Introducing, Jenna Kate!

Jenna Kate Allen arrived at 11 o'clock pm on Tuesday night, August 25th. Melanie and I got to the hospital at 6:30 that morning, so it was a long day to say the least. Melanie did great and Jenna has been a great baby for us. She weighed 6lbs 13 oz and was 19 inches long. As you can see from the pictures, she has a lot of hair - Mel is pretty excited about that since she can already put bows in her hair; I will let her post some of those pictures another day. Melanie's Mom and Dad (Nana and Pappy) were both able to be here and they are both very excited about being Grandparents. Jenna is the first grandbaby on the Smith side and the first girl on the Allen side. She is looking forward to meeting everyone soon.

Pregnancy Photos...

Taaa Daaa.....here it is pregnancy pictures! The last one is from today and my belly has gotten bigger than I had thought. We went to the dr 2 weeks ago and everything is looking great. She is 4 lbs. 8 oz so far. We go back to the dr on Thursday. I can't wait to see what this week will reveal. Pregnancy has definately been quite an experience for me. The first 18 weeks I threw up everyday....but thank goodness after that I have been doing great. It has just now gotten uncomfortable but I think that is do to the 100 degree weather...Yuck! I hope you enjoy these... 23 weeks, May 13, 2009

Utah

27 weeks, May 31, 2009

Alabama

27 weeks, June 5, 2009
Alabama

34 weeks, July 19, 2009
Utah

Jenna's Room!

Here is our little girl's room! We still have a few minor touches to do on it. We have decided to name her Jenna Kate, unless she comes out and it doesn't fit her (I guess). It is getting very close and we are very excited to meet our new

little love button! These are a few pictures...

I am definitely not the writer in our house...but I am being FORCED. :) So bare with me as I try to figure out how to write.

Our lives have finally gotten back to normal, somewhat. I am now 17 weeks and 6 days pregnant. I am finally feeling more like myself and have my life back. I have my energy back and I am not puking anymore! Hallelujah! We went to the Dr on March 6th, and he said that he is 95% sure it is a boy. I guess we will see if he is right next time we go to the Dr on April 6th. We are really excited no matter what we have. Joe and I are trying to decide on a name. We have different thoughts on every name we come up with.

As for Joe...not much is going on. He just works, works, work. He is also excited about being done with his Master's Degree in October! WOOO HOOO!

A New Writer

Due to high demand for "the blog", I will start writting another day...not today. So stay tuned....it should be exciting!

A Utah Christmas

Melanie's family all came out for christmas this year. It was nice to have them all out at the same time. They drove all the way from Arkansas, dodging and diving winter storm after storm and even drove through Wyoming to complete the 19 hour drive without stopping! They arrived on Christmas eve and we all went to Christmas Eve service at our church which was pretty funny

with all the little kids signing and the middle school kids attempting the Carol of the Bells with hand bells. We spent Christmas Eve opening our presents and then playing rock band on Brian's Wii. I think we spent half the week playing rock band - I think I'm going to try out for the church band since they're looking for a guitarist now...my rock band skills should help me out with that! On Christmas day we relaxed around the house and then went to a movie in Ogden later that evening. On our way back from the movie it started snowing very hard and within about 5 minutes you couldn't tell where the road was or wasn't. I think we got about 9 or 10 inches of snow that

made it nice and cold and icy. Friday, we all went to Park City.
We ate lunch on main street and walked around to a few shops...it was too cold to stay long, so we went to the Olympic Park and went throught museum. There were a few ski jumpers from Norway who were practicing on the freestyle ramps, but other than that there wasn't a whole lot happening up there. On Saturday, we tool Laura to the airport to fly home for her GRE test and to see Spencer. The rest of the weekend was pretty eventless and pretty nice to just relax before going back to work. Mel's Parents and Brian started the drive back to Arkansas on Tuesday morning, making a pit-stop in Moab to check out the sites of Arches and Canyonlands and then headed back over the Rockies of Colorado. It was great to have the Smith's out for Christmas and are looking forward to everyone else visiting over the winter. We hope you all had as great a Christmas and New Year as we had!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Here's some pictures I took today after the big storm came through this morning. There was about a foot or more snow that feel in just about 6 hours. Roxie and I were the first two to be

on the trail - I had to keep knocking snow off the tree branches that were drapped over the trail to be able to make it through. Roxie was happy to be in the snow again. She just runs back and forth, up and down the trail in front of me until she can't breath. Hopefully the snow will continue and we'll have another good Winter season for snowshoeing and skiing. I got a pretty good picture looking across a valley at snowbasin while I was out there. We haven't been skiing yet this year since we decided not to get season passes, but hopefully we'll be up there soon.

