Let It Snow!

Wow what a winter wonderland it is for us outside today. Matt and I have just been relaxing, tourchering the puppy by throwing him out in the snow to go potty and watching movies. Matt had to literally pull Archer out of the house on a leash and carry him to the street so that he could go potty. The snow is as tall as Archer so he has to jump around in it. And we are still going to be getting more snow.

Right now, I finally talked Matt into shoveling the snow to make a foot path from our door to the street so that I can go to my neighbor's house for a cookie swap. Matt is being such a wonderful sport about it. As long as I keep the chapstick and hot apple cider coming he will shovel the driveway for me.

We already know that church is pretty much canceled. They canceled it 2 weeks ago due to about 4 inches of snow and we currently have 2 feet of snow in our driveway. Fun for us. I don't even know if Matt will be able to safely make it to work on Monday as Charlottesville is getting slammed with even more snow than us. We shall see, but here are few pix for your viewing pleasure. Oh and I added the pix of our Thanksgiving feast. Have a great Saturday!

~Archer's Hole that he landed in and made~

~Our Backdoor snow pile~

~It's up to Matt's knees! CRAZY~

2009 Christmas Pix

Hey everyone. Well now you all get to see my RED hair. It is a different look for me than what you are used to but it is kind of growing on me now. Anyhew it will go back to normal after a month or so.

Last week Matt and I had our Christmas photos taken at Maymont Park in Richmond. It is a beautiful location. There is a zoo, stables, and a Japanese Garden located inside this park.

A HUGE thanks to Cami for taking the photos for us. Here are a few of my favs. Enjoy!

Humm part 2

Still not any wiser this year maybe by next year. I'm excited though we are supposed to get snow today, that is a nice surprise.

Thanksgiving Bliss

I am so sad because today is the the last day of my Thanksgiving week off. I had such a restful week of working on Christmas gifts, (sorry mom, won't let it slip this year what I am doing) planning and making our Thanksgiving feast, it truly was a feast this year. I made everything but the stuffing, Seth did that and everything turned out wonderful. Last night Matt and I put the ornaments on our tree and sat back and listened to Christmas music and admired all of our little ornaments.

Thanksgiving feast menu:

perfectly golden turkey

brown sugar baked ham

Boston Market sweet potato casserole-totally yummy!

mom's famous spinach leaf salad

stuffing

corn bread

mashed taters

3 streusel topped pumpkin pies

I even have a picture to prove it. But I can't download it till Matt gets back form St. Louis at the end of the week.

I have already turned over the house from autumn decorations to Christmas decorations. Our neighbor will be putting up our house lights this Thursday for me while Matt is away. They are going to be all over the house for the first time in 2 years. I am sooooo excited for the lights to go up.

I must say that I am so excited for the Christmas season! I love Christmas so much. Matt and I are getting professional photos by a friend of a friend, and I am so excited for them. Matt and I are also flying out to AZ for Christmas and a family reunion on my side of the fam. My Grandma is turning 90 this December so everyone is coming out to celebrate. I haven't seen some of my cousins since our last family trip last year. (Goal for me is to have lost 15 lbs by then.) Oh yeah if you didn't already know, I have a personal trainer kicking my butt 3 days a week right now. I will be healthy by mid next year and down 60 lbs. That is my goal.

That's it for now, pix to come later! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Must Reads!

I have to tell you all about my new fav series of books that come in a close second to the Twilight books. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I read Hunger Games last year just after I finished reading Twilight a few times, I really enjoyed the book. I was upset cause I would have to wait a year for the next book to come out. Catching Fire came out in Sept and I have been waiting for it to be released on Kindle so that I don't have to buy the hardcover book, cause since I have the Kindle I shouldn't need to buy the hardcover. Well it still has yet to be released and Matt let me get the book. I started reading Catching Fire and felt a little lost since it had been a year from reading, so I decided to re-read Hunger Games, and fell in love with it again. I went right into Catching Fire and in about 7 hours I finished the whole thing. AMAZING!!!!! I loved the book better than the first one, and I am mad cause I have to wait another year to read the 3rd and probably final book of the series. So everyone I highly recommend the Hunger Games series. It is a teen book but has some violent attached, as it is a book about kids who fight to the death. It is very good!!!!

