ALLREDHEADS: The Amy, Andy, Isaac, Lauren & TBA Allred Family

Wobbly Blade

2010-06-03T18:30:00.003-04:00

And what does that say about Army quality control?

Snow Day in Southern Alabama!

2010-02-12T19:56:00.003-05:00

The forecast called for snow today and I immediately thought it might be the kind that comes down and doesn't even stick to the ground and then turns to rain after about an hour.... not today! This stuff was real, honest to goodness snow! It stuck to the ground and continued most of the day. It started snowing in the morning, and we got an early bus back from the flight line, obviously not flying today. And so now I can say officially that I've had a snow day at least once in my life :) The snowfall continued until about 4:00 in the afternoon. There was plenty to play in and even build a snowman. I got pictures of the kids and me in the snow. But I got the snowman built too late in the day to get a good shot of it. I'll have to post that later.

It's a Girl!

2010-01-03T18:35:00.003-05:00

I know this is putting the cart before the horse how I just wrote a post about Noelle's blessing when I never even posted her birth. I'll just mention that she was born at 1452 Central Time, 23 December 2009. At birth she weighed 7 lbs 0 oz and measured 20 inches long. We were lucky to get Amy and baby home by about 9PM on Christmas Eve, which meant we had a lovely new baby for a Christmas present.

In the week and a half she has been alive, I doubt she's been awake for more than a few hours, other than being awake to eat, which she barely does that as well. But she's a cutie and we love having her in the family. The kids love her so much and love to give her kisses and otherwise annoy her in loving ways :)

Noelle in her Blessing Dress

2010-01-03T18:27:00.003-05:00

This morning we gave baby Noelle a name and a blessing in Sacrament Meeting. Mom (Andy's mom) had crocheted her a dress, which she was in for the blessing. Just thought I'd share some photos we took of her in the dress after church.

Lauren in the Hospital

2009-12-21T22:03:00.002-05:00

I realized that we hadn't chronicled this event in Lauren's life on our blog. I do believe we sent out an email about the event, however, it should have an entry here as well. Plus there are some cute pictures to show.

The short version of the story is that Amy and her family did the classic "I thought she was with you" thing and briefly lost accountability of Lauren at her family's house, where they have a pool. The pool area wasn't fenced at the time and Lauren slipped out the door that everyone thought was locked and went for a swim. After looking all over the house and then following that gut wrenching thought that she might be in the back yard Amy found Lauren floating on her back, unconscious, and her stomach full of water.

Lauren came to and vomited all that water, but Amy and the family rushed her to the hospital, which was actually just around the corner to be sure everything was okay with her. All this took place in the morning and she was released from the hospital around 5 in the evening.

I tell this story using third person because I wasn't there myself. I was at SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school where we're locked out from the outside world completely for three weeks. This news was a week old before I heard about it.

Ward Talent Show

2009-11-14T21:08:00.002-05:00

Here's Isaac singing Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree. Lauren's singing wasn't planned. She just decided to do an impromptu singing of her own rendition.

And here's a video of me playing Seitz's Concerto No 5, 1st movt. It's cut off because Amy had to attend to Lauren while I was playing. And you'll notice a lot of out of tune notes. That's because I haven't played much in years and I was nervous.

Halloween

2009-11-01T08:14:00.003-05:00

This year Isaac was Peter Pan, for the third year in a row and Lauren was a purple bug of some sort, for the second year, I think. We went around our neighborhood, but to our chagrin trudging up and down the hills hardly paid off as it seemed that most folks were out for the evening, or at least not participating in the candy delving, for whatever reason. I reckon it's partly because our neighborhood is so far removed that folks were probably taking their kids off to other parts of town with more fertile spots for trick-or-treating.

Here's a short film I took from my new ipod nano (Happy Birthday to me from Amy!).

Isaac in Dad's Flight Gear

2009-10-07T12:32:00.003-04:00

Just got my flight gear issue this morning. Isaac was the first to appear in a picture wearing the gear though :) Sadly, I had to tell Isaac that owing to the exorbitant amount that I would owe the government if something happened to the helmet, this was the only time he could touch the thing. We took a picture to mark the occasion.

Pix of Isaac

2009-08-09T01:05:00.004-04:00

I just thought I'd add these photos that we took today. I saw Isaac sitting on the bathtub and everything about the situation screemed kodak moment for some reason. Maybe it was the light coming in through the window. Who knows? I'm not even a photographer.

New House

2009-07-05T14:14:00.005-04:00

Just moved into our new house last week. We had the "Mormon Movers" (Elders Quorum) from our losing ward help us load the truck and the gaining ward helped us unload at our new house.

The house is a nice one with a few annoyances like cupboard space and a lack of a coat closet and a smallish master bed room. But they're all outweighed by what lay at the back of the house... and the overall niceness of the place. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. They're all taken from the deck in back.

At the Park

2009-06-20T14:11:00.003-04:00

Here are some photos of us playing around at one of the many parks in the neighborhoods on Ft Rucker housing. There's one nice things about military housing. I could name a plethora more unpleasant things about military housing, however.

Panama City Beach, FL

2009-06-20T13:57:00.002-04:00

These pictures were taken from one of our many recent trips to the beach. Here in lower AL, we're within 1.5 hours from the beach in Panama City, FL. Destin, FL is 2 hours and Pensacola is 2.5 hours.

