The Allen's Activities

Found the book!

2009-09-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

I know, it's been a while since I have blogged....sorry. But...

Woo Hoo! I finally found the BEST Crockpot cookbook ever! (It's even part of the title of the cookbook) :-)

I am very picky about my Crockpot cookbooks...it started a little over 4 years ago. We remodeled our kitchen and all I had in the Dining room was a Crockpot, a Microwave and a Refrigerator. I didn't have a stovetop, as we gutted the kitchen down to the studs, so, I couldn't use any crockpot recipes where you had to pre-brown ANYTHING. So, the search was on..and I found one that was great! Only problem is...I lost it. I don't even remember the name of it. So, off and on for the past 4 years, I have been on the search for my Crockpot cookbook. I finally found one that is FANTASTIC! It is called, "1001 Best Slow-cooker Recipes". I highly recommend it. The recipes are FANTASTIC. I made a Roast the other night...WOW! The BEST Roast I ever made.

Our kitchen has been done for many years now, but I have to say, I like the fact that I don't have to pre-brown anything. It just makes preparing that much quicker. So, check out the book and happy eating!

Until next time, God Bless.

Potty training

2009-08-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

SUCCESS!

For the past Month, we have been diligently working on getting Cody potty trained. I had to get my good friend Michelle to take Cody for an afternoon to get him used to the idea. That went well, then a week later, we started and kept at it. Cody is now trained in the day. All we have left is the night time. I know all we have to do is stop giving him water right before he goes to bed. Well, we have done that for a couple of days...I'm still not ready to take the Pull-ups off yet. I think within the next week or so, he will be good to go. I am just so thankful he gets it now.

Oh, also, Cody starts Pre-K on September 1st, and Connor starts 2nd grade August 27! We ALL are very excited about this.

~Until next time, God bless~

Church Life

2009-08-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

Exciting things are happening at our church.

We have Home Group every other week. Home Group is basically Home Church. What we do is discuss how to put into practice what Pastor Daren's sermon was on during the weekend. Each Home Group is between 5 and 12 singles, couples, or a mixture. It has been in the past, no more than 12 couples or 12 singles. As you can imagine, we get burnt out pretty quickly, but Pastor Daren has a solution for this.

Starting this coming January, we will be changing things up a bit. We are going to be calling the groups, "Growth Groups". They will still be at somone's house, and will have 5-20 people in the group, will be meeting EVERY week and only run for 10 weeks! At that time, you can stop leading; change groups; lead a group or take a month or more break. Also, there will not be Growth Groups during the summer. I think this is very beneficial in the long run. Looking forward to that. :)

HARVEST FESTIVAL

Every year, we have a "Harvest Festival" instead of celebrating Halloween. It happens on Halloween, and is usually in the parking lot of our church. But, this year we are hosting a "Fall Festival" at a local park and it is going to be HUGH!!! It is proposed to be a Revival. We are expecting 2,000+ people to come through. There is going to be games, Extreme Inflatable stuff, mechanical bull, rock climb, petting zoo, pony rides, concert, etc. We are soooo excited. Please keep us in your prayers, that everything goes well, and that God gets the glory and works on peoples hearts right now.

Until next time, God bless~

Puppies up for adoption

2009-07-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody. My friend from Grade School and High School has a friend that needs to find good homes for a few puppies. Here is the email message and a picture of a couple of the puppies...

******

Hi, A friend of mine has some puppies that she wants to give to a good home.

If you're able and interested in adopting, let her know.

* They are pure breed, miniature poodles.

* They now drink and eat solids on their own.. but the milk is still for newborns and on solids just a lil a day.

* As soon as we give them their first shot, they are ready to go.. that will be within a week or two.

* Girls are $500

* Boys $450

* The parents are right under our knees (we can send pics of them too)

* We have 4 girls and 2 boys...

Guillermina Najar (Guillermina.Najar@MolinaHealthCare.Com

******

These are just too adorable. If you are interested in any of the puppies, please let Guillermina know. Thank you.

