Our half-hike to the wind caves

Last week, Robbie and I decided to go on a hike. Unfortunately, I was a little crabby and needed to hang out in the car for a minute longer, so we rode up to Bear Lake for some lunch. On the way home, we thought it was getting too late to be in Logan Canyon but we began the hike anyway. We may have made it nearly a mile, but my full bladder forced us to turn back.

Someone driving in front of us thought it would be a good idea to have their newly-killed elk just ahead of us in the lane coming out of the canyon. Needless to say, it was gross.

Favorite Child Poll

The votes are in!!

Thanks to all who voted, it appears that Carly and Robbie are the favorite children in the Hansen and Allred families, respectively.  An honorable mention goes to the dedicated Clayton Hansen who recruited much help, but predictably was not able to hold any sort of a lead.  

29 November 2007

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!

28 November 2007

Another friendly reminder!!

A Benefit for Primary Children's Medical Center

November 28 - December 1, 2007

10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

South Towne Expo Center

9575 South State Street, Sandy

Trees ~ Wreaths ~ Gifts~ Sweet Shoppe~ Live Entertainment~ Santa Land

Ticket prices: Adults: $4.00/ discount $3.50

Children: $2.50/ discount $2.00

Seniors: $2.50

Wednesday is Family Day when admission is $13.00 for six immediate family members. Discount tickets are available at Zions Bank locations.

How You Can Give the Gift of Love

Every penny raised by the Festival of Trees provides charity care at Primary Children's Medical Center. The Festival is a truly unique fundraiser, as every item for sale is donated by the community. There are many ways you can help!

Purchase a Tree...

...wreath, centerpiece, or other holiday decoration! Festival of Trees Opening Night is an invitation-only event held Tuesday, November 27. Tickets are $30 and admit two adults. For more information, call

(801) 213-3272.

Decorate or Donate

The Festival wouldn't be possible without generous members of our community who decorate and donate trees, wreaths, centerpieces, goodies for the Sweet Shoppe, and items for the Gift Boutique. For more information, call (801) 213-3272.

Volunteer

The Festival relies on thousands of volunteers each year. If you are interested, please call (801) 213-3272.

www.festivaloftreesutah.com

26 November 2007

Just in case I hadn't worked for Intermountain Health Care enough times, I officially began the third time today. Actually, truth be told, I was hired almost 2 months ago, but wasn't able to start until now.

I am working in the Logan Regional Hospital's Child Development Center. Basically, I play with the hospital employees' children and get paid for it. I made all sorts of new friends today, and a few of them will not be leaving me alone anytime soon. It's pretty funny.

I was hired on prn (on call), but today, they told me that they want me to work every day that I can. So far as I know, I will be working from 3-6 every weekday. This enables me to work 3x as much as I was previously, while still allowing me to work at my other job, running price quotes for Architectural Detail. I will also have plenty of time to do homework and such, and will never have to work weekends or holidays.

Yay for paying tithing!

26 November 2007

this thanksgiving, i continued to solidify my relationship with isaac, a new nephew. after we took pictures on the computer, we learned all about potty training from elmo on www.sesamestreet.com.

25 November 2007

while surfing the web, my darling husband stumbled upon the link to rachel and brady paulich's blog. in an effort to satisfy him and help him to see that our blog can (and will) be just as cool as theirs, i am attempting to add such things that will help him to feel as though his wife is just as cool as the woman on the other blog he has never met. here i go!

22 November 2007

so, i was just trying something...apparently this worked. anyway, the movie was ok, we did, however, really like the majority of the music...also, the choreography is awesome.

20 November 2007

go here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze201j5/countdown.htm

20 November 2007

there are officially NO MORE classes for us this week. Hooray for holidays!!

17 November 2007

I'm not sure how this is different from the email forwards, but my sisters sent this to me, so I feel morally obligated to return the favor:


a. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
b. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
c. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

5 THINGS I WAS DOING 10 YEARS AGO:
1. ...I actually really liked 8th grade!
2. realizing that the girls I spent time with in my even younger years were not very nice
3. realizing that I did, in fact, have a personality
4. walking home from Eastmont Middle School and stopping for hours at Buttercup park with the Chris's and Nate
5. deciding I would much rather hang out with fun males than emotionally charged females (this is, for the most part, still intact)

5 THINGS ON MY TO-DO LIST TODAY:
1. study, study, study...
2. sleep at some point (it's nearly 1am)
3. study, study, study...
4. drive to Sandy
5. study, study, study...

5 SNACKS I ENJOY
1. Diet Dr. Pepper
2. Peach-Os
3. Hot Tamales
4. Snelgrove's Mountain Lake Raspberry Ice Cream with added lime juice and fresh raspberries
5. POPCORN (save the best for last...)