Halloween '09

People have been asking for some pix of halloween this year. So here are some pix. Just some info, Matt did not wear his uniform as a costume, he left for his military duty from the party so I got a few pix with him and that is it.

This year we have about 250-300 kids stop by for some candy. We were going straight from 6-9pm with kids. It was a lot of fun. My students had a ton of fun stopping by to say hi. I even had some families that don't participate in Halloween stop by just to see me. It was a lot of fun. So enjoy the pix!

Out of the Mouth of Babes...

I LOVE TEACHING!!! I just had to say that first off. I want to tell you what happened yesterday that brought me to tears but first lets have a flashback to the 90's

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the 7th grade I decided what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had other "Backup plans" such as, Astronaut, Zoo Worker, Housewife, and Storm Chaser. I know I was weird. Well in the 7th grade I met Miss Verde/Mrs. McGee we called her Mrs. McVerde, she got married later my 7th grade. Anyhew, she was my favorite teacher, my band teacher. I loved her. She was so fun and entertaining in band and pushed our band as much as she could to make us be the best. She helped me love music, and I mean really love music. I told her at the end of my 7th grade year that I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. So I decided that I was going to be a Jr. High Band Teacher. For the years to come I had it set in my head that I wanted to teach that age group with the idea of instilling one student with the same love of music that Mrs. McVerde passed on to me.

Present:

Well the dream of teaching Jr. High was quickly squashed during my college years as I helped out with a local High School Marching band, granted it was not Jr. High but I figured that it was close enough of the age group that I couldn't handle it, as most of my charges were freshmen. So when Matt and I married I told him I wanted to teach privately when we were at a place long enough to make a difference in the kids life. My dream of why I wanted to teach came true yesterday with my cute little red-headed horn player. Her mom talked to me after the lesson and told me that her daughter told her that she wanted to be just like ME when she grew up, and teach private horn lessons. she loves music and loves playing the horn Her mom said that she has never been so excited about one thing other than animals in her entire life and they are very thankful for me. This is huge for the daughter, because she has always only wanted to do something animal related for her future, but now she has changed and wants to teach horn, and she said that she might need to learn piano as a backup teaching instrument. I started crying because that is the EXACT reason why I wanted to teach. So dream fulfilled, I can stop right, NO WAY! I am going to help ALL my students love music. I LOVE MY JOB!!!!

Seeing Red

I have finally painted a new room in my house. In my favoritest color of all RED. A deep dark red just like I had with my wedding roses. My dining room is now a beautiful, appetite inducing, inviting room. It took a while to find the perfect shade of red but I finally found it thanks to the Pottery Barn. It is one of their Summer and Fall colors for 2009 called Caliente. but I will will tell you that it was very frustrating to do this red. I did 2 coats on Saturday, and finally my brother in law, Seth, finished off the third one yesterday while I cut in. He just did a better job at applying the paint than I did. Here is a swatch color and pix to come.

Oktoberfest 2009

Here in the Allen Home we celebrated Oktoberfest last night. I love doing these theme nights because I always try something new. Last night I made Jaegerschnitzel, Potato Dumplings, and Cranberry Apple Dumplings with Crimson Sauce. Everything turned out AMAZING!!! We all loved the Apple Dumplings, they were so good. Here is the pix from the website I got it from:

There is a sauce that goes in and over it, it is made from whole berry cranberry sauce orange juice and red hots. It was soooooo good. Anyhew things are going well here. My parents are coming to visit in a week from Monday so I am excited to see them and play tourist. Matt will be doing a TON of training for his job and for the Military for the whole month of November but will come home for Thanksgiving, thank heaven. Matt's bro Seth has been living with us since September to spend more time with Matt and Matt has been gone most of the time. Seth has been helping me around the house. We are going to paint the dining room this weekend along with our pergola. I hope all is well with everyone and that they are enjoying the beautiful fall weather.

CW2 Allen

CONGRATS MATT ON YOUR NEW PROMOTION TO:

CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 2 IN THE US ARMY RESERVES!!!!!

LOVE YOU!