Improving on an invention

2009-05-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am an avid Cross-stitcher. I LOVE doing cross stitch. When I started, I started with a kit. A kit includes your canvas, all the thread you will need and 1 needle. It took FOREVER to do ONE project! I took this and bought a BUNCH of needles and threaded each needle with the thread. I then needed something to put all these needles on. So, I took one of my dad's legal size notepads and took off the cardboard. (When he was finished with it of course) I then took a small sticker and drew the symbol on it and put the pin through it. I have been doing this for years!

Here is a picture of what I do:

The problem with this, is that stickers don't stick forever.

So, I found this and would like to improve on it.

What I would like to do is make that holder flat, and maybe have a cover; as this would make it more portable.

I would like to make this happen, but I don't know where to start making this happen...any ideas?

2009-05-17T22:49:00.000-07:00

Even though our Anniversary isn't until this coming Friday (5/22), Bill and I celebrated our 10 year Anniversary yesterday (5/16). The day started with taking Connor and Cody to our friend's (Rick and Teresa Horvet) house for the day and overnight.

We then went and had lunch at Whole Foods Grocery Store! (I know it sounds strange; I thought so too at the time, until I saw the Deli Section) Their Deli Section is AMAZING!!! It has every kind of food you can imagine.

We then headed down to Buena Park, and went to a Pirates Dinner Adventure. It is a dinner theater. It is similar to Medieval Times, but with a pirate theme. It was FANTASTIC! I highly recommend it.

We saw the early show, so we had the rest of the night, and we WERE close to Disneyland.....so......

We ended up going to Downtown Disney and went to the movie theater there, and saw the new Star Trek movie. Another highly recommended thing to see! WOW! What a great movie!

We finally got home around Midnight! What a wonderful day!

I just have to say..... I have an AWESOME husband!

Transitions

2009-05-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

Why are some transitions so hard for us? We get attached so easily to people. They become such a deep part of our lives, even though we may not know them well. They could be acquaintences, or very close to us. Our Senior Pastor has moved on; our new Pastor is in and we love him and his family very much. I know these transitions that we have been going through lately at our church are of God. They have been prayed about, tested against the Bible, confirmed, and are of God. This is definitely a time of growth...lol I think the stretch marks are beginning to show...but in order for us to grow, and build strong character, we must endure. It is a choice that we have to make in advance. When we were told that our pastor was leaving, it wasn't going to be immediate. We all then had a choice to make...accept it or not. In a way, we had to make an advance decision, because he was going to be going whether we accepted it or not. We also had to make an advance decision to accept our New pastor or not, whether we liked it or not, he was coming. More transitions are happening at church...in staff, in the worship center, in services, etc. re-structuring is happening...for the better? I believe so (some would argue that point). We will miss all those that go, but really and truly, we are excited to see what God has in store for us. I am reminded...when situations seem like they are too difficult to bear, God knows how much we can handle, and will give us no more than we can handle (we just need to keep our eyes on Him). Then there are times, I feel, when God gives us slightly more than we can handle, so that we can grow. Or maybe it isn't more, just many things that we can handle, all at once, which makes it seem, like it's more than we can handle.

Jer. 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

There is definite hope and a future in our church. Thank you God.

Just something I was thinking about, maybe even wrestling over tonight.

Until next time, God bless.

Easter and such since then...

2009-04-15T18:39:00.001-07:00

Easter was fun. We went to church Sunday Morning. It was our new Pastor's first sermon for us. It was great. I loved how comfortable he made us feel, and I love that he mapped out where he wants to take us in the next 180 days.

After service, we met up with Bill's family...his Dad, Jan, and Tami at Roxy's Deli. Very good...we all ate too much. After lunch, we invited everybody back to our house for an Easter Egg Hunt, but, Jan had fallen a while back and got hurt. She needed to get back to their house and rest. However, Tami joined us and we had a great time hiding the eggs and having the boys find them.

Here are some pictures...

Also, we took off Connor's training wheels. I'm so proud of you sweetie!

Santa Barbara Zoo

Today, 4/15, the Connor, Cody, Caroline, Teresa and I went to the Santa Barbara Zoo. Yes, this is the same Teresa that has Caroline that said,

"I don't ever want to play with Cody again. Not today, not tomorrow, not
Thursday, not even Saturday!!!"
We had a fun time. It was windy and Bitter cold though. Was not expecting that! I did look at the weather the night before and it said it was going to be cold, but that wind made it bitter.