5 THINGS I WOULD DO IF I WERE A BILLIONARE
1. spend more time with my husband
2. buy an island
3. spend grande (yes, Robbie, grande) time in Africa
4. never look at price tags
5. fund the building of a temple somewhere

3 OF MY BAD HABITS
1. picking (hair, face, food, you name it!)
2. drinking much too many caffeinated beverages
3. talking too much and over other people's comments

5 PLACES I HAVE LIVED
1. Sandy, Utah
2. Cedar City, Utah
3. Logan, Utah
4. Indiana
5. "West of Main" Logan, Utah

5 JOBS I HAVE HAD
1. tux shop girl at Tuxedo Junction
2. Youth and Families with Promise Program Coordinator for USU Extension
3. multiple youth group homes in Southern Utah
4. Polysomnographic Technician (Sleep Lab Tech) at Logan Regional Hospital
5. "Quote Girl" at Architectural Detail Corporation in Logan

5 THINGS PEOPLE PROBABLY DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME:
1. I've changed quite a bit over the years
2. I'm going to lose this ridiculous Hoosier weight from my mission SOON!
3. I got a 95% on my statistics test
4. I will graduate in December 2008 from USU (blech!) in Community Health
5. I really like scarves

MY TAGS ARE:
....oh wait, they are all taken already!

12 November 2007

What a crazy weekend (especially for Robbie)! Friday night, he worked from 5:00pm to 1:45am, and made it home at about 2:00am. He had to be to work at 6:00am. We decided that we would stay up and shoot through the next few hours so that he wouldn't be quite as groggy at work (Is that even effective?? I have no idea-I'm tired either way!). We started watching Finding Forrester, and I crashed about 1/2 way through the flick. We turned it off and went to bed; it couldn't have been much earlier than 4:30, if at all....Somehow, Robbie woke up in time for work and "put his head down and powered through" the shift (though he admits to some short dozing). I slept until he got home at 11:00am. I needed new pantyhose for the Business Development Seminar we were going to, and we drove all over tarnation (aka Logan) to find the right kind (I was a sister missionary..don't second-guess me) without any luck. We made it to the seminar late, left early to make it to Cort and Janelle McGinty's wedding reception, and never made it back (it took us 30 minutes to drive 3 miles east of the Salt Palace). Because I was having a major fat-day (correction: fat few months) and can not currently fit into any of my jeans, we went to Macy's in Layton where we had a gift card from our wedding (thanks, Dowdens and Eddys!). The very nice (though slightly off-center) clerk helped me to find a pair of jeans that I love...rare find! Unfortunately, when I went to put them on I noticed that she had inadvertently left on the ink tag device designed to deter unmotivated shoplifters from taking them. By this time, Macy's was closed and we were headed back the long and winding road to our home in Macy-less Logan, Utah. Unwilling to give up, I googled information on how to safely remove the ink tag--FYI rubberbands don't work. We finally were able to get it off by prying it as far as we could, then using wirecutters. The drawback: the ink packets still broke onto the jeans, and I broke my favorite little wire-cutters that I had been using for the wire nativities I have made. Though we do not promote the idea, Ebay sells the device stores use to remove the tag for a mere $39. Pretty cheap price for integrity.

