The Alix Blog » vacation

Another year of memories!

Katie — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:42:04 +0000

So once again, we have invited all of our family and friends to our blog and get caught up on what has transpired over the past year. This past year has been full of first’s for Katie and Chase. First and foremost, we wish you a wonderful holiday season.

As I mentioned last year, we spent last Christmas in Breckenridge, CO with Katie’s side of the family. It was a wonderful trip and we enjoyed a very white Christmas. Katie didn’t break any bones this time around. But we did have fun skiing, tubing, snowboarding, making snow angels, and just enjoying the company. You can see the pictures by clicking the image below.

Colorado - December 2008

After the festivities had ended Katie returned to her research which did not end quite as early as planned. Chase returned to work and life returned to normal in Richmond until March. In March, we experienced one of those rare winter storms that actually drops snow and it accumulated. This rare storm gave Richmond between 8″ and 10″. Richmond will typically start shutting down at about 1″ of snow (yeah, yeah, laugh away all your northerners) Katie luckily got a day off since VCU is primarily a commuter school; unfortunately Chase still had to work. Check out the few pictures we took.

Snow - March 2009

At the end of April, Katie finally presented her research to the Medicinal Chemistry department. And May 1st successfully defended her Master’s Thesis (For your sanity, don’t read unless you really like Chemistry :-p – -Chase). May 16th, Katie graduated from VCU with her Master’s in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Of course, pictures of the joyous day are posted.

Katie's Graduation

In the days after her defense and before graduation Katie interviewed for a position as a Lab Specialist in a microbiology lab at VCU; and in June started her first job. She’s still working there and enjoying the opportunities available to learn new things.

Also in June we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Some people claim the first year is the hardest. We honestly didn’t notice much of a change other than some added jewelry. We hope the years to come are as equally blissful.

July we bought our first house. It’s a nice 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath, brand new house in the same area of town we’ve been living in. There are plenty of pictures up of it, inside and out, furnished and unfurnished. The dogs seem to have finally gotten used to the house and to going out on their tie-out leashes.

House

We spent our birthdays in Key West with Chase’s parents. We toured most of the tiny island and learned a lot of its history. We even saw some interesting places including the Pelican Poop Shop, Garden of Eden, and the Love Muscle House. If you want to read more of our adventures just scroll back through the posts or browse the pictures.

Florida/Key West - August 2009

We stayed home this year for Halloween. We handed out about 7 large bags of candy to the neighborhood kids. Chantel and Alex even brought over Jay to go trick-or-treating. He was Bumblebee from Transformers. It was really neat to see all of the costumes. Our next door neighbors’ 2-year-old granddaughters were a pumpkin and a lady bug. The one got a kick out of being the same as our dog Gizmo. The jury’s still out on how Gizmo felt. Of course, we decorated the house.

Halloween 2009

Chase, Katie, and friend Mary-Jane, and her boyfriend, Adam, drove down to Florida for Thanksgiving. It was a nice to get away from work for a while and just be able to sit back and relax. We spent the date after Thanksgiving at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure with Mom.

Florida - Thanksgiving 2009

This year we are hosting our first Christmas. Katie’s side of the family is coming down to visit for a few days. Mom O already made us a gorgeous wreath for our front door. The Christmas lights were up before Thanksgiving. Presents have been bought and wrapped. Now all we have to do is wait for Christmas to get here.

Christmas 2009

Once again, we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The photo gallery and blog is continuously updated, so be sure to look at it throughout the remained of 2009 and all of 2010 for updates.

Update (12/19/2009): Since this post was originally made we’ve had one of those rare snow-dumping storms hit Richmond. We got about 8-9″ of wet snow in the last 24 hours.

Snow December 2009

Having Fun in Sunny (but Cold) Florida

Chase — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:10:05 +0000

Well, we all have been having tons of fun in Florida. Thanksgiving day was a great time with the family and friends, and of course the delicious meal most of us helped cook. Yesterday, everyone except Dad went to the Universal theme parks. We went on as many rides as we could. We were never able to get on the new roller coaster, Rock It, because it always had an 1.5 hour+ wait time. That’s too long. Today we are heading out to look at any manatees that may be in the river and maybe do a bit of shopping. Unfortunately, our trip comes to an end tomorrow when we have to head back to VA.

I have uploaded the pictures take so far. Here’s a link:

Florida - Thanksgiving 2009

On a side note with the blog, we have everything finished. The pictures are now being hosted on Picasa and are linked through using a couple of plugins. It makes things very nice, fast, and extremely easy to use (Katie needs that).

Back to Florida

Katie — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:53:37 +0000

So we finished re-uploading the pictures last night. We’ve switched over to using Picassa and changed around the theme a bit. I hope everyone enjoys the changes to the Photo Gallery.

Since then, we’ve started our drive down to Florida. Mary Jane and her boyfriend, Adam, are tagging along so Chase doesn’t have just me to keep him company and awake during the drive. We’re currently relaxing at the hotel in Richmond Hill for the night. Tomorrow we’ll finish the rest of the drive.

Discovering Paradise

Katie — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:45:35 +0000

So we arrived safely in the Cayman Islands yesterday. After landing and being one of the first few from our flight to figure out what “Taxi Dispatcher” was instead of dragging all of our stuff to the taxi cabs and have them ignore us, we got to the resort. It is absolutely gorgeous. We found a “goodie bag” on our dining room table when we got here, containing a bottle of rum, a shot glass, some spicy seafood grill sauces (which they also use to make the dip for tasty Conch fritters), a rum cake, and some polo shirts that were custom made for us that say: “I honeymooned in Grand Cayman and discovered paradise.” Thanks Mom and Dad!! Our balcony gives us a view of both the golf course and the ocean. We can see Rum Point in the distance. The room is very nice and is essentially a one-bedroom apartment. Yesterday afternoon we went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for breakfasts, snacking, and the occasional meal where we didn’t feel like going out.

Today we’ve already been “oriented,” sunbathed on the beach, swam in the pool, ate a Caribbean lunch and it’s not even 3 PM yet! We’re just going to take it easy, relax and take it all in today. Tomorrow we’re planning on going to the beach to watch this huge jet ski competition, Tuesday we’ll go do some shopping in George Town and so far the only other thing we have planned is Stingray City and snorkeling at the Barrier Reef on Thursday.

But now I’m going back to watching the golfers try to hit their balls over the giant water trap / lake outside of our balcony. Especially since Chase has just informed me that the current golfer hit a bird with his ball. Oops!

Edit by Chase: I haven’t written in a while, but I will try to keep up since we found that we, as “owners” of the timeshare, get free internet in the room. First thing, Katie looked absolutly stunning in her wedding dress. The only thing I could do to keep from crying was to look at my father and nod. Second thing, the internet connection here is not the fastest. Therefore there will be no pictures uploaded until we return.