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!

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!)

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):

Easter Weekend/Mikey's Birthday

I promised pictures, and I uploaded them to Flickr, but I forgot to post the story here! We started off last Saturday at our church, The Bridge, working on some Easter baskets for children in needy Bixby families:



We had like 35 volunteers working... we made pretty quick work of it! 35 volunteers out of a congregation of about 150: I'm proud of my church family!

After that, Mikey had a soccer game. Action shot:



After the game we had just enough time to go home and pick up the cake, and then turn around and head right out to the Fun House arcade for Mikey's birthday party! There were gifts (this is "Endless Ocean: Blue World"):



...and there were awesome video games:



After the party we had some dinner at Carl's Jr. and the kids played until they couldn't play no more!



The next morning we got all fixed up for Easter (see Hannah's beautiful Easter dress at the bottom of this post) and had a great time in church. After lunch we came home and hid some Easter eggs and just spent some time together. Mikey's birthday was Monday, and he had dinner with Meme and Papaw. Lots of fun for the weekend! (You can see all of the pictures right here!)

Happy 10th, Mikey!

Somebody turned ten years old today!



Pictures and stuff from his birthday celebration coming up shortly!

Hannah's Second Birthday

Last Wednesday, Hannah turned 2 years old! We met up with a few friends at Incredible Pizza for a birthday party the Saturday before, and everyone of course had a blast. If you have a little one and you haven't been in since they revamped the play area in the back corner, you need to go. There's a whole bouncy inflatable area for them to play in, plus a bunch of rides and stuff for them to enjoy:

    

When Wednesday came, we broke out some chocolate cakes with pudding inside (Cathy called them "lava cakes"), and sang happy birthday again (for the whole day people were telling Hannah "Happy Birthday", and she would say back to them "Ha bir-day, to yoo!" and then give 'em a kiss. :)

My mom and dad came over late (they had been at a meeting) and spend a little time with her too. I think Hannah REALLY had a blast! Here's a link to the pictures from the party, plus a few more from her birthday evening. I'll leave you with these images of the proper way to enjoy a chocolate lava cake when you're 2 years old:

 

Happy Birthday Kevin!

Kevin and Candi and Mikey's cousins came to town... Kevin on the way to a worksite and the girls to stay for a few weeks. The first day they were here was Kevin's birthday! Here are some pictures...


There are more pictures from the day right here!

Big Easter Weekend 2009

What a weekend!

It actually started on Thursday, when unexpectedly (to me, anyway) my boss was no longer my boss. I'm still in the same position, but my immediate supervisor moved into a part-time/consultant status, and I was going to have a new manager. So THAT was a crazy day! Friday was Good Friday and the office was closed, so we mostly vegged out at home, but SATURDAY was Cathy's birthday! Mikey had a soccer game at 8am (41 degrees... in April?!?... BRR! ...but they won it 1 to 0) and then he went to Lowe's and built a birdhouse, and then he and I stopped at the store to pick up Mama's birthday present from him.

Mikey got her a beautiful pair of earrings (she wore them that evening to dinner and then again on Easter morning!). My gift to her was a shopping trip! I gave her a little bit of cash, enough for an outfit or maybe two if you got something on a good sale, and we went to a couple of fluffy lady clothing stores with her. Having the family along was supposed to be part of the gift, but Mikey was a little bit disruptive at first (he calmed down later). And we had a really happy surprise when we ran into Cathy's brother's wife Theresa at one of the stores! She's been really sick and we haven't gotten to see her much, so that was quite a treat. She was with two of her daughters, too, and we love them and were glad to see them. Theresa kissed Hannah on the cheeks so much I wasn't sure if she was going to raise a bruise! That evening we went out to eat at Charleston's, and got full until we were ready to pop.

Easter was great! Cathy got up early so she wouldn't have to rush so much getting ready, and we were at sound check on time (!), and the service was AWESOME from start to finish. I think that was the most fun I've had in praise & worship since Brian and Nancy came on board at Grace (which is not to minimize other services, but this one was TOTALLY maximized! I was SWEATING when we were done!) Pastor Bob preached one of the most awesome Easter messages I ever remember hearing him preach, and we had a great lesson in Sunday School as well.