9 November 2007

Hey Everyone! I thought that I would follow my wife's request to add my side of our "got together" story. So before I go...just know that I tend to write without doing much editing...so...here we go. I honestly don't remember the very first time I met Carly, though I REALLY wish that I could. My first memory, solid memory of her was going sleeping bagging. As is said on Carly's portion, it's when two people get into a sleeping bag together and roll down a big hill. It's the single college student's version of the kids game "Roll down the biggest hill you can find and get really dizzy so that you fall over." There were two problems that night, A.) when I was rolling down the hill with Carly's friend Robyn we rolled over a drainage grate...my hand hurt, and 2.) My friend Jake Havens fell hard and broke his shoulder that night. (Sorry for the random side note) Other activities Carly and I participated in was riding around in cars with snowboards under the back tires (mullet-mobiling), coveting nixon watches, listening to N.E.R.D on my cell phone ring tone, and doing a little snowboarding up at Brian Head Ski Resort near Cedar City. The entire time Carly and I were in Cedar I was either interested in her friend Robyn (about a 1 week span of time) or dating a past girlfriend, Jaimie. So I never thought of Carly as anything other than someone who was really fun to be with. We lost track during the Spring Semester of 2003...but when I went on my mission we wrote a few times. Now most of you already know that I came home after about 6 months for knee surgery. When I got home most of my friends were on missions still, so I tried to contact Cedar City friends. LITERALLY, Carly was the only one who would give me the time of day. I found out that she was living in Logan now going to USU. I was coaching the track team at Davis High and we took a few trips up to USU for meets. I would go up the night before the meet to stay with my sister Sara and her husband Jes...but this gave me a chance to hang out with my old friend Carly again. We saw eachother a couple of times...but that was about it. Then my friends Brandon, Dan, and Chase all decided to transfer up to USU and it just so happend that the ward we moved into was the one that she attended. I walked into church that day and saw a slightly longer haired Carly on the stand preparing to give a talk. It was really random. Carly, Brandon, and I went up the canyon once for a bonfire before she left on her mission...and I saw her at a party just before she left...but that was about it. (I was still dating jaimie at this time...even though Jaimie had just left on her mission). Soon after Jaimie left I started to realize that she was not the one for me (even though I fought it for a while). There were a lot of things missing in that relationship. So while my once friend, and once girlfriend were both on their missions I dated a few girls...gave my family a few scares...and in the end came out with nothing. I got a card from Carly saying "Hi Robbie, It's time for an update! Thats all." on it. (so typically Carly by the way.) I wrote her probably 3 times in the last 3 months of her mission and about a month before she got home I started toying with the idea of asking her out when she got home. I still don't really know what made me think of that...but I'm so happy that I did. I attended her Welcome Home talk in church with Jake Havens. It went a little long and Jake had to go right after the closing prayer. I didn't feel very comfortable there alone...but didn't want to leave without saying hi. So as soon as the prayer was over I walked up to say hi to Carly so I could leave quickly. I didn't think this was weird...but apparently everyone from Carly's family did. They wondered who the "blushing boy" was who wanted to see Carly so badly. (for the record I was not blushing...I got severly (sun) burned the day before and because I have high power allies (some call them widow's peaks) it really shows when I get (sun) burned). After leaving Carly's welcome home I had officially talked myself out of asking her out on a date. It just didn't seem right...I can't put my finger on it though. Anyway...either that night or the next night Carly called me and we talked for a couple hours just to catch up. It was a great conversation. It replanted the idea to take her out in my head. Had we not had that conversation I probably wouldn't have asked her out. So we went on a date the next weekend in Salt Lake. We ate at a SALAD PLACE!...(I was hungry...but we knew that she could eat there so it was good...but I was hugry). Then we went to the planetarium and walked around looking at the exhibits. It was here that I started to REALLY think that I had been missing something that was with Carly all along. It was so much fun to be with her. I wanted to make her happy, and I felt like she wanted the same (a first for me). We saw a comedy show later that night and then talked outside her front door till early in the morning. She left to Arizona to pick up a car she purchased from her brother. When she was there we had a five hour conversation about life. It was amazing! I felt no reservations about telling her my weaknesses and strengths. She accepted me in spite of them and she opened up to me as well. We have since talked about that night and decided that it was a critical point in our relationship. The night she got back into town was a week night...and I decided to drive down even though I had a ton of homework and class in the morning. I am so happy I did. It was from that night on that I knew that I wanted to see where this relationship would go. On numerous occations, and to this day my mom claims that after I started seeing Carly I was happier. I was having a rough couple of years fighting with a number of issues and problems. I was feeling very drained and I was about ready to just move on with life and go a different direction. But Carly gave me a reason to stick around and fight for the lifestyle that I knew I deserved and wanted. She continually enchourages me to strive to reach my goals in life. She sees in me something that I don't understand, but I love her so much and am thankful for her love. That is the story...DONE!

1 November 2007

So many people have asked our story, so I figured that I would post it once and for all....maybe I can get Robbie to put his side on a bit later...we'll see.

Anyway, it all started about 5 years ago when I moved to Cedar City to attend Southern Utah University. When visiting some friends from elementary school (strange, I know--we were friends in kindergarten and such, drifted apart the rest of the years, and became better friends again in college), I noticed this highly attractive person who became known as "Hot Jake."

Eventually, Jake and I kissed, but that ended the infatuation with Hot Jake. Strangely, Hot Jake had this roommate named Robbie that was really fun to hang out with. We would go "mulletmobiling" (placing snowboard decks under tires in a car so that you can spin donuts on pavement), "sleeping bagging" (shoving 2+ people into a sleeping bag and rolling down the hill so that the chances of injury increase exponentially), look up nixon watches online (www.nixonnow.com), and talk about snowboarding and photography. Once we even drove to Park City to go ice skating, only to find out that the rink was closed, so we got hot chocolate at a gas station instead; and another time, Robbie took me and my friend Robyn up to Kaysville to look at Christmas lights.

My relationship with Robbie was strangely similar to my best friend, Ally. We could go months without seeing each other, and rarely hung around the same groups of people, but whenever we were together, it was literally like no time had passed. There was never any "weirdness" and I soon gave Robbie the name "Safe Robbie" because I knew that no matter what happened, he would never be romantically interested in me, nor I in him. Being with him was safe.

