Author: Brian (iweb) Allen

We are back from our trip to Fairhope and Gulf Shores, Alabama.  You can see our pictures here (remember “friends” and “photos” are the username and password.)

Day 1

We had a nice drive down to Fairhope, Alabama.  We stopped a long the way so Katie Beth didn’t have any accidents.  Katie Beth loved playing in the play area at the Chick-Fil-A. (Side Note: Every time we pass a Chick-Fil-A or any restaurant with a play area, Katie Beth now goes crazy wanting to play.) Katie Beth played in the water at the Greenville rest area.

When we arrived at my Aunt Ann’s house, we found my cousin’s Ashley and Little Alfred.  Soon, my Aunt Ann and Uncle Alfred arrived home.  Ashley’s family came and joined us for hamburgers.  Ashley even brought over Reynolds’ wooden train set for Katie Beth to play with during our visit.

Day 2

We dropped in to visit my mother’s Aunt Dorothy and Uncle William.  We had a nice time chatting.

Next, we headed down to Gulf Shores, Alabama so Katie Beth could play on the beach.  She had a great time, but she screamed with sheer excite the whole time she was running in and out of the water.

After our visit to the beach, we returned to my Aunt Ann’s home for dinner with all my aunt’s children and my Uncle Tommy.  We played Apples to Apples.  We had a great time.

Day 3

We went to the Fairhope Beach Park where Katie Beth got to feed the geese, ducks, and seagull .  I’m not sure who ate more of the bread Katie Beth or the birds.  In the video clip below, you will see to Katie Beth asking Karen for more bread with sign language.

Katie Beth had a blast at the large playground in downtown Fairhope.  She was able to climb all over, under, and through the equipment.

That evening, everyone came back together for Uncle Alfred’s and Aunt Ann’s great gumbo.  They have the best gumbo recipe that I have ever had.  (A great roux is the key to a great gumbo.) My Uncle Alfred worked on it throughout the day.  Karen even enjoyed the gumbo, which says a lot.  You can see it simmering in pot.

Day 4

We joined Stacey and Sammy Wilcutt for Palm Sunday mass and then we started our journey home.  I think we all had a great visit.  My Aunt Ann and Uncle Alfred were wonderful hosts.

We stopped and visited with Paul Ronning (Karen’s brother) and his daughter Lea Moore on our drive home.

We have picked some dates and we are heading to the Gulf of Mexico.  This trip will be a first for Katie Beth.

Most my mother’s side of family has not seen Katie Beth so this will be great time for them to meet her.

I know that we will all have a great time in the sand and surf.

We have had a lot going on this past year with milestones going by, travel going everywhere, and more.  Many of the links below are into our photos which require the username and password of “friends” and “photos”.

January

This year we had more family in town for new year’s day dinner.  And, this was Katie Beth’s first new year day.

Karen’s niece, Lea Moore, visited with her boys, Aaron and Evan.  We had a visit from Karen’s sister, Sharon Ronning,  Destanie Hull came to help with Katie Beth for a week.

My January blogging will have more highlights.

February

We celebrated Katie Beth’s first Valentine Day.  Katie Beth got to play in her first bubble bath, which was a lot of fun including eating the bubbles.

My February blogging will have more highlights including Karen’s surgery.

March

We cleaned our spa and Katie Beth decided to help.  We took some nice family pictures.  Katie Beth had her first St. Patrick day so we have her in green and happy.

We celebrated Katie Beth first Easter.  Katie Beth tried apple juice for the first time and she reacted in the funniest way.

My March blogging has few entries for this period.  I guess I was too busy with other things.

April

We had a great season of Huntsville Stars baseball and Katie Beth still loves going to the games and seeing Homer the mascot.  Katie Beth had her first TV appearance. We took Katie Beth to the Big Springs park in downtown Huntsville, Alabama to see the ducks and fish.

https://www.brianallen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/Snapz-Pro-XScreenSnapz001-17.mov

Katie Beth took her first steps.  We finally got back to hiking since having Katie Beth.  Katie Beth has started to feed herself.

We attended Decoration Day at Willis Chapel.

My April blogging will have more highlights including baseball and more.

May

We celebrated Karen’s niece’s college graduation.  Vikki Hull graduated from University of Alabama in Birmingham.  We celebrated Karen’s first mother’s day.

We took Katie Beth to Walt Disney World for her first visit, which included frequent blog updates over the trip. We celebrated Memorial Day with my parents and we took a family picture with Katie Beth in her sailor outfit.

My May blogging will give you more highlights of all the travel during this busy month.

