Murphy Family Reunion

This weekend we headed out to the Wyoming/Idaho border to be together with the family for the Murphy family reunion. We are related through my Great-Grandma who was a Murphy and married Lewis "Luke" Alley who I'm named after... If I remember right.

It was great because Aunt Lynette, Jami and fam, and Kariessa came out and we don't get to see them all together very often. Grandma and Mom, Dad and Anna made it to. So I took a lot of pictures and made sure they were "good ones" and deleted the "bad ones" so everyone would approve this time! Especially you Grandma. :)

Monday morning we first headed to the Cokeville graveyard and put flowers on Grandpas and others graves. After we headed over to Montpellier for the reunion.

Jami, Jean-Paul, Shelby, Karlee, Aunt Lynette, and Grandma in front of Grandpas gravestone.

This was take #5 because Shelby did not want to smile! Grandma finally got a little one out of her.

Addee enjoying her time after the long drive down and before the long drive back up! We were glad to see them.

Aunt Lynette lookin great. We were looking at Great Aunt Arlene talking about... something. Who knew she was so interesting?!Cousins! The Alley family reunion within the Murphy family reunion! Basically all the people we knew. :)

It was great to see everyone. There were talks of an Alley/Jensen reunion... Be ready!

GraduEaster!

Well it's been a while since we've blogged(Emily reminded us over the weekend :)) so here is a little update of the past weekend. Mary graduated(with a degree in Psychology) and the WHOLE family came out. They all traveled so much just to be here a few days and we were very grateful to have them. Mary's mom even came out from Pennsylvania! Everyone made Mary feel so special as she deserved to feel.

I'm sure we'll get cute pictures from Julie and Emily so I figured we could do some of the "good" ones. Steve was great and made copies of all the pictures he took(about 6 gigabytes worth!). Here's a few we liked with our own captions...

Trenton(matter of factly): "Guys... Look. This is how you break dance."

Johnny turns away in disgust because Steve actually spit up on him!

I went fishing with Steve and it was THIS big!

For 25 cents a week, you can feed this neglected child. Visit orphanedchildren.com for more info.

Grandpa growling at Steve for taking so many pictures... just kidding, he was yawing.

Trenton. Caught.

Em striking a pose! We love you Emily :)

This child still needs a home. Please donate.
I love my grandma!

Guys! I don't like this song!

Hmm... Did I put to much liquid smoke in the bbq sauce?

Look Mom, the resurrection!(Trenton's own words after finding a ring with a cross on it. Mom got pre-filled eggs from Costco.)

My dreams of an Easter filled with chocolate are coming true!

This child was fed... with only 25 cents a week(Love you sis!)

The Family.

A New Begining!

It is January of 2009, a season for New Year resolutions. I(Mary) have a New Year resolution just happens to be this blog spot! The title of this blog has both of our names so I thought it appropriate to help out with the adventures of the alley clan. "In the mouth of two witnesses...shall every word be established."(2 corinthians) We are a family now, eternal companions. I just love saying that.

We just got back from our 3 week long christmas vacation and are ready for the new semester. We spend the first week with my sister Sarah in Baker city. It was a winter wonderland the whole time. Living in the middle of now where as a lot of perks. We spent a lot of time just playing games with sarah and danny and getting to know or 5 month old neice Mikelle.




After that we made our way to utah with a detour in rexburg and continuing on to Utah. It was a long drive but well worth the time to make it to the Alley family Christmas. We got to spend so a lot of quality time with the allen's, alley's and Emily and her family. Blake as gotten so big now and has evolved from just sitting on the ground to skooting and walking, with some help. He might just skip crawling altogether. Baby john made all of us smile as he has gained so much expression and awareness of the world around him. It was great. It truly felt like a family Christmas with all the games, treats, wonderful dinners and late nights with our family.