Here are some pictures from the Zoo...

...I might add, be very glad I DIDN'T take pictures of the Elephants...let's just say, one of them could have put out a fire with the amount of liquid that was coming out of him!

Until next time, God Bless!

Jasper

2009-04-11T19:16:00.001-07:00

This is Jasper. He is our Black and White Domestic kitten. He is 8 months old (9 months on May 1). He is the most relaxed kitten we have ever had. We bought him from the Agoura Animal Shelter, and well, he picked us.

This is my favorite picture of him:

This is his favorite place to sit. The boys are outside and he is watching them. When we got Jasper, he was an indoor/outdoor kitten. Now, every time the front door opens, he wants to bolt out the door. So, I thought why not put him in a harness. None of the other cats I've had ever liked the harness. Jasper really likes being in the harness! At least I feel safe being with him and letting him explore.

CONNOR

Today was a great day for Connor. He has been riding his scooter for a long time now...he has a bicycle with training wheels. We had taken off the training wheels and Connor rode for a little bit and fell. I think it freaked him out, he didn't want to ride for a LONG time. Well, today, we got him on that bike again, and he did FANTASTIC! I think tomorrow we will be taking off the training wheels again. He has better balance and has this bike thing down. Here are some pictures...

He looks like a pro to me!

My Family

2009-04-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, Yes, this was taken this past Christmas at Disney's California Adventure, but it is the only picture I have of the four of us. From Left to Right...Bill, Cody (4yrs. old), Karen, and Connor (7 years old). Having two active boys, it is sometimes difficult to gather everybody together and sit patiently for a picture.

Anyway, Bill is my wonderful husband. We have been married for 9 years (10 years on May 22). He is my Computer guru and also, my all things Disney aficionado. He recently started working for Innovative Merchant Solutions, A division of Intuit. He loves his job. He works on networks (how's that for computer literacy).

Connor, just turned 7 on March 18th. He still wants to be a NASCAR driver when he grows up, but at the moment is all about Lego Star Wars...well, anything Star Wars. He is a very intelligent boy and we recently had him tested for the Gifted and Talented Education program (we are still waiting for the results). He also enjoys riding his scooter, and playing games on the computer and on the Wii.

Cody, just turned 4 on March 7th. He is his brother's shadow. Anything Connor does, Cody is right behind him repeating (you can imagine how well Connor takes that). He is a typical 4 year-old boy, and very sweet most of the time.

Karen, that's me, is a housewife, stay-at-home mom, Avon Representative, and a (soon to be again) student. I have been an Avon Representative for a little over a year. You will have to visit my Avon blog and site.

My husband recently decided he wanted to go to College and get his AA in Computer Information. He asked me how many units I had left before I got my AA in Liberal Arts. I had no idea, so I went to Moorpark College and found out I only had 3 units left! So, naturally, I took an online Astonomy class and received my AA this January.

One of the classes my husband had to take was Beginning Algebra. I perused the book he was going through, and helped him a bit, and found that I had fallen in love with Algebra! Oh my! Anyway, I also found out that in order for me to transfer to a 4-year university I would need to re-take Algebra. (It had been way too long). I have a dear friend at church that is a Math Professor at Moorpark College, and she just happened to have an online Intermediate Algebra class. I took Rena Petrello's class, and enjoyed it so much, that I decided I wanted to go back to school and get my Bachelor's Degree in Teaching High School Math! Woo-Hoo! The part of the class I enjoyed the most was having to go to the class Forum and asking and answering questions on each chapter. In my answering the questions, I had fellow students compliment me on how well I explained how I got my answer. That right there, confirmed for me what I wanted to do when I grew up.

My 4-year old (Cody) is not potty trained as of yet (my Summer project), so my thought is to wait until he gets into Kindergarten (next August), then I can go back part-time and eventually get my teaching degree and probably by the time Cody gets into High School, I will be teaching Math.

Anyway, Thank you for taking the time to read all about my family. Until next time...God Bless!