June

Katie Beth has started learning how to feed herself with a spoon and fork.  We started summer time with lots of swimming at the pool.

We celebrated my first father’s day.  Katie Beth learned what fun can be had with chalk.

My June blogging is filled with posts about travel, baseball, beer, and many other things.

July

This month started out with Katie Beth’s big celebration of her first birthday.  We celebrated the 4th of July all day; starting with a family picture and then with Allison and Steve Tofflemire at the Huntsville Stars baseball game.

For the rest of July, we were in Colorado Springs for my work, but we had a great time at the Garden of the Gods, the Rodeo Parade, the parks, the Sky Soxs Baseball, celebrating Karen’s ½ birthday, the concerts in the park, Uncle Wilbur (you just have to see it), the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, more Sky Soxs Baseball, another concert in the park, and hiking in Palmer Park.

My July blogging has even more activities including more trip details.

August

We celebrated our 12 Anniversary.  My sister, Hope, came into town with her children, Hannah and Charlie.  We celebrated Everett Grayson’s birthday.

We had won a prize of free passes to Point Mallard in Decatur, Alabama, which we went to this month.  We celebrated my 42nd birthday.

My August blogging has even more highlights of this month including baseball, beer tastings, family and more.

September

Katie Beth is having a blast with our new bicycle seat for her.  We are trying to take a family portrait every few weeks.  Katie Beth moved up to the next size car seat and is facing forward.  We attended the annual Alexander family reunion.  We had great time at the Monte Sano Art Show with Katie Beth joining in on the jam session.  Katie Beth has developed her “mean” look face.

My September blogging has even more highlights for this month.

October

Katie Beth had her first visit to the emergency room, because she pulled down our large gum-ball machine on top of herself.  My work took us back to Colorado Springs so we played in the parks some and went hiking.

We had some snow while in Colorado Springs.  Katie Beth had her first Tootsie Pop.

We had time to play in the fall leaves.  We were in Colorado Spring for Halloween and we had a great time.

My October blogging was even more highlights including hiking, food, beer, and more.

November

We setup the Christmas tree earlier than normal, because we returned to Colorado Springs during November.  We traveled by Amtrak train and I made lots of posts to my blog while traveling.  We celebrated Thanksgiving day in Colorado Springs.

My November blogging show our trip to Colorado Springs via train and much more.

December

Karen made a snowman while we were in Colorado Springs.  Our trip to Colorado Springs came to an end.  We celebrated a lot of birthdays in December including my mother’s birthday, Karen’s birthday, and my father’s birthday.

Katie Beth was baptized.  The Karen’s family came into town to celebrate Katie Beth’s baptism and exchange Christmas gifts.  We celebrated our Christmas.

We joined my family for Christmas at my parent’s house.  My Aunt Becky came into town over the holidays.  We went to Allison and Steve Tofflemire’s house for their New Year’s Eve party.

The December blogging was highlights from our travels, the holidays, and more.

We are back home after long trip to Colorado Springs for my work.  My work was on FTG-05, which was a missile test.  You can see more about it here.

You can see our journey on my blog here.  Here are some high lights:

• I tracked our trip on our Garmin 60CSx GPS and you can see our route here.
• We got to try out our new video camera.  You can see samples here with more to come.
• Karen got to make a snowman, which you can see here.
• Katie Beth was given a gift a knitted hat, which you can see here.

The only bummers is that we were always fighting off sickness during the trip.

We will be heading back out of town via Amtrak train.  You will be able to keep track of our progress on my blog.

You may see actual progress as I figured out how to post Google maps with GPS data from my Garmin 60CSx.  I may not, because all of this takes time.  I think handling Katie Beth in a room no bigger than 6½’ x 7′ will be enough work.

If I don’t post the maps, you will still see photos along the way, which Flickr will map for you so you can see where we are or are not.

Our trip is over.  My work went well.  Halloween was fun.  We are coming back with more than we started.

Karen had a great time shopping at the downtown thrift stores.  We planned for cool weather and had very harm weather.  So, Karen picked up a few warm weather clothing items.  Since we were going be in town for weeks, Karen picked up a few toys, too.  Well, my travel was extended so Karen was back at the thrift store to pick up a Halloween costume (a cat), which you can see in the Halloween picture below.

Our hotel had on no microwave so I picked up $10 microwave.  Karen has been loosing weight so her blue jeans were too big.  She made another trip to get blue jeans and donate her larger blue jeans.  We both pickup some books.  I guess you can tell that Karen and I love thrift stores.

We will be returning to Colorado Springs very soon so the Antlers Hilton is holding our microwave, a stroller, and a large box of things.