Ten Years

Today's an emotional day for us. We're moving out of the house we've lived in for ten years, four and a half months. It's the longest period of time in my life that I've ever lived in one place.

Mikey was only ten months old when we moved into this house in East Tulsa in February of 2001. Cathy had wanted to live in this area since she was a little girl and much of it was brand new; 30 years later it wasn't quite as new and sparkly, but we loved it anyway. We've celebrated many important events in this house: we made a baby and celebrated a birth. We've celebrated many birthdays, including the first birthdays of both of our children. Ten Christmases and ten Easters. Ten anniversaries. Four full-time jobs for myself, not counting the flurry of short consulting gigs during the second year we lived here, when I had been laid off by an ailing company right after the dot-com bust + the WTC attacks. Four deaths of people we were very close to happened while we lived in this house, and two more of relatives who were much-loved but a little more distant. Lots of potty training. Five years of Cub Scouts. Three years of Christian School in two different schools, two years of home schooling and one year of public school. Several seasons of soccer. Brutal heat and crazy amounts of snow. Out of electricity once (or was it twice?) for a week or two at a time because of ice. Two different churches. Two different dogs and two pet frogs. Three different cars. Lots of movies and music. Lots of laughing, lots of crying. Lots of friends.

It's been a good run. I'm looking forward to the next ten years in Bixby!

Memorial Day 2011

Boy, has it been a long time since the last post! Lots has happened since then... birthdays, Christmas and Christmas Train, Mother's Day, museum visits, trumpet playing, Vacation Bible School. And now it's Mikey's last week of 5th grade! But I really wanted to mention the great time we had this weekend down in Texas with my brother's family.

I took Friday off from work so we could go down a little early; as it turned out, we let Mikey go to school and drove down to the Fort Worth area afterward. Saturday Candi had to work (at home), so the rest of us beat it out to the Ray Roberts Lake State Park to go swimming at the man-made beach there. Everybody had a great time and got sunburned (didn't wait long enough after applying sunscreen to go into the water... D'OH!!), and then we went home (with a brief side trip to a favorite thrift store, where my brother bought a disco light that looked totally like a Dalek from Doctor Who) and applied Aloe Vera. After that delicate process, we mounted back up and went to a restaurant called Babe's Chicken Dinner House, where we had some of the best fried chicken and chicken fried steak anywhere!

The next day was Sunday, so as always we went to Kevin and Candi's church with them, but this time was a little different... we lucked out and wound up there on the day of their annual church picnic! They have their picnic at a place called Circle R Ranch, and we ate some barbecue and then all of the kids went out to go swimming. Some of Kevin's kids went back inside later to play Bingo... my two stayed in the pool the whole time! After they closed the pool down but before we left, I had a few minutes to take Hannah down to the pony corral and let her meet and bet two very sweet ponies, Babs and Ginger. I know the girl must have been getting them ready to be put away after the pony rides, but she was so nice, letting Hannah have some time with them through the fence. Hannah loves animals, and I know that was a big deal to her!

(And yes, we wound up getting more sunburned... we've REALLY got to figure out how this sunscreen stuff works!)

Monday morning we weren't quite ready to blow out yet, so Kevin and I took Mikey and Emily out to a friend's pond to fish (Mikey caught the big fish of the day: a bass that was in the neighborhood of 20" from lips to end of tail! Picture below) while Cathy and Hannah went with the rest of the girls to the mall to do, I don't know, whatever girls do at the mall. Everyone had a terrific time; Kevin and Emily and Mikey all caught fishes, but I caught diddly, despite the fact that I had a brand new ball cap I had bought the day before that says "Born to fish, forced to work!" So much for lucky fishin' hats. Maybe I need to poke a few lures into it to activate the fish-catchin' magic. The mall bunch got to ride a carousel, so they had a great time too!

That afternoon Kevin grilled some steaks that Cathy had bought and marinated the day before, and we feasted a feast as good as anything you'll find at a restaurant. Turn that guy loose with a piece of meat, a bottle of propane and a match, and he'll work magic! We wound up leaving much later than we expected, and if you add my poor navigational skills to that (you wouldn't think it would be THAT hard to get from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, but I seem to have an awfully hard time at it) and we wound up getting home about midnight-thirty. But you know what? It was worth every bit of sunburned skin and every mile out of the way we drove. I don't think I've ever had that much fun on a Memorial Day weekend. Thanks so much, Kevin and Candi!