After 3 years of trying to complete his Warrant Officer training, Matt has officially been promoted to a CW2. Lets just say that it has been a long awaited promotion for him.

7 years

Not only is it our dear puppy's birthday but it is also our 7th Wedding Anniversary. I can't believe that it has actually been 7 years. I will tell you that it has been a very fast 7 years and it has been full of difficult times of separation due to deployments or work obligations, but it has also been the best years of my life. I am so happy with where I am in my life and who I get to spend all eternity with. I am so excited to what might happen during this next year of our life together. Here are some pix of our Wedding Day for your enjoyment.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARCHER!!!

Today is our wonderful puppy's 7th Birthday. We are so happy to have him as part of our family and he has been such a wonderful friend to us.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PUPPY!!!!!

~Archer at 2 years~

~Archer at 4 years~

~Archer Today~

Goodbye-Hello

Goodbye Matt's 12 year old Nissan Pickup, that we went on our first date in.

HELLO! Nissan Versa.

We have added a new family member to the Allen Fam. After the disappointing news that Matt's truck didn't qualify for the Cash for Clunkers, which originally we were told that it did, it has been a bother thinking about what we could have had. So after talking about how much money we will actually be saving on gas every month, we decided that it was time to get a new car and donate the truck by the end of the year. So we went with the Versa. It can get up to 40 mpg, even though the stickers say 34 in big lettering, but that is an average on how well you drive. (Matt drives like an old man and gets killer gas milage, so he will probably get close to 45 mpg.)

Anyhew, we were going to get used, but found a base model cheeper than the used which had 50,000 miles on it already, can we say rent a car. So we are getting AC installed this week and my anniversary gift to Matt is a radio system so the car will be perfect for commuting. Needless to say I was ready to get rid of that truck since the AC died, a few months ago. I'm just glad that I don't have to drive that thing in the afternoon with 95% humidity and in the 90's. Matt is pretty excited too that he doesn't have to do that anymore.

Garden

Two really interesting things happened this week in the garden. First of all, the gardenia bush that we just bought has finally started to bloom. We have 2 open buds on there right now and the smell is intoxicatingly beautiful! There are many non-open buds still on the bush and it will be covered with blooms very soon, I hope. That bush is only about 1 foot tall and wide now and is supposed to get about 5x5 feet. I can't wait.


The second, something has gotten to one of my tomatoes. It is the first animal attack on my veggie garden. I just hope that they don't go after my carrots next cause I have been waiting forever to pick them. Hopefully this hurricane will dump some much needed water in our yard to help my babies grow.

Other little tidbits: I have been experimenting on Matt again with new recipes. So far I am 1:1. I made baked chicken the other night and he loved it. Last night I made chicken chili rellenos, and he didn't like it so much, he didn't like the pepper in the middle. Tonight is chicken cordon bleu. I am pretty sure he won't like it but it is one of my favs and I am making it from scratch. So wish me luck.

Also I am busy teaching my students, practicing for my own lessons, and another completely different creative activity. I even had one of my students give me a thumbs up on my projects I have been working on since last December. I started having major doubts on it yesterday so I asked her to help boost my moral on my project. More on what that project is later, but it has been very interesting and somewhat time consuming. (if you know what the project is, please don't post a comment about it, I am being mysterious for now.) Anyhew that's all here on the front. Today is a baby shower for my friend Kimberly and I am excited to see her. I haven't seen her in months.

Congrats to Nat and Brendon on their new baby girl Vivian. (Can't wait to see how much of a curly top that kid will be.)

Us.

So you are probably wondering, "What happened to the Allen's? Did Becky not make it through the Star Trek date night?" I survived, don't worry. It was actually a lot of fun. I now have a killer homemade marinara sauce that it amazing, and even though I fell asleep during the episodes, sorry Matt, we did have fun and Matt really like me customizing the date to his likes as well. The next week we had a Pirates of the Caribbean theme, we had Pineapple and Rum chicken and then we were supposed to watch the first Pirates movie, but the Home Teachers showed up. That kind of killed the night. I don't know what theme to do this week. Anyone have any ideas?

