2 Crazy Months

Wow! I took a look at the contents of our camera today, and was amazed at all the pictures I needed to upload! If you like looking at my family pictures, set aside some time to check them out!

If you've been reading this blog, you already know we've lost a lot of loved ones recently. We lost two grandpas and one aunt/sis-in-law. In the middle of all of that, we managed to have a nice Mother's Day. But wait... there's more!

When we were in Shreveport for Grandpa Mickey's funeral, Hannah got her first haircut:



Cathy had a birthday, and so did Michael:


Bonus picture of Hannah eating a piece of my birthday cake:



At The Bridge Church, we had our first-ever church picnic, which Hannah and Mikey LOVED:

   

The next Sunday as we were leaving church, Hannah said, "I want to go to the picnic!" I guess she had had fun!! We had to break it to her that the picnic only happens once a year or so, not every week. :)

Today was the "Taste of Summer" event at the Blue Bell ice cream plant in Broken Arrow. You plunk down five dollars a person, and you get to eat all the ice cream you can handle! There are also games and inflatables for the kids (Mikey and Hannah tried out almost all of them), self-guided tours of that plant (which Hannah and Mikey LOVED), fire trucks, a "fire safety house", a trailer with information about recycling, and even some live music. Cathy was planning on entering the ice cream eating contest, but she didn't get in on that this year. :) We had a blast! Don't believe me? Here are all the pictures, or take a gander at these samples:

     

Yesterday evening we were in Bixby to eat dinner, and we ran across the coolest playground ever! It's at the Bentley Sports Complex. I couldn't BELIEVE how tall one of their slides is. It must be at least three stories high! Here's the picture from their site (I didn't have the camera or I would have taken one myself):

Mother's Day 2010

7am on Mother's Day I saw Mikey. This was significant, because I never see Mikey at 7am on a Sunday. On Sundays, I get up at 7 and grab my shower first thing because our water heater needs a running head start to heat water back up for the other family members. I usually wake Mikey up closer to 7:45 or so. But this was Mother's Day! Mikey was so excited... he wanted to make breakfast for Mama! I was doubtful; did Mikey really know what he was doing? More importantly, would I be able to figure out the cappuccino machine we bought for Cathy and make her some coffee? I don't even drink the stuff! But Mikey explained to me that he knew how to make pancakes, so I got him bathed and then grabbed my own shower, and then when it was the right time, we got to work.

Mikey surprised the daylights out of my by knowing exactly what to do. He measured the pancake mix and poured and flipped the pancakes, and did a great job! I plugged in the griddle for him and sprayed the nonstick spray, and he did the rest! He even made some baby-sized pancakes for Hannah!

Meanwhile I was trying to figure out the cappuccino machine. I wasn't actually sure that the coffee I had bought (a Starbuck's "House Blend") was even appropriate, but I followed the instructions as well as I could and soldiered on. I actually accidentally released the steam before I put the dipper into the milk (whoops!), but I put a little more milk into the reservoir and it seemed to work out all right. When we got Cathy up, she had some pancakes and cappuccino waiting for her! She seemed to really like it!

Hannah had also picked out some earrings for her. Hannah has a knack for knowing Cathy's taste in earrings. At the store I showed Hannah several pairs of earrings, and no matter what else I showed her, she kept pointing at the dangling concentric loop earrings and saying "Those are Mama." Sure enough... they were Mama! Mama loved 'em!

We wound up a bit late for church; the worship service was already in progress. We came in quite a bit into the music part of the service, and had to walk all the way across the room to get to our seats. The congregation was singing a song about how glorious God is, and I set my Bible down on my back-row seat and turned around, and when I did, I felt the presence of God so strongly it almost brought me to tears! It was awesome worship. It was an awesome service!

Afterward we met my mom and dad for lunch at Carino's (the kids had picked out a hanging tomato planter for her), arriving early enough that we walked right up to a table with no wait at all. From there we went to Oklahoma Aquarium, where Moms were free for the day and the rest of us got in free on Mom & Dad's membership! We had a great time seeing sharks, fish, jellyfish, shrimp, horseshoe crabs... even beavers and otters! Hannah didn't want to leave... she wanted to keep touching the shrimp in the hands-on tank!

Mom and Dad went on to their own stuff for the evening; we went home to let Hannah take a nap (which she ultimately did not take) and then we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Texas Roadhouse was quite crowded, but we passed the time by eating peanuts and throwing the shells on the floor. Wish I could do that at home... that would be AWESOME!

Cathy told me this morning that after everyone was in bed last night, she cried from the happies. Sounds like a great Mother's Day to me!

February Catchup

A couple of important things have happened recently, and they've made it to our Flickr account but haven't made it to this blog yet. So here goes!

Last Saturday was Pinewood Derby for Mikey's Cub Scout pack, Pack 137. Saturday morning Papaw Jones and I took Mikey to Home Depot to the Kids Workshop to build a car display stand... it's maddeningly close to being just the right size to display a Pinewood Derby car! We thought it would be perfect, but it's a little bit too low for comfort. Still works though, so not a total bust!

