Friday, August 30, 2013

The Allen Family

About 2 months ago, we had a big Allen family reunion.  It's been 7 years since we were all together.  If you don't already know, Kyle has 7 brothers.  Kyle's mother is a saint!  There are 21 (or is it 22 now?) grandkids!  I feel so blessed to be apart of this family.  It's crazy and wild and sometimes overwhelming - especially at big holiday get togethers in my in-laws little house - but I wouldn't change it EVER. 

While everyone was together, I took some family pictures for my in-laws.  This may be the last chance we ever are all together to do this.  Grandkids are going to be going off to college or on missions so these were really important to all of us.  These are just a few of my fav's.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And my two personal favorites - I could be a little bias.
 
 
 

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The New House

Ugh...a little over a year since my last blog post.  Why did I stop?  I used to love it so much.  Maybe, I'll start again?  Make it a weekly thing?  We'll see. 

I wanted to blog about our new house for friends and family who are curious about it.  We are so excited about it.  I love it.  Seriously, everytime I drive up to it I do a little happy dance.  It's kind of a fun story too.  Here we go.  First, the story -



When we started looking for houses, I was really disappointed.  There wasn't anything I was really excited about.  Kyle had seen this house months ago when we were playing around with the idea of moving to Indy.  He said, "Kelly, come look at this one.  What do you think?"  I laughed at him and said "NO WAY!"  It just needed too much work to make it the way I'd want it. 

Well, we got here and started our search.  This house came up and met all our criteria.  I still dismissed it.  As the week went on, this house kept popping up in my head.  I knew Kyle was interested initially (although he had kind of dismissed it in the mean time because of me) so I figured it wouldn't hurt to just go look at it.  Just go look...

I drove up to the house in the evening by myself after Kyle got home from work.  The drive was so refreshing.  5 miles out of town.  I've missed these old Indiana country roads so much.  It felt so good. 

I pulled into the drive way.  I started laughing.  It was SO us.  I got butterflies in my stomach.  Yes, I know, so ridiculous.  It was like I was falling in love ;)  I walked around, looked in all the windows (I knew it as vacant).  While doing this, I could see us here - in the yard, in that kitchen, Kyle and the boys working in the garage, having a garden and playset in the back yard.  It was surreal.  I got in the car and called Kyle.  I went home, got him and the boys, and we came back. 

We looked at it as soon as we could.  We took a few days, looked at a few more house just to be sure, and then we put an offer on it.  It was a low offer.  We felt like the house needed way too much updating and cosmetic work AND appliances (it didn't have any) to pay as much as they wanted.  After a few negotations, we still couldn't aggree on the offer so we walked away.

In the mean time, we found another house we liked.  It was a lot like our last house.  We weren't as excited about it, but I liked it and I knew we could be very happy there.  We put an offer on it.  While we were in negotations for that house our relator called and said that the first seller called back and WAS GOING TO ACCEPT OUR OFFER!  We were thrilled!  We got out of negotations with the other sellers and started on the buying process with our current house.  Things from there went so smoothly.  The insception went really well.  It's in great shape for being 30 years old.  They fixed everything else that was a major concern of ours without an negiotating. The sellers were this really nice middle ages couple.  They were excited to know that we were going to raise our family there and fix it up.

Okay,  here are the pictures.  It's got 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a loft, a huge garage, and 1 acre of land right in the country.  Have I mentioned that I love this house already?  It needs a lot of paint (and I mean alot!) and love, but it's going to be perfect for us - our little heaven on earth.

The Outside:
 

 
 
Living Room:
 

 

 
The Entry:
 
 
 
The Kitchen and Breakfast Knook:
 
 
 
 
Loft (4th Bedroom thru that door):

 
 
 
Leon's Room (please, forgive the mess - we've already started workng on it):
 
 
 
 
Grady's Room (currently being used as the boys entertainment room):

 
 
 
Boy's/Guest Bath:
 
 
 
Our bedroom (it was hard to get a good shot of it):

 
 
 
Our Bathroom:
 

 
 
The Oversized Garage (pretty sure this is why Kyle wanted to buy this house):

 
 
I have more, but blogger is just way too slow about uploading pics.  My patience is all GONE!  Maybe that's why I stopped blogging!  Ugh.
 
So there's lots of painting on my plate right now.  LOTS.  And maybe a few bathroom makeovers in the future.  But I think we are going to really love this house! It has so much potential for us.
 
I'll try to keep you up on the progress.