Video of Alex Snowboarding!

SKI TRIP!!!!

Alex and Ryan made their way to Winterplace, WV this past weekend with some other friends for their first every boys ski weekend! Our good friend, Kevin Krick, called Ryan earlier in the month and threw out this idea of a boys ski trip to teach his oldest 2 boys how to ski. He wanted to know if Ryan and Alex wanted in too. Of course, the answer was yes and Ryan and Alex have looked forward to it fora month. After Alex's head injurt (See my last post) we didn't know if Alex could ski like planned, but all went well and he got to go tubing and try out snowboarding. Thanks to the Krick boys for being understanding about Ryan and Alex having to adjust the schedule due to "the head" and for inviting the Allred boys on this fun adventure! Alex is already wanting to know if they can go again next year! Here are some pics of Alex and his buddies. There is one of Alex and his best buddy of all, DADDY!!!!!!!!!!

The last week in January.....

You know that everybody has "those kinds of weeks" every once and a while. Well, this last week in January has been one of "those weeks" around here! All in all, it could have been much worse, but there was just a lot of stuff going on this week and then you throw in a couple of unexpected occurences and what you get is what is detailed below!

* Sunday, Emily wakes up with a fever. The kids and I stay home from church on Sunday. We decide it is best for Emily not to go to school on Monday and thankfully, my mom came over to keep Emily for me that day.

* Monday night I had to speak at the school board meeting. Not bad at all, just a little nervewracking! It all went well and I was happy when it was finished.
* Tuesday, Emily went to school and seemed to be feeling better. No problems at all!
* Wednesday, Emily wakes up in the middle of the night with a fever, again! I have a meeting on Wednesday morning that I am in charge of....Ryan stays with Emily until I can get back home and then I take her to the doctor. She was complaining of her ears hurting, so I assumed she had an ear infection. I took her to the doctor Wednesday afternoon and they tell me she has a little fluid in her ear,but it is not infected. No antibiotics, just a bad cold. (Insert lots of sarcasm here......not infected, yet....but fluid means it will be infected and I will have to take another day off work and come back to the dr. and pay more money so they can write me a perscription later in the week.)
* Emily seems to be feeling okay and Alex and Ryan are getting excited because they have plans to go to West Virginia on Thursday afternoon with some good friends! We spend a lot of Wednesday night, getting their stuff packed up and ready to go.
* Thursday, Emily goes back to school and had a great day! My day on Thursday was busy, but good. And then came 1:30......I am holding open the library door for a class to leave and I see Alex coming down the hall with his kindergarten asst. He looked upset and I thought he had gotten sick in the classroom....not quite. She tells me to come look at his head.....he ran into some playground equipment and had a gash in the side of his head. We very quickly walked him down to the nurse's office, where she took one look at his head and said, you need to take him somewhere to have that fixed. Remember....... Alex and Ryan are leaving at 4:30 to go to West Virigina for Alex's first ever SKI TRIP. SKI TRIP and HEAD INJURY don't go well together! I look at my watch and realize I have 3 hours to get his head fixed, most importantly, and then make a decision on this ski trip.

* I call Ryan, and he meets us at Urgent Care to have Alex's head fixed. We left an hour later with 4 staples in his head and a warning that a ski trip is not such a good idea.
* After much talk and deliberation and phone calls to various friends in the medical field, Ryan and I decide that he and Alex should go ahead and go on their trip, with Alex knowing he may not get to do everything as previously planned. Ryan promised to keep me informed and promised to watch Alex closely for signs of a concussion or any other problems related to the bang on the head.

* You would think that would be enough for one week, right. Well, my day/night only got more interesting. Remember Emily and that fluid in her ears....I finally got home after getting the boys off on their trip and finally had begun to settle down from the adrenaline that pumped through my body for about 3-4 hours earlier in the day. Emily was fed, bathed and in bed sleeping and I was vegging on the couch watching TV, and I hear a strange noise from Emily's room. It is 10:30PM at this point, I go upstairs and see my sweet baby rolling in her bed, in pain, grabbing her ear. EAR INFECTION!!!! surprise, surprise (sarcasm again!) She was miserable and I knew I could not keep her comfortable all night long, so at 11:00 PM, I loaded Emily into the car and took her to Urgent Care (a different one than I had been to earlier in the day with Alex) where we waited about an hour until we saw the doctor and they told us both ears were infected and then wrote us a perscription for an antibiotic. At 12:30 AM, I was in the drive-thru lane at the 24 hour CVS and by 1:00 I was home and had Emily sufficiently medicined up and in bed. By then, I was wide awake again, and finally went to bed around 2:15. Then I woke up at 5:15 to get ready for Friday at school. Luckily Emily never had any fever and with a dose of antibiotics in her she was as good as new. We went to school on Friday and ended the week of craziness with a snow and ice storm.