Anyhew, I am just getting slammed with students this week. I have 27 students now, 26 piano and 1 horn student and I have a waiting list. I can't believe I have a waiting list. It is so amazing how much I have been blessed with this business. I love teaching my little musicians. In a few weeks the piano studio will be 2 years old. I can't believe that my little idea has blossomed into this successful business.

Matt is staying busy at his work plus doing extra military duty on the weekends. He hasn't had a weekend off since Seven Springs and won't get another weekend off for another 2 weeks. He has to make up all the drills he missed when he was over seas, I know it doesn't make sense, but he was not over there for the military, so technically he has to make them up.

Matt and I are in the process of re-financing our home. We found a killer APR that we couldn't resist, and the stupid county taxes were going to kill us with their hike this year so we decided to just get a lower rate and reduce our amount. We are excited for that but just want the process to be done and over. We had the appraisal guy over yesterday and he gave us major kudos on our backyard transformation. He said that it looked really good and was a huge plus for us. So we will see. The whole goal is to get higher than what we had when we moved in 2 years ago, but with the market the way it is we don't know. The good thing, a house in our neighborhood that is the same model sold 6 months ago for WAY over what we bought our house at and even higher than our original appraisal amount, so that is a good thing, hopefully.

That's about all on the Allen front. Matt works, and I teach and read a ton of books. Oh, and I finally figured out what to get my mom for Christmas. For 27 years I have never known the perfect gift for my mom and always questioned if what I got her would be good, but this year I finally figured it out and hopefully I will finish it in time to give to her for Christmas. So I am really proud of that. Alright, thanks everyone for reading. Hopefully I will have an interesting blog someday, but my life is pretty much the same day to day.

To Boldly Go...

Where no wife has gone before! When Matt and I were in PA at our Couples Retreat we were advised to have a date night every week. So this week Matt and I decided to have a Star Trek Themed Date Night. We just bought the original series of Star Trek remastered so to go along with that we are going to have a theme dinner too. Here is on the meal plan:

Ghagh with Tribbles-Spaghetti with Meatballs

Blood Wine-Red Grape Sparkling Cider

Vulcan Fire Sandwiches-S'mores

Nelix's mystery toast-garlic toast

Troy's obsession-double chocolate fudge Ghirardelli Brownies with vanilla ice cream and fudge topping.

Risa's frozen cocktail-Pina Colada

I really must love my husband!

What's Yours is Mine...

Mine is yours. Well Matt was sick with something on Saturday, than I was sick with something yesterday and Matt is sick with something again today. He had to call in from work and now I have to cancel my lessons cause I have an active flu bug in my house and I don't want to get my kids sick. Funny thing that happened yesterday. I was sick as a dog yesterday morning and couldn't get a replacement for piano for sacrament. So I went but I had to leave during one of the speakers and had to laterally run out of the auditorium so that I didn't upchuck in front of the whole church, so I run out. By at the end of sacrament I got asked if I was preggers. NO I AM NOT PREGNANT. MATT GAVE ME THE BUG NOT A BUN IN THE OVEN.

Seven Springs, PA

After we got back from being gone a week in NYC we were home for 4 days then left again to go to Seven Springs Resort in Pennsylvania. We were there for military duty, and I was even on orders. It was for a couples retreat. The resort was pretty cool. It was so beautiful and it is a full fledged ski resort in the winter. We felt like we were eating on a Cruise cause they had very fancy food there. Anyhew here are a couple of pix from our balcony suite! There was an alpine slide and I was so mad, Matt and I were racing and this one girl in front of me decided to CRAWL down the mountain. Which made me crawl and Matt kicked my butt. He also kicked my butt at bowling the night prior. We had a ton of fun at the resort. Thank you military for sending us!

NYC Post 2

Ok next set of pix:

~Little Italy, Nolita~

~Piano Heaven~

~Chocolate Heaven~

~On our way out for a night on the town~

~Museum of Natural History. I loved it. There was a cool Journey to the Starts exhibit that was a movie on the ceiling. Totally awesome!~

~I thought this was the funniest scene.~

~Central Park~

~The fireworks from our Hotel Room on July 4th. We turned on the TV and watched them out our window.~

So that's all folks. Actually I took over 400 pix while we were there and these are some of the best ones. Enjoy.