of the fabulous boy we were given), see below ;)

...sort of cute, but WOW what a forehead!