Allen Family: edgemont

Its been nearly two months since I've written. I think there a lot of reasons for missing on writing.

Not really happy living here- so its hard to write.
Busy- well kind of not always
Feeling like there isn't anything to write about.

I have tried to be happy, I really have. I am happy just not about living in Boise. It doesn't feel like home. I don't see us being here long term so its hard to be fully invested ™. I miss my friends a lot. I wasn't one to see friends or talk to friends everyday but I miss knowing that I can go to lunch or dinner with Robin or Rachelle. I miss going to Alyssa's house for playdates and marathon talking sessions. I miss my hot chick nights with Bridget and Robin. I miss walking to Days and ALWAYS seeing someone from my ward. I miss my Edgemont ward and neighborhood so much. I loved going to church and having so many friends.

Okay that is enough of what I miss. Lets get onto what's been going on.

Last week we attended our THIRD ward in the FOUR months that we have been here. When we first came to Boise we were faced with the decision of attending the ward that our apartment belongs to or just go to the ward where we are building our house. I opted for the apartment ward, Lou wanted the house ward. I was wrong. We went to the apartment ward for a few Sundays, we knew it wasn't where we we were suppose to be.We started to attend our ward within our house boundaries. We both felt at home. Last week we found out that our Stake was changing ward boundaries and we would be attending a new ward once again. We went this past Sunday to our new ward. It seems nice enough, its quite large,(apparently it was very small before the changes) it was really loud during Sacrament meeting but maybe that was just the excitement of changes. Lou and I were lucky enough to talk in our ward the last week we attended. It was funny it was like a welcome talk and a farewell talk (even though we didn't find out until that night that we would be part of the ward that was changing) . Its so funny when we were looking at houses one of the reasons I wanted Southeast Boise and not a growing place like Meridian is because I didn't want changes in our ward!! Silly me.

The kids have had this entire week off. I LOVE it. In Utah they always just had the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Friday after Thanksgiving off. Its been so fun to get ready for Thanksgiving and have the kids around.

Speaking of Thanksgiving. We will be spending Thanksgiving in Boise this year. It will be the first year I'll make the meal. I am so so excited. We'll miss Lou's family but it will be so fun to be just us too. I have been planning for a few weeks the menu and the day. I have some fun ideas, that I'm really excited about it. We'll have turkey (I found a copycat recipe for the Honeybaked Ham turkey recipe... that we love) , ham, homemade Lionhouse rolls, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing (lou and josh like it, me and kira don't), stuffed mushrooms, a cranberry- apple pie relish, salad and of course pie. I bought my family's traditional snacking food to eat throughout the day too.

Beautiful flowers Leann and Jeff sent me for Thanksgiving, saying they are going to miss us but wishing us luck :)

We are starting a new tradition on Thanksgiving. After dinner and pie we'll open our Christmas season box. I thought it would be fun to put a box together to welcome us to the Christmas season. I bought a few Christmas movies, books and candies to put in the box. I am sooo excited about his box, like beyond excited. I think the kids will love it. It will be fun to think of new things to do every year with it. I almost bought Christmas shirts for the kids to put in but the movies and books were adding up :)

So I was going to take a mediation class this fall. I was pretty excited about it. But as I looked more and more into the training. Every training class is held on Sundays. You have to take quite a few courses before you are certified. I didn't feel right about that at all. So I won't be doing the mediation training anymore.

Our house is delayed again but that's okay. We need things to be done right, there were a few major things that the inspector and Lou didn't like when we had the inspection. So hopefully CBH will agree to fix those things, the way we want them fixed.

That's our update for now. Hopefully I'll write more than every two months!!

Today Lou turned 33 years old! I can't believe this is the 12th birthday of his that we have celebrated together. We have had a very fun birthday weekend. We started his birthday weekend early. I took Friday off of work so that we could have a real date. Josh had a birthday party for his friend Isaac. Josh was so extremely excited, the party was at Chuck E Cheese. Since Josh had the birthday party, Kira got to join us for dinner on our date. We decided on Thai food. We went to Thai Mango, it was really good. I just love curry. (Something I never would have thought I'd ever say when I was a child). Kira was a little disappointed in our choice for dinner (though she loved the egg rolls). Kira wrote in her journal " I went to a weird restaurant with Mom and Dad" We had some time before we had to pick up Josh so we decided to get some birthday ice cream at the Creamery. We all LOVE Creamery ice cream. We even called my Dad to rub in the fact that we were eating delicious Creamery ice cream!

After we picked up Josh, got home, and put the kids to bed we got a movie from Red Box. It was some movie called Like Crazy. It sounded really good and had great potential but it turned out to be a dud. I usually love most romantic type movies that take place in London, half of this movie took place there but it was sill a dud. The idea was good but they didn't really do anything with it. It did reinforce in me that I really really want to live in London some day. It saddens me at times that we are not even close to that goal but I feel so strongly that we need to that I know we somehow are taking the right steps to get there.

Saturday we made root beer. I wanted to do something fun that we hadn't done before. I saw Hires root beer extract at Day's and had to make it.

Kira and Josh loved making root beer they felt like they were in Professor Snape's potion class! (In case anyone was wondering yes that is the same Mr. Funny shirt I got for Josh when he was 3). We had fun playing with neighbors in the afternoon, Lou and I sneaked off to Barnes and Noble and then I made homemade chili for dinner, to match the stormy weather outside.

After two days of celebrating, today was finally the day, Lou's birthday! I made Lou a yummy breakfast of pancakes and bacon. I had to go practice for a duet I was playing in Sacrament meeting and then had an appointment with the bishop so the morning was a little busy. (I got another piano calling so now I am primary pianist and ward choir pianist haha) Lou said the closing prayer in Sacrament so between that and my piano piece it was a fun Sacrament meeting for Lou.

After church Kira and I made a yummy marble cake for Lou. We had a dinner of steak, fries and salad. It was yummy (Lou made it, he is the steak maker in our family). We had our neighbors/friends Mike and Maegen and their daughter Aneesa over for Lou's cake. It was really fun having them over. (yay we were social with people in our neighborhood).