After the first year of college, Robbie entered the mission field, where I wrote to him periodically. In fact, I still have the letters he sent back to me....they are truly amusing. I stayed in Cedar for another year then moved to Logan to go to USU (the big guy was in charge, I didn't want to leave Cedar). It seemed I was there to get my roommates married--they would not have found their current spouses the way they did had I not been there.

One year after moving to Logan, I turned in my own mission papers. Soon, Robbie ended up moving to Logan as well. It was funny to be speaking in church, and see him walk into the chapel--He moved into my ward!

We saw each other a few times over the summer, and I entered the mission field in September of 2005. He attended the open house before I left, and while I was in Indiana, Robbie wrote to me a few times.

I returned home on March 29, 2007 and gave my homecoming address on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007. On the 12th, that next Thursday night, he took me on a date. We spent a lot of time together; my parents were worried that I was leading him on. I wasn't completely convinced at that time that I wasn't doing exactly that.

April 27, I met Robbie up in Kaysville to spend the day with him. His mom and sisters as well as grandma were going to lunch that day. We were invited, so I was suddenly exposed to a large amount of Allreds all in one day. The icing on the cake was when Robbie's nephew, Alex, turned around and said, "Robbie, I have a girlfriend too!" Wow. So much for not being sure if I was really going to truly and seriously date him, now the whole family was involved! The problem was only that I knew inside that the moment I let myself become Robbie's girlfriend I was done. I knew already that there was something here, I just had convinced byself I wan't ready yet for that.

My parents had gone to the cabin that night, so I really wasn't worried about making it home at any particular time. We hung out all day and rented "Walk the Line" which apparently stimulates some incredible conversation....before too long we were "hypothetically speaking" about getting married. Only it wasn't very "hypothetical," and we both knew it. Luckily for me and my fear of the future, I was only his girlfriend for about 4 hours...

...until I became the fiancee.

One week later, our parents met us at Mimi's Cafe in Sandy for dinner, and we went to Le Jardin together to see if it was the right place for the reception. Another wedding reception was in progress, and we were definitely in jeans. Suddenly, Robbie pulls me over to a nearby water fountain, gets down on one knee, and asks me to be his wife. It was darling to see how nervous he was, and eventually we got it on the correct hand/finger. To top it all off, we had attracted quite the crowd, that thought that the bride and groom celebrating their wedding that night should know, assuming that we knew them. They were wrong. We left quickly, before they could attract more attention to the wedding crashers. A few months later, we were married. And that's that.

31 October 2007

my husband, telling me a story, actually said "...cops and ambuli" ...no one but an Allred would make the plural of ambulance "ambuli"....why not, right???

29 October 2007

it's amazing, but we actually had a moment to put away the clean laundry. Hooray for spare time!

23 October 2007

This past weekend, we went to Louisville, Kentucky for a Leadership Development Seminar. It was awesome!! In the process, we flew into Indianapolis (conveniently for Carly, it was cheaper!), so we got to see only a couple of her friends from the mission. It was really hard for her to leave. When we tried to get back home, we ran into issue after issue with the airlines. Our first flight to Chicago was delayed for over an hour and a half, and the last leg of our flight was supposed to leave Chicago at 5:20 pm, but because of mechanical issues with the plane and the awesome wind, it didn't leave until after 10:00 pm. We finally made it back to Logan at around 3:30 Monday morning, and are currently suffering the implications of the continued lack of sleep.

11 October 2007

  

Here's a bunch of our wedding photos by Mandi at Jnkx Photography (www.jnkxphoto.com, jnkxphoto@gmail.com---how about that for a plug?!?!). Anyway, we love them and are excited to get some touched up to show off in our home!

8 October 2007

Ok, so I need to complain a bit: I hate school today. That's all.

2 October 2007

(awesome shot that Robbie took on our Sunday drive on 9/23/2007)
This month Carly and I volunteered as First Responders for the Top of Utah Marathon in Logan. It was a lot of fun…mostly because we got to see Amy run by at Mile 22 of the race. We single-handedly gave a local child Diabetes due to the amount of Mike-n-Ikes and sips of Diet Dr. Pepper he stole from our camp chair while we were helping runners. Other than that we are both just getting sick of the dual lives as students and workers. It’s getting pretty tough to go to school full-time as well as working full-time/working in a job doing things we'd rather not. However, our collective and singular sense of humor is still intact…so things are going well.

2 October 2007

We were recently called as the "Ward Fellowshippers" of the USU 41st ward. We think they are making up callings. Fortunately, it is a convenient way to meet new people without feeling awkward, because it's our job! Great. Oh yeah. Ryan Bickmore and his new wife, Laura, are in our ward as well. They live one street over.

27 September 2007

Erica, Chuck, and Keagan came up to visit last weekend. They came for a friend's wedding, but we used it as an excuse for haircuts! It's nice to see how ridiculously good-looking my husband really is....but If you look closely, you can see exactly why Robbie doesn't yet love children.