Mikey's Monster Fish!

Grade 5, Week 1

Last week Mikey started the 5th Grade. This year he's going to the school in our neighborhood, Walt Disney Elementary. (I've never been in a school before where black & white pictures of Disneyland from to 50s were a key part of the décor!) Cathy has been really anxious about his first time in public school (Mikey's been in Christian school and home school up until now), but Mikey said his first week at Disney was AWESOME! His teacher, Mrs. Sears, is big on reading, so she actually gave him a Roald Dahl book on registration/meet-the-teacher day so he could get started reading it right away. He loved the book! He tore through it as soon as he got home. He even got a 100% on his first homework assignment in "reading and listening!" He's pretty excited about starting computer class next week, too!

And... Mikey's going to be learning to play trumpet this year! We've already rented him his horn, and I showed him what I could remember about how to hold it, how to play it, that sort of thing. He got some books about trumpet from the library, and I printed him a fingering chart of notes and of a C scale so he could play around with that. I showed him a squinchy tone and then a nicer tone (I never really played trumpet on a regular basis, so my tone was still a LITTLE squinchy, but the point was to show the contrast). Unfortunately, at the moment he still generally sounds a little bit like the baby duck in the classic Tom & Jerry cartoons, but that will change quickly when band class starts. On the way home from renting the instrument, I was like, "Mikey, you'll need to go in your room and close the door to practice." Cathy was like, "I don't mind if he practices in the living room!" When we got home, Mikey took out the trumpet in the living room, and within 30 seconds he had traumatized the dog, terrified his sister, and changed Cathy's mind about where he would practice. :)

So so far, Mikey seems to really be enjoying his new school. He's looking forward to his second week. It's going to be a great year!

Jellystone Park

"I forgot the camera."

Those are the words I said to Cathy yesterday as we left the city limits of Tulsa, and that's why you won't see pictures of us with John & Sheri at Jellystone Park Camp in Eufaula, Oklahoma. But I'm not sure we would have gotten that many pictures anyway... we spent most of the day in the water, and our little snapshot camera is most definitely not waterproof!

We didn't go to camp... you can pick up a day pass for ten bucks apiece and use the facilities for the whole day without spending a night. John & Sheri had discovered the place somehow, and we had a GREAT time with them. Mikey and Hannah loved the pool (Hannah was wearing a floating suit, so she even got to go in the "deep end"... a whopping five feet!), and after we had splashed around there for a while (and got to dance the Macarena and the chicken dance and eat free ice cream... POOL PARTY!!!), we went on down to the lake swimming area, where the water gets a little deeper and where they have paddle boats, kayaks, a huge inflatable water slide and a smaller plastic slide, and a trampoline right out there in the lake. Awesome! Mikey and Sheri snagged a paddle boat while John and I swam out to the water slide, and they promptly ran over a life jacket which was floating in the water (presumably whoever had been in the jacket was on the shore somewhere and it blew out into the lake... I hope!) and so it was almost impossible to paddle the thing. Crazy! Hannah wasn't liking the muddy water, so she and Cathy went back to the pool. John and I went down the water slide, forgetting that unless you want muddy water up your sinuses, you should hold your nose when you go down a monster slide into the lake!

So anyway, we joined Mikey and Sheri on the paddle boat and managed to get back to shore. Sheri joined Cathy at the pool while Mikey snagged a kayak. Mikey and John and I went out to the trampoline; we discovered that a trampoline on water is a weird thing. The water absorbs some of the bounce, so it's a lot harder to jump. So we didn't jump for very long!

We joined the girls back at the pool and splashed a little longer, then we dried off and took a break to go across the street to Watts' Barbecue, a restaurant which is apparently somewhat legendary and which is owned by the family of former U.S. Representative J. C. Watts. It was good stuff! Afterward we went back to the campground and tried out the mini-golf course, but it was really hot and except for Mikey, who finished the whole course without us, our hears weren't particularly in it... the grown-ups and Hannah quit halfway through. :)

They have tent sites and cabins out there, and it would be a GREAT place to camp out! We may yet do that sometime, but the day pass was a great, inexpensive day with family and friends. Despite using waterproof sunscreen, each of us wound up with varying levels of sunburn... but we all had a great time!

