One Sad Mama

My baby turned one on November 30
I miss her baby smell
And her cuddling
And when she used to stay in one place
And my cabinets weren't constantly re-organized
I enjoyed every minute of her first year. (Except for when she cried every day for 4, or more! hours) 
It's sad that we won't have a baby at our house anymore. But it's so fun to see who she is turning in to!

We've all had so much fun getting to know our Syd the kid

Love you baby Sydders!

Let's see if anyone looks at this anymore...

Sydney Reay Allen

11/30/2010 8:05 p.m.

7 pounds 15.5 ounces, 20 inches

I'm back??????

Feeling better finally. I might try to get into blogging again...then again, I might not. No promises :). We'll see how it goes. For now, Here are some pictures from the summer.

In Encinitas, the place of no sun.

Ashley and Samantha Herbert

Taylor getting his T-ball award

Samantha in Rocky Point

Stay tuned for more pics from our trip to CA.

New Kitchen!

I am finally getting up the pics from our kitchen re-do. I took horrible, blurry, pictures, but have been too sick to care! It definitely looks better in person, and I have some re-arranging to do but this is the final product painted black, antiqued, (which is hard to see) and with new hardware.

Taylor's newest obsession.

And he's good too! He practices all the time and loves going to the skate park.

Baptism

Ashley was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on February 5, 2010. It was a really beautiful day and we were so thankful to be able to have so many of our friends and family attend!

The many outfits of Samantha Marie

Enough said.

Pinetop

We took some friends up to the cabin for New Year's- and I just realized we have pictures!

I LOVE this picture of Taylor- Look at the pure bliss on his face. He was the most excited to go to the cabin and play in the snow!

The snow fort the menfolk made.

One of the builders. It was very serious work.

This is about as far as I like to venture out of the cabin.

Ashley!

Ashley turned 8 years old last week. Wow! We are so proud of the girl she is becoming. She is excited to get baptized on Friday. What can we say about Ashley? She is very smart and continues to do well in all subjects at school. She is the life of the party and makes friends easily. She wants to be included in everything. She is SO fun and SILLY! She is beautiful and is already starting to have to beat off the boys. We love her!

Meghan will love me for this one, but it's so cute!

Please Help!!!

And Spread the Word!

My name is Ryan Hess and I was diagnosed on June 12, 2009 with a rare and aggressive form of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Over the past 7 months I have received enough donated leave from federal employees to help me keep a paycheck and throughout 3 rounds of chemotherapy and most recently, a bone marrow transplant. After meeting with my Dr. last week (1/12/10), he said that I could possibly be back to work in July. I have finished one year of residency at the Veteran's Hospital in Tucson, Arizona. All of your generosity with donating leave and spreading the word has kept food on our table and kept a lot of stress out of our lives during this time. I am now doing well enough to watch our two children so that my wife can work part time to help with the bills. As difficult as it is for our family to have to ask for help, we have realized that we must do so at this time so that we can keep our health insurance and so that I can hopefully continue with work later this year. Thank you so far for your help and prayers. We are beating this together!

We were told that any federal employee (ie: civilian military- not active duty, Border Patrol, DEA, FBI, IRS, Dept of Justice, EPA etc. EXCEPT Post Office employees and active duty military) can donate vacation time to be used as sick leave for another Federal employee.

We would be so thankful for any number of extra paid days we can accumulate.

Thank you so much.

How can you help if you ARE a Federal Employee?Go to your HR department and request to donate leave to Ryan Hess who works for the VA. (Your HR person will know the form that needs to be filled out- each Federal agency has their own form to donate leave)Once filled out and signed, the HR person will then need to fax or e-mail the form to:Brenda Joy - Benefits Specialist (TUCSON V.A.) Phone #: (520) 792-1450 x 4409 Fax # : (520) 629-1849 attn: Brenda Joy E-Mail : Brenda.Joy@va.gov ALSO, for those who are federal employees, please print out this message and post it in break/lunch rooms to help get the word out as well as emailing it to co-workers!How to help if you are NOT a Federal Employee:PASS this along to ANYONE and EVERYONE that you know and then ask them to pass the message along. Post it on blogs, Facebook, e-mail...whatever you can think of.Visit:

http://teamryanhess.blogspot.com/

The Cutest Kids Ever!

These are scanned into the computer so they aren't the best quality.

Samantha 3, Taylor 5, Ashley 7

All the Great Grandkids

Taylor, Samantha, Ethan, Harlow, Parker, Colin, Ashley

The Ultimate Vacation

This post brought to you by Sarah who has taken back the blogging reigns- for a couple days at least.

We had the opportunity to go with (most) of my family on a Royal Caribbean cruise before Christmas. We left from San Juan, Puerto Rico and visited the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. Kitts, Dominica, and Barbados. Paradise. Keep scrolling through the older posts to catch it all.

Our Ship- Serenade of the Seas

The Group

Us

Here's a little of what we experienced.