At Pack 137 we're not particularly competitive at Pinewood Derby; they run a couple of races for each den so the boys get to race their friends, then later you can sign up for family-built car races or to race kids in other dens. Mikey's car wasn't the fastest one, but it wasn't the slowest either! He had a great time taking "instant replay" video with his video camera that Papaw Angel got him for Christmas the year before last. Meme and Papaw Jones were there too, to cheer him on and eat some pizza. Enjoy the few pictures below, or visit this page for the whole batch.

        

Back up to New Years Weekend... a few pictures from our great trip home to Shreveport (mostly Mikey and/or Hannah in Grandpa's back yard) are up on this page. Here's one of them:

Big Round World

Yesterday we went to Oklahoma City to visit my uncle Frank and his son, my cousin Frank Jr. and their wives. We stayed until it was pretty late (OKC is almost 2 hours away) and it was waaaaaay past Hannah's bedtime. She and Mikey had spent most of the weekend at Meme's house (the reasons for that are a whole 'nother story) and they really love her, so Hannah was not only sleepy from it being late, but she was cranky because she was in my car instaed of Meme's car! So we got into the car and she started crying... and by "crying" I mean "screaming her head off." She was inconsolable, and very un-ignorable. Finally we decided to try to see if she would go to sleep with some music. I put on my Ashley Cleveland Men & Angels Say CD, hoping that the hymns would calm her down, but it didn't do the trick. So I finally put back on the CD that she had seemed to enjoy earlier: Big Round World by Trout Fishing In America. As soon as she heard the first part of track #1 (the title track) she quieted right down, and didn't cry another peep until the song ended! Then would you believe it, when the song was over she started screaming again! But then as soon as track 2 came on, silence again. It was hysterical! She didn't cry after every single song, but she never cried as long as a song was playing. Finally she conked all the way out.

TFIA has been nominated for Grammy awards several times (including for Big Round Workd), but they've never won so far. I think the "made the baby stop crying" award is much harder to earn, and if you ask me, MUCH more valuable!

Mikey joins the SWAT team!

Monday afternoon, Mikey's Meme, who is a Tulsa police department chaplain, took him to UDSW to hang out with the police Meme works with. Mikey got to turn on the lights in a car, see a demonstration of the new gun holsters that the police are going to start using, see the "intake" area where people who are being booked come (nobody was being brought in at the time), and he even got to try on some SWAT gear! See Meme's pictures below!

Happy Birthday, Meme!

Haaaaaaa-ppyyyyyyyyyy....

...birth-day to you!!
Hap-py birth-day to you!
Hap-py biiiirth-daaaaaaay deeeear Meeeee-Meeeeeeeeee...


Haaaaaaaa-ppy biiiiiiirth-daaaaaaay...


tooooooo....


YOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU!!!!!

Tulsa City Picnic 2008

Today we have a guest post from Mikey!

Last weekend, we went to the zoo with Meme, Papaw, Mikey, Mama, Daddy, and Hannah. We got in free because it was the Tulsa city workers picnic and Papaw works for the city. We got to go, and it was really fun. We ate hamburgers and hot dogs, but I only ate hot dogs because I like hot dogs better than hamburgers. After I ate, I played in a Nascar Jupiter Jump. You get to climb on the cars, you get to jump on the scoreboard, and you get to run into all the cones, and you don't get in trouble!

The bald eagle, it was awesome. I couldn't believe I saw the symbol of the U.S.A.! I remember the part where we went and saw the owls and stuff... but the scary part was in the cave. It was dark and had stalactites and stalagmites that sometimes looked like monsters' teeth and stuff.

Hannah looked at some flamingos... it was funny! It was like she said, oooo, I like those pink things! But then in another picture, she said, Oh, I found something more interesting.

The cool part was the owls. They can turn their heads 360 degrees, so that was pretty cool. The snow fox was really funny, because whenever we were about to take a picture of him, he always ran into his hole and went outside! It's like he was saying, oh, I don't want to take photos! I'm not a movie star!

The sea lions were cool too! I saw a show, but this was even better than the show! They climbed up the stairs by themselves! It was cool to watch them go up. When we first got there there was a big splash. It was because one of the sea lions was already up on the platform, and he wanted to go down, but he didn't want to slide so he just jumped down and then he swam around going ARR ARR ARR! But then he stopped and went back up again.

I played on a blow-up obstacle course... I saw my friend Eddie there but we didn't really race because the three brothers wanted to play together, so I just played with different people.

The day at the zoo was awesome because I got to see every animal! I tried to look at all the zookeeper notes, but I missed some, but I did get to learn about frogs. I can't wait until next year!

Mom's Month

You know, sometimes something really important slips through the cracks. The month of March was a big deal for someone very special to me and my wife and kids... Meme!


first place winners
In late March, Meme (my mom) got a phone call from someone at the Tulsa Libraries. She had entered an essay in their 2008 Adult Creative Writing Contest, and she won first place! The picture above is all the winners, taken after the awards ceremony on April 6... click through to Flickr if you want to see their names.

Anyway, her essay was about her work as a Tulsa Police Department chaplain. Another thing that was due in part to her work with the Tulsa Police happened on March 11... in a small informal ceremony with Pastor Bob, Geoff Jackson and about a dozen friends and family members, my mom was ordained as a minister by Grace Church. We were all so proud! (I didn't take any still pictures... I shot video of the ceremony but don't have an easy way to upload it.)

Congratulations, Meme, and congratulations again! Now that it's April, how are you going to top March?