Having a family

Can I just say something? Having a family is the hardest and best thing I've ever done.

A Wedding, A Firehouse, A Victory, and A Crown

Ever have a weekend where you don't realize how much has happened until you sit down and think about it? MAN, was this one of those weekends... and it's not even dinnertime on Saturday yet!

Last night, October 2nd, was the Dave Matthews Band concert. We were thrilled to NOT be there. Instead, we were at the wedding Cathy's second cousin Melinda to a great guy named Justin! When Cathy and Melinda were teenagers, Cathy had promised to sing at Melinda's wedding, so for over a month Cathy and I have been practicing "Bless the Broken Road" to get ready to sing it last night. I think Cathy's been killing two birds with one stone... I'm pretty sure she was looking for an excuse to sing it with me anyway. :) We got it all worked up, and we were ready to give it our best. Hannah didn't go to the wedding with us; she stayed with Meme (we didn't think Hannah was up to a wedding quite yet). Mikey came along... he's known Melinda since he was a baby (she tried to teach him karate or something on her once... I was afraid she was going to teach him that it was OK to hit girls!) and he wanted to come. He brought his video camera to record our performance (we have the video, such that it is... sound quality is far from pristine, but we have it and we'll get it posted if we can make it presentable).

The wedding was quite beautiful. Melinda was stunning. Her parents looked slightly uncomfortable but excited... just as parents should look at the wedding of their only daughter! The minister looked and sounded just a tiny bit like Ben Stein to me, and if Melinda sees this I feel pretty sure she'll laugh her rear off. I mean absolutely no disrespect to him; his message and ceremony were meaningful and beautiful. I kept explaining things about the ceremony to Mikey (everybody stands up when the bride comes in, they'll use the two candles on the side to light the one in the middle because the two of them are becoming one, etc.) so he would understand what was going on. And speaking of the candles... they took on a little bit of a life of their own. When the two cousins came in to light them with their long lighting sticks (which probably have a name, but I don't know it), apparently the lighters went out too early and neither of them could light all of their candles. Finally the girl took one of the candles that they did get lit and lit the others with that. Later in the ceremony, Melinda and Justin tried to light the Unity Candle with the candles on the sides of it... but they were all the thick kind (they must have been three inches thick!) and there was no way they were going to get the middle one lit with the others! Finally they got some of the narrow ones from the other candlesticks at the edges of the stage, did their lighting, and then Justin blew his out as people usually do when the unity candle is lit. Melinda forgot and gave hers back to her matron of honor! She tried to get Melinda's attention so Melinda could blow it out, but