Max's early Birthday Present!!!

We are so excited for this new development. We have been trying for a while, not as long as some. We are still pretty early along so anything can happen but we couldn't wait to share the news.!!!

Life has been so good to us. We have already been living in Pleasant grove for 4 months. We have loved our landlords who live above us. THe hardest part about the basement is the noise, but all of the perks make up for it. They let us use their yard which we have never had in an apartment. We also get to interact with them and they are an amazing family. We have been able to spend lots of time with my two sisters anna and liz and their families as well as Luke's parents. I have had so much fun lately. I feel just as busy as a working mom even thought I don't have a job because I get to do so many fun things. In april I did Womens conference with Julie and Eva. It meant alot to be able to grow closer to them through that fun and spritual experience. We had a lot of exercise running from session to session and trying to catch the right ones for us. We were able to spend the whole day without our kids thanks to Anna and liz and we learned and gained a lot from it. I hope to do it again next year. We just got back from Washington D.C. this weekend to honor and remember John by participating in the TAPS program. We started out the trip pretty much set on not doing it again in D.C. because of costs but by the time we were done we knew we wanted to do it again no matter the cost. Luke got to connect to some special people that have lost loved ones and that is just priceless. We also got to see a lot of neat things. We watched the U.S. Marine Corps parade which was next to perfect. We spent some time in the Arlington cemetary looking for my Grandparents and Great Grandparents on my Mothers side. They are both named Max, which is neat connecting to past generations by having Max's name in our family. Im also grateful that we got to spend time with my parents in D.C. as well. They were so close that they drove down for sunday and slept over the last night with us. It was nice to give hugs and spend time with them and let max get to know his other Grandparents better. Max is so big these days. This morning he was throwing a basketball in a little hoop and coming to me afterwards asking for high fives. He is all boy. He loves watching basketball with his dad. He even cheers and says "Whoa" when someone makes a shot. He is also developing a lot. He is very observant in trying to figure things out. He loves to count which consists of out of order combinations like "2...7...9...20...5...". He also started signing along with songs like Child of God and ABC's. He gets about every 5th ward and gibberish in between but I love it because it is learning. We are trying to move forward with life. Luke and I both have callings in the ward which affects our decision to move out when we start looking for a house soon but we are a growing family and can't stay in this small space forever. We only signed a short contract with our landlords so we can't stay very long. Life is going by so fast and we are just glad that we get to be together through everything.

What are the Alley's up to...

We just can't help but have fun!!

Update on life with max

So I feel kind of silly always writing about max, like there isn't too much going on in my life.. but max is my life and everything fun I do now a days is because of Max. He have so much fun just playing and being silly. Luke is the instigator of most fun moments and I just get to enjoy the too of them.

Christmas Vacation!

We had a wonderful Christmas vacation with Mary's family this year. We went to beautiful eastern Oregon and stayed with Mary's sister Sarah and family. Mary was able to go out a few days before me to get some more time with her family. I took so many that I think they can do the talking better than I can...

Christmas Morning

Sexy and Pregnant!

"Dick Cheney" taking aim. :-)

Playing Wii Tennis

Bro and Sis on Christmas Morning!


Christmas Dinner
Lounging around on Christmas MorningThe Kerns FamilyMaximusThe Boys and their 21 Birds(undoubtedly the best pic of vacation)

While we went hunting Dave and Danny had a soda drinking contest. Can you gu

And for those of you who have several minutes to spare, you can watch most of the Nativity(I couldn't publish the whole thing because it was too long).

Max is officially walking- or should i say falling!!

Max started taking is first steps a couple of weeks ago but it wasn't until the past few days that he has really been taking off around the house. He also has had some of his worst falls but I love watching him and seeing his determination to get right back up in good spirits.

Max has officially turned the big 1! We celebrated with some of our neighbors and had a little pool party. The pool barely fit all three kids that were trying to stay alive inside. I let the water sit in the sun all morning so it would be warm enough to play in. But wouldn't you know, the first five minutes max was in there he threw up! Just a handful of milk curds were floating around as everyone got to the party and jumped in the water with him. But we didn't want to empty it out because it was going to be so cold if we re-filled it. So they all enjoyed a little bit of milky looking water for about an hour. Then chips and Twizzlers started making their own collection inside so we called it a quits.

For his birthday cake we let him dig into some chocolate pudding topped cake. He was a mess and we all loved it. We even let him rinse off in the yucky pool water before we dumped it.

Max got a a couple cards and some nice gifts that he has been playing with since we opened them. He got some new clothes as well with the gift money he received so thank you so much for thinking of him. I will post some pics of the b-day when I get them from luke.

Max's first few steps

Max has been so fun these past few weeks. He wants to be all over the place all the time. He definately wants to do want HE wants to do and lets me know. But at the same time he is really easy going and such a sport when I have to drag him around for work or running errands around town. His latest thrill is walking. He wants to walk all the time but is still learning how to do it. As evidence below.

Enemy #1-Grass

Max enjoys most things and is willing to try a lot of things. The other day he finally crawled through the grass because he had been sitting by himself for 10 minutes while i was weeding. He crawled as fast as he could till he finally reached the safety of mommy's lap. But even though he ventured to me, he still spends most of his first moments on the grass very uncomfortable, as depicted in this video.

Many faces and talents of max

We finally had our first good day to take max outside and we spent it swinging. He loved it.

THe following video is max's first word besides momma and dada. You might not catch it but he sas "tood" which is max for food. He says it almost habitually when he eats rather then intentionally asking for food but it is still so cute.