(I touched on how cold it was Saturday morning... chilly but not windy, and very sunny which counteracted the cold a bit. And by noon it had gone up like 25 degrees and was in the 60s! Sunday morning was almost the opposite, though... rainy to the point of big puddles of standing water on the sidewalks at Grace, chilly again, but breezy as well. Have I mentioned, Welcome to Oklahoma? And Monday it was chilly to mild again, and dry. WHATEVER.)

After church we met Mom and Dad at the little church they're attending; they were having lunch together as a church and we got invited. Unfortunately for us we got there at the tail end of the meal; there was lots of food left but the people were trickling out and heading home. We did get to monopolize the pastor for a while, though, which was cool for us. Everybody is really nice there. They even gave Mikey and Hannah each an Easter basket! (Monday night I put the Easter basket they gave Hannah, which is plush like a stuffed animal and has a head like a purple hippo, to good use... Hannah and I played "put the plastic eggs in the basket" while Mikey worked on homework.)

That reminds me... I forgot one of the big parts of Saturday afternoon! It was the annual Grace "Egg-stravaganza", which I guess you could call an "Easter egg hunt" but in practice it's more of an "Easter candy foot race." You may remember it from last year. Anyway, Cathy chose to go with Mikey and I stayed with Hannah in the "walkers to twos" area. He did the run-and-collect thing, and Hannah, who is walking just barely, did the "get carried and sit and put the candy I can reach in the basket even though I've got no idea what's going on" thing. Next year she'll be totally into it; this year it was a bit much for her to take in, but she had fun anyway, as did Mikey. The whole thing was a hiccup in Cathy's birthday, but after having that birthday her whole life, having it intruded on by Easter is no surprise. The surprise is when Easter happens in March like last year or something, and it doesn't step on her birthday!

So how were things with the new boss Monday? He seems like a really great guy, and I think I'm going to enjoy working with him. His name is Travis and he knows about this blog, so I'll tell you the REAL story when he turns his head. Hi Travis! Wow it was great working with you Monday! Don't forget to give me a good performance review at the end of the year!!

Big Weekend!

What a weekend we had!

Thursday afternoon I got a phone call. I had won some tickets to Sesame Street Live from an online radio contest! We weren't going to get to go, and Hannah saw Elmo dancing around on TV and was so excited, so we were thrilled that she would get to go see the show. We picked up the vouchers Thursday afternoon, and Friday I went down to the BOk Center box office and picked up some tickets for that night. Hannah had a great time! Even Mikey had a great time, although at 8 years and 363 days old we thought he was going to be a little too old to be into it. He enjoyed it so much that he took his own money and bought the soundtrack CD to enjoy with his sister!

Saturday was Meme and Papaw's day out with Mikey. They took him to the Home Depot Kids Workshop and then they went out to LaFortune Park and let him play. They went to Cici's for lunch and then went to Mardel to get some birthday presents. Meanwhile, Cathy and I were out buying him birthday presents! You can see a picture of his new friend who really likes the water later in the set of birthday party pictures. We also picked up another gift for after the party... I'll get to that in a minute.



Saturday afternoon was Mikey's soccer team's first game of the spring season. He's with Coach White and the Outlaws again, and we're all pretty excited about that. The team is much bigger this season than last, and they won their first game. As a matter of fact, The Outlaws ended a 28-game winning streak for the team they played! And that with only two practices! That's pretty awesome!

Click here to see some more soccer pictures.



Sunday morning after church and lunch we went to a place on Brookside called Purple Glaze Studio for his party. A birthday party at Purple Glaze consists of each child getting to paint a ceramic figure, which they leave there to be glazed and fired, and then they get to pick up their figures a few days later when they are done. The kids had a great time! Mikey painted the walrus you see above. He got some terrific presents, one of which is a Rubik's Cube which has fascinated him and his mom all day today. :)

More birthday party pictures:

     

Birthday party picture set

At the party Cathy and I gave him a surprise... tickets to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D at the IMAX! The 3D was stunning, the movie was loads of fun, and we all left excited and happy. Quite a weekend!

(Monday night at Cub Scouts Mikey made a model rocket. Stay tuned tomorrow for pictures of that!)