I am very thankful that we do not have these kinds of weeks very often!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

100 Days

As of Friday, January 29th, Alex has been in school 100 Days. In order to celebrate the 100th day of school, each student in Alex's class had to choose 100 items to display on a poster board and bring it to school. I was very proud of Alex! He came up with the idea for his project all by himself! He asked Ryan and I to help with some parts, but he did all the creative thinking himself! He wanted to use 100 pieces of bubblegum. He first talked about grouping them into groups of 5 or 10 and then he decided he wanted to draw something and fill it in with the bubblegum. So we made one BIG piece of bubblegum out of 100 little pieces. I helped him draw the outline of the big piece of bubblegum and together we used the gluegun to glue on all the pieces of gum. We had fun and he was proud of his work. And, his daddy and I are proud of all the hard work he has done during his first 100 days of Kindergarten! Only 80 days left before he will be ready to be a first grader!

2010

Wow! The first month of 2010 has blown right by me and I am now a whole month behind on my blogging. Let me give you the quick run down of January up to this past week. It is going to deserve it's own special post, if not multiple!

We ended December with a trip to Jacksonville to see the Allreds. We had a great trip and got to catch up with Ryan's parents. We got to visit with his uncle and aunt as well as his grandma, who had made the trip down from Indiana!

We spent New Year's de-christmasing, and we made a quick trip to Gaffney on New Year's Day to hang out with the fam and have a traditional New Year's meal of Pork Roast, Turnip greens, Mac and cheese, pinto beans, cornbread and I don't remember what else. Needless to say, we were plenty full at the end of the day!

Of course, we also spent some time watching the end of the college football season and all the bowl games. Ryan goes into a period of mourning every year when college football comes to a close!

The rest of January has been spent doing our normal stuff of church, school, and laundry!!!! Don't know why, but it seems I have done laundry nonstop this month and it is never done!

Of course, we have had some fun....I will attach some pictures of Emily, the dress up diva, and some of my latest pics of Alex! He usually runs when I pull out the camera, but I do have a few of him during the last month!

Merry Christmas!

I am sure the next 3 days are going to fly by, so I wanted to take a few minutes to send Christmas wishes from our family to yours! I hope that each of you has a wonderful time celebrating the holiday with family and friends. My prayer for all of us is, that in the excitement of gifts and food and fun, we will be able to take a few minutes to remember and reflect on what this special holiday is all about. May we find a way to share the love of Jesus Christ with those we come into contact with during the holidays and in the year that follows!

Merry Christmas!

The Allreds.....2009
Alex - age 6
Emily - age 3

Charlie the Elf

We have a new "family member" this Christmas Season.....meet Charlie the Elf! Charlie arrived at our house last week with a copy of the book Elf on the Shelf just for Alex and Emily. The first job Alex and Emily had was to name our elf. After much discussion they decided on Charlie. Did you know that Charlie is in the Top 5 of Elf names....who knew? Charlie has stirred up much mischief at our house over the last week, but his nightly reports to Santa at the North Pole have kept the kiddos on their toes as far as behavior goes! Charlie first showed up in our kitchen basket, and has since made appearances on our Christmas tree, in the kids' bedrooms (he built an elf-mobile out of Alex's LEGOS in his room, and made a mess in Emily's dress- up clothes). Sunday, he made his biggest mess yet by digging into the cereal box (Lucky Charms, no less....what else would an elf eat?) and leaving a cereal mess all over the kitchen floor and table. He is hanging out in a Christmas Stocking today. The kids wake up each morning searching the house to find out what kind of trouble Charlie may have stirred up while they were sleeping. They are already sad that they will have to tell Charlie good-bye on Christmas Eve, since he will leave with Santa on Christmas Eve! Charlie has been a great addition to the Allred Family Christmas Tradition!