Jasmine Moran Children's Museum

Last Saturday we took a day trip to Seminole, Oklahoma to visit the Jasmine Moran Children's Museum. We had a great time, as you can see from these pictures:

     
     
     

Usually I try to give a synopsis of what all went on in these blog posts, but in this case, the pictures are so central to the story that I sort of blogged in the individual photo descriptions. The real blog entry lives almost entirely on Flickr! You really should go there and take a look at each picture individually... it's easy on Flickr to enter a photo set and click "Next" on each page and go all the way through it. This is one case where the official Web site doesn't do the real place justice.

Click this picture of the museum's welcome sign to see all of the pictures and read the photo captions to see all the things we did:

Happy Birthday, Kevin!

Today Kevin turns 37! In honor of this momentous occasion, here are a couple of shots of him from our fishing trip with a couple of the kids a few months ago. You can check out all of the pictures of that event, as always, on Flickr, at this link.

Here's the MONSTER fish that our birthday boy pulled in that day! Think of the fish he can catch now that he's a BIG boy!!!



(p.s. Sorry, kevin... I'll try and hold the camera EVEN CLOSER to the fish next time!)

Vacation Bible School 2010

This week was Vacation Bible School at The Bridge Church! In past years I haven't been able to volunteer at VBSses because they were in the daytime, but we did an evening program this year (Tuesday/Thursday/Friday), so Cathy and I both signed on to help. And, of course, Mikey signed up to participate. (Hannah is still a couple years too young, sadly.) Boy, did we have a great time!

Initially, Cathy just signed up to bring some homemade snacks one day. We were going to work in the "food shop" where the kids were going to get their snacks. Children's Pastor Pete came over to me at the training session the Friday night before, though, and asked me if I would help out in the games room instead, and I said that would be fun. But then he had another idea.

This VBS was Egyptian-themed, and one part of it was going to be a nightly visit with "Joseph" who would tell a piece of his life story every night. They had someone ready to do it for Thursday and Friday, but on Tuesday he couldn't make it. Pete asked me if I would play Joseph on Tuesday, and then be understudy to the other Joseph the other two nights in case something happened to him. I said sure! I've done the tiniest bit of acting, and Cathy and I have actually taught children's classes once or twice before, so I'm not scared of a roomful of kids. It sounded like fun!

So on Friday night, I received a script for about a 10-12 minute monologue to deliver as Joseph in prison. I memorized a lot of it, using the script, some index cards, and listening to myself reading the whole thing into my MP3 player, and so I knew it well enough to muddle through. I was ready when day 1 of VBS came around!

I'd say we had in the neighborhood of 20-25 kids total at VBS every night. I wound up playing Joseph Tuesday, and then the main Joseph had car trouble on Thursday so I was Joseph again (2 days to memorize that script), then for the sake of continuity, I got to do it again Friday night (one day to memorize that part)! It's a really fun script; there are a lot of times when the kids get to comment on the story, or they get to get up and do something. It's very participatory. (Favorite kid-participation line: the kids are pretending to be the cows from Pharaoh's dream, and I say, "I don't know where YOU're from, but here in Egypt, the cows make these loud MOOing sounds!") One night I even got to wear a "bald cap" and surprise the kids when I whipped off my headdress and had a shaved head! (the skull cap was NOT very convincing... but it was funny!) The kids came through in three groups, and every group was different. Kids really keep you on your toes, too... you can't be too married to the script, because sure enough someone's going to say something and you'll have to respond to it! You have to think on your feet! I recorded myself several times on my MP3 player and I wish I could go back and erase some "um"s, but overall I felt happy with my work. I really believe God was working with me, because that was a LOT of material to memorize in a short period of time.