Winter's Arrived

Winter has officially arrived...in the mountains anyway. 4 days ago there was absolutely no snow on the mountains, we got about 5 feet or more in some places on Wednesday. This is just West of Snowbird/Alta were they just opened up the ski runs yesterday. It was nice to get out this soon since it's still relatively warm. Zach and I went up towards Red Pine Lake which ended up being a little over 6 miles total. This picture is at around 9,500 feet elevation - I'm not sure where we started at but it was uphill the entire way! I'm hoping I'll be able to get out as much as last year with this new job I have.

Allen Update

Well, I've been back home for about 2 and a half weeks now and after the last week of sitting around the house by myself I'm ready to get back to work. I'll be starting a new job though, instead of working in the Munitions Squadron, I'm going to be heading over to the flightline and working Aircraft Maintenance in the 421st Aircraft Maintenance Unit within the 388th Fighter Wing. It will be a good experience for me and it's also good for career progression. I think the hours and work schedule will be a little more hectic, but I'm pretty excited about this new opportunity. We've probably got about 2 more years here in Utah before we PCS to (my guess) Eglin AFB in Destin, Florida, or Hanscom AFB in Boston, Massachussets.

Melanie is still working at the Ogden Family Support Center. We are also helping with our church since we just started a new campus this month and are trying to get everything up and running smoothly as much as possible. She's heading home in November to be in a friends wedding and will probably stay home for Thanksgiving since I will also be at a wedding that's in Charleston at the same time.

The winter snow will be here to stay before too long and we're ready for anyone who wants to make a trip up to go skiing or just visit. Hopefully we'll get to see everyone around the Thanksgiving timeframe; we're planning on having a white Christmas in Utah this year so we probably won't see anyone then.

Viva Las Vegas

I guess it isn't too hard to see who keeps up with the blog around here since the last time it was updated was before my deployment. I got back last Wednesday, October 1st, and we are all glad that I'm back home now. This week Mel and I went down to Las Vegas since neither of us had been there before. We had a lot of fun and saw some pretty interesting stuff too. It wasn't a bad
drive down (about 6 hours) but I think we'll be flying next time since we can get plane tickets for about $100 or so from SLC to Vegas.

We stayed at the Mirage which was right on the strip across from the Venetian and the Wynn and next to Treasure Island and Ceasars Palace. It was a very nice resort; we got upgraded since they didn't have our room that we wanted to get so that all worked out pretty well for us. We spent a lot of time walking the strip and I think we walked about 20 miles in 2 days, but it was pretty fun to see all the sights. The Bellagio is where they do a water show like the one in this picture a few times each night. It was pretty neat and free, so we really liked it. I have always heard about the cheap buffet's in Vegas, but I don't know where they are because everything we had and saw was very expensive. Buffet's were about $20 per person and restaurants were even more ridiculous; $18 for a salad and $25-$30 for you main course which wasn't anything spectacular. The food was good, but I think we need to learn where to go to get the deals!

All the resorts have a different theme so we spent a lot of time just walking through them and seeing what was in each of them. The Mirage had a Tropical them like being on an island in the South Pacific, the Venetian is all Italy. You can
get gellato's and go on gondola rides or go to the Lladro store. They had one Lladro there for $40,000, we were gonna get it but figured we'd wait until the next trip. Ceaser's Palace is a huge resort that takes up a few blocks and looks like all the building's and amphitheater's from the Romans time. At the Mirage we got to go look at Siegfried and Roy's Tigers and Dolphin Habitat. It was pretty fun, they had a 1 month old dolphin and a couple 2 or 3 month old white tigers we got to see. I don't think they do the Shows with the Tiger's like they used to, at least not that we know of, but they still have them at the hotel for you to go and watch.

We also went to a Cirque Du Soleil show at Treasure Island. They have a bunch of different shows but we went and saw Mystere which was interesting. It was pretty good for the most part but there were a few times it was a little weird to say the least. It was a fun trip but would
probably be more fun with some people who know the area a little better and know where to go for the deals. We played a couple slot machines and spent about $15 dollars (we weren't allowed into the high limit rooms). One my first machine, I put in 25 cents and won $10, so I cashed out immediately. When I came back to the machine after getting my $$ the lady who had been sitting next to me took it over since she thought it was on a roll, but I don't think she got anything. I won about $20 dollars total and Mel lost about $20 so I think we ended up even. Vegas is a fun place to visit for a day or two, but definitely would never want to live there. We were driving in the dessert for hours with absolutely nothing around and then we came over a little hill and there's the city just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. I didn't win my millions like I had planned so I may have to brush up on my Texas Hold 'Em skills and go win a big tournament in the next couple years while we still out here.