Above is Lauren and Isaac is below. They both loved the beach at first and wouldn't stop asking to go nearly every day. But as kids do, they suddenly tired of the beach and now we can't get them out there with out them griping and wanting to go home as soon as we've arrived.

Catch Up

2009-05-25T16:34:00.005-04:00

It's time to add a little meat to our blog. It has been looking rather miserable for the last year. If you had made attempts to catch up on the Andy Allred family news, I apologize for disappointing.

So let's sum up the highlights of last year for the Allred family, shall we?

May '08- We bought a house in Grovetown, GA just outside gate 2 of Ft Gordon. Nice place, not bad for a starter home.

December '08- Lauren began going to Nursery at church, a very blessed occasion for Amy and me. We had been awaiting this day for 18 months!

February '09- Amy and I won a free trip to an all inclusive resort at Cancun, Mexico. We won it by getting our Realtor the most referral dollars in 2008. It was an awesome trip, lots of fun.

March '09- Our little family made the 6-hour journey to our new home in Alabama. In November I was selected to become a warrant officer and go to flight school to fly helicopters in the Army. Our move day finally arrived.

April '09- Amy, Isaac and Lauren went out to Houston to stay at her parents for a few weeks while I went off to Warrant Officer Candidate School. They had a blast eating out all the time, swimming in her parents' pool and spa, and doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. I, on the other hand, got to experience Basic Training all over again, or at least WOCS felt that way in some respects. Those who have been to WOCS or OCS will say that I'm exaggerating, and I probably am. But the school was more or less an unpleasant four weeks that serve more of a right of passage into the Warrant Officer Corps rather than actually preparing one to become a warrant officer. Either way, come May 12th, I was happy to graduate, get my freedom back, and pin on WO1 rank.

I want to add, however, that to date, I still have yet to be saluted. I figured out that being in a training company of literally hundreds of other warrant officers provides little opportunity to see Enlisted folks to receive that first salute. I'm still carrying around my silver dollar to hand out to that first person.

Lately- We've been hanging out at home a lot. I'm in a hold before starting flight school. I'll be doing a phase here and a phase there with holds in between, they call those "bubbles." They're not as long as they have been, so I should be grateful. But with little to do, Amy, the kids and I have been taking day trips all around just to get out of the house.

On June 18th, we close on our second home purchase. This one is a little bigger, a little nicer, and has a spa. It also has one of the best views in the back yard that I've ever seen from anyone's back yard. We're excited.

Vacation

2008-07-26T10:17:00.003-04:00

Amy, Isaac, Lauren and I flew out with Amy's dad in his new plane (Piper Malibu, six-seater) to Houston and from there caught a commercial flight the next day to Phoenix.

Mom's wedding-

Our first intentions were to be in Phoenix for my mom's wedding. But just before we were to leave, the wedding was postponed. At mom's encouragement, we decided to go anyway just for a week's vacation. Then just after we arrived, it somehow became back on for the original time, which was quite a blessing. I don't think my unit would have allowed me to go out again just two weeks after returning from the first trip. So we were able to attend after all.

My mom, Jana Lofgreen Allred was married to Dale Porter. I can't tell you too much about my new step dad except that he seems a very stalwart man, dedicated, and a good guy. He's the great uncle of my best friend Brandon Porter. He does cabinets for a living and he's mostly retired. He and my mom plan to live in Orem, UT for six months out of the year and in Mesa, AZ for the other six months. I hear they plan to go on a few missions as well.

Speedminton-

I was introduced to a cool new game that's picking up popularity these days. It's called Speedminton. It's similar to badminton except that it's not played with a net. Rather you set up two squares about ten feet squared in the grass and stand in it trying to hit the birdie into the opponent's square. He hits it back trying to get it to land in your square. You score points accordingly. It's really fun, but requires a lot of lawn area. If interested, I recommend looking it up online. Check out this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AwcmCOLgz0.

New Home

2008-06-09T20:44:00.000-04:00

As I promised in our last post, we have pictures for this one. These are of our new house, us at the beach at Hilton Head, SC, and us at 6500 ft in a Cessna 172N.

No news for this post, all is well and we're loving our new home.

Bandwagon

2008-05-24T14:37:00.001-04:00

Don't hate us because we're blogging. We too want to be cool like everyone else.

In case it has been a while for some of you, we'll first give the Allred family roster in order according to age: Amy, Andy, Isaac (2yrs 9mos), and Lauren (11mos). We sorted our family by correlating gender with hair color. It just makes things easier... girls are red heads and boys are brunettes.

Andy just returned from a two-week course called Warrior Leader Course, or WLC. Amy took the kids out to Houston to visit the family and see her little sister's first birth in Dallas.

Next week we're buying a house in Grovetown, GA. It's just minutes from gate 2 of Ft Gordon. It's a nice place and almost twice as large as the space we have in our military housing currently.

Very shortly Andy will be submitting his application for Warrant Officer as a helicopter pilot. Wish him luck.

We spend our days making family trips (which are becoming increasingly more expensive due to rising fuel prices) to Target, Waffle House, and Cold Stone. Life is good.