Cathy was able to come Thursday and Friday night; Tuesday she had other plans and couldn't make it, but after hearing me and Mikey talking so excitedly about it, I think she was pumped! On Thursday she wound up being a servant girl in the palace where Joseph was, keeping us cool with a palm frond. (Funny palm-frond moment: Cathy had started to get interested in the story, or was looking at the kids or something, and forgot to keep fanning. One of the kids said: "It's getting hot in here!" I could see Cathy not fanning from the corner of my eye, so without looking directly at her, I pointed at her over my shoulder and said, "My air conditioner is broken down!") On Friday she fanned for a little bit, but then one of the adult "family leaders" had an emergency and had to leave, so she went with that family group for the rest of the night. She had made a snack called "palace bread" for snack time on Friday, and I'm not sure she was happy with how it came out, but I did notice that there were zero leftovers at the end of the night, so it must have gone over well!

Every night there was some music at the beginning and end, with LOTS of hand motions and DANCING! Our final dance on the last night was particularly BIG and BOISTEROUS and LOUD! There's a part in the song where it says "Your [God's] love has brought us together..." and all the kids are holding hands in a circle, and they all come together in the middle. That night they RAN together! For a minute I thought they were going to bash heads! OUCH! (They didn't.) After that they had a brief lesson with their "family leaders" and then they got to go do activities... hieroglyphics, face painting, "shaving" (with olive oil), making an Egyptian collar, making an Egyptian head band, painting a canopic vessel (one of those "King Tut" coffin things), playing games, making bricks out of mud, having snacks, and visiting with Joseph. After that they had another brief lesson with their families, and then the closing music for the day. You could tell by the looks on their faces and they way they acted that the kids were having a blast!

Every day they were there the kids got coins with the memory verse and theme of the day on them to take home and keep. Mikey really enjoyed writing on the hieroglyphic wall (brown butcher paper on the wall in the hallway). He says they wrote an advertisement for the "barber shop" on the wall, and then he drew a triforce (from the Zelda video games on Nintendo!) He had a lot of fun making his Egyptian collar. But his favorite part was making the mud bricks. Boys like stuff that is MESSY!

When I asked Mikey his favorite part about VBS, though, he surprised me. His favorite part was actually the lesson times. Not only the Joseph story that I was acting out as a mini-drama, but also the little lessons the family groups talked over with each other at the beginning and end of the day. It's pretty high praise for the curriculum when a child thinks of mentioning the Bible lesson before he thinks to mention playing in the mud!

The final night after singing "Lord, You Are Mighty To Save" we had an altar call for anyone who wanted to receive Jesus into their hearts - nobody responded, but I'm pretty sure they were all kids from our church so I'd say that wasn't entirely unexpected. Pastor Pete did invite them to come up for prayer if they had something they wanted to ask God for, and several did come up. Pete had asked me and Cathy to be ready to come up and help pray for the children, so we did that. I think Cathy has a burden now for one of the kids who was in her family group - he came up for prayer and she prayed with him. I prayed for a little girl. We didn't actually ask them what they needed prayer for; Pastor Pete prayed a sort of blanket prayer, and we were led by the Holy Spirit as to what to pray for the kids individually while he was praying for all of them.

I think VBS was a SMASHING success. I don't think they even had a VBS program at The Bridge last year; the children's ministry wasn't fully organized yet at that time. For a first VBS at a small church, I'd say it was an amazing success. It would have been a great effort even at a much larger church. We had TONS of adult volunteers who all had wonderful attitudes (and who looked great dressed up as Egyptians!) the whole time, and there were almost as many volunteers from the youth group as from the adults. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am so impressed with the teenagers from The Bridge Church. They always seem ready to jump in and help with things; they always have a good attitude; they are kind to the children (even when it's not VBS); and I'll tell ya... they're just a good-looking bunch! Over the three days I don't ever remember seeing any children who looked unhappy or bored, or who left and didn't come back the next day. It was great fun! We're pooped, though... last night I couldn't get wound down until after midnight, and I slept until nine this morning. I'm in the habit of getting up to get ready for work every morning at 6, and sleeping past 7 is amazing for me. I was worn out! But it was TOTALLY worth it!



I took some snapshots on Sunday afternoon as we were setting up; another church had loaned us some set pieces from their VBS using the same curriculum, and let me tell you... they were IMPRESSIVE. Take a look at the pictures at this link!