On christmas eve we had an unexpected visitor come to Kali and Trenton. Who would have thought luke could fill out a santa suit so well but it was perfect. Trenton giggled so much he couldn't sit still and kali trembled so much she hid back in her bed. The next morning santa brought lots of great presents including a snow that fell almost the whole day.


The rest of vacation was a breeze. We got to have the Allen's for a few more days, got to see my sister Liz and brother John, shoveled lots of snow, and had a broken down car and now have AAA! Steven showed us how helpful they can be :) Now we are back up in good ol' Rexburg and ready for a new semester! Happy New Year!

The Rexburg Idaho Temple

We are blessed to have a temple 10 minutes walking distance from us. Here are a few pictures we've taken over the last year of this sacred building.

"That the work of the gathering together of my saints may continue, that I may build them up unto my name upon holy places; for the time of harvest is come, and my word must needs be fulfilled. Therefore, I must gather together my people, according to the wheat and the tares, that the wheat may be secured in the garners to possess eternal life, and be crowned with celestial glory, when I shall come in the kingdom of my Father to reward every man according as his work shall be." D&C 101:64-65

Christmas in November?!

So mom came into town about 3 weeks ago and with her she brought all these christmas decorations that my Aunt Sandy gave Mary and I. Because our apartment is so small we had them sitting out in plain view ever since and they have been whispering to us every time we saw them telling us to put them up! So we justified putting them up two weeks before the official "after thanksgiving so it's ok to put up the decorations" date because we figured we would only be able to enjoy them for two weeks before we went back down to Utah for X-mas break :)

Before...

After!

I talked with Dad while writing this post and he mentioned how he was feeling "jolly" this year and wanted to decorate early on the 22nd... the 22nd of December! I realized that our over-compensation with decorating may be caused by Dad making us wait so long every year! Merry early Christmas!

Family Matters

We've had a great and busy week. Last weekend we got to go down and see our new little nephew John Harold Alley Jr. He has a few features of his dad, most notably his upper lip which sticks out like John's did.

John Harold Alley Jr.

It was great seeing the family also. Julie and Steve were in town so we were with them the whole time. Saturday we had the whole family together so we went to the park and played tennis and volleyball and had a little picnic.

The Fam at the park

It was great being home also because mom let me raid the food storage! I don't think she quite understands how much that means to us poor married college students. We had an eventful drive home also as my gas gauge decided to get stuck at 2 bars and thus running out of gas about 15 minutes outside of Idaho Falls. Luckily my cousin Kariessa lives in IF and she sent her husband out to rescue us and bring gas. We were so grateful they came out because we don't what else we would have done without them.

We finished our decorations up for Halloween for FHE. We carved some pumpkins and decorated the outside of the apartment. I'll let the pictures explain...

The outside of the Apt. Our theme was the "Great Pumpkin"

The pumpkin eating the scarecrow... haha!

We enjoyed more family time over the weekend too. Mary's sister Liz came up and got away from BYU life and stayed for a few days. We all went to the African Childrens Choir performance on saturday night which was fun and touching. One girl shared a story of how she walked 6 miles every day to go to school! I thought of how sometimes Im lazy and drive to the library which is about a 10 minute walk... It put things in perspective. We also got to have dinner with Kariessa and Jared and his family. We had tried to invite them to have dinner at our place to thank them for rescuing us but it ended being dinner at the Lamphs! It has been a joy being able to be with our family this last week.

Date Night!

Friday night was date night and we had a fun time making a wreath and putting up some fall decorations in our little apartment. I told a single friend in one of my classes what we had planned because I was so excited on friday, but instead of having the same excitement that I had my friend made fun of me! Aparently making wreaths for the apartment is boring for singles. Personally though I loved it!

Us Starting on our Wreath

Mary's Fine Sign

The Finished Product!

It was a fun weekend also. Mom and Anna came up for Mothers Weekend and we enjoyed spending time with them. They all got to come to my work and see me lead Vision Conference. After we went to a Mother/Son banquet and then to an International Dance show. It was a great weekend! Oh and it snowed which I was very happy about :)