Allen Update: 2008

Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Murphys are Here!!!

On Wednesday, the Murphys drove over from Cebu in order to join in all the craziness!! We met around lunchtime at a local water park/resort and all spent the afternoon together.

The Grill Master!

Ben "surfing" on the bench

BFFs!

Mr. Universe Contest

Aunt Jen bought matching shorts for these guys. Cool!!

Jesse, once again showing his true self! LOL

Captain Jamin

Taking it easy

This resort has two huge water slides - several stories high! The kids had a blast making a train and coming down together. (Can we say ER waiting to happen??)

Maybe Zach has a future as a lifeguard?

Somehow in all the chaos, Jen found a quiet moment.

The sunken pirate ship

The kids loved swimming around in the sunken ship.

Hey...who's that big kid in there??

The kids and dads played a rousing game of "freeze tag" in the kiddie pool.

Ben opted for another cupcake!

***A special thanks to my 2 dear friends, Jen and Connie. Most of these pictures were taken by them. They both are very talented photographers with awesome cameras, so I am basically bumming off them! Thanks you two!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Bowling with the Hagens

Make a Smilebox scrap pages

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The Hagens are Here!!!

One of the most difficult things our family has ever had to do was to say goodbye to the Hagen family last April when we left Legazpi to move to Bacolod. Steve, Jen, Mikayla, Zach and Ben have become some of our closest friends and we were thrilled when plans worked out for them to spend the week of Thanksgiving with us in our new home. The Hagen crew arrived in Bacolod Monday afternoon, and, with the exception of the arrival of grandparents, I have never seen Carly and Caleb more excited and anxious for a plane to get on the ground!!

Carly and Mikayla show off their finished product!

Since this was the Hagens' first time in Bacolod, we HAD to introduce them to Bacolod Chicken!!

Waiting on the chicken

After lunch, we all went bowling. We all made quite the fashion statement with our bowling shoes!!

A few more bowling pics....

Smile Ben!

I think this was some sort of victory dance??!!

When all was said and done, Mom and Caleb tied for first place with a score of 117! Woohoo. (Yes, it was a bumper lane.)

Friday, October 03, 2008

Here, There and Everywhere

Just a quick note to let you know what's going on in our lives this week. Wade has been in Bicol for the last week doing Church Planter Training and also helping to set up the Lifeword Recording Studio in Sorsagon. As far as I know, it's been a good week, but I know he is anxious to get home. He will travel home to Bacolod on Monday.

At the moment, I'm sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Manila. Caleb and I are headed out to Hong Kong in the morning. We will be doing a two day conference with our ladies there on Sunday and Tuesday. (Tuesday is a national holiday.) We will have Monday off and are looking forward to a really cool "date!" Pictures will come soon!

Caleb is traveling with me this time because when Carly was seven, she was able to go with me to Hong Kong. So now it's his turn!! He is sooooo excited. He's bouncing around all over the place and can barely contain himself! He told me today, "I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE HONG KONG!!!"

Carly is at home in Bacolod, being passed around among friends!! LOL. I'm sure she'll have a great time until Dad returns on Monday. Caleb and I will fly home on Wednesday.

Please keep our family in your prayers over the next few days. And please remember our conference in Hong Kong and the ladies that will be attending. We will be studying the topic of Stewardship/Finances! Always a tough subject! Also, there is a typhoon approaching Hong Kong at the moment. It's not a strong one, but it could change some of our plans and I could have a VERY DISAPPOINTED seven year old on my hands!

Thank you so much for lifting our family up to our heavenly Father. You have no idea how much your prayers mean to us.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Archive Alert #5

I'm on a roll!!!! The June pictures have all been posted. Posts include a visit from some dear friends in Texas, Carly's 11th birthday, a trip back to Legazpi and an important day for Caleb. If nothing else, check out the pictures Carly took on her birthday....her birthday gift from God! They are awesome!!

http://allenupdate.blogspot.com/2008/06/special-birthday-gift.html

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Archive Alert #4

In the previous post, I told you April would be coming soon. So here it is....all the April posts. PLUS MAY!! (Ok, don't get excited. There are only 2 posts for May. If you read them, you'll see I was a little bit preoccupied!)

If you've ever wondered how one moves from one island to another in a 3rd world country...read away!!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

A Visit from the Murphys

In the Allen house, the month of September can be summed up with 3 words....

school,

and more school!

Ok, that was 5 words but you get the idea. As a result, I haven't taken many pictures this month. We've pretty much kept our noses in the books and that doesn't make for a very exciting blog entry!

However, we had one huge blessing in September when the Murphy family came for a visit! Robert had a trip out of the country so Connie and the boys came over to hang out with us for a few days. Here are a few pictures from our time together:

(These pics were all taken by Connie. She is a much better photographer than I am, so I just bummed these pics off her! Thanks, Connie:)

There's a swimming place in town called The Caribbean that we've been wanting to check out. We've heard it's pretty cool so we decided to test it out while the Murphy boys were here. We were all impressed. It has a couple of huge water slides, this sunken ship to play in, and it's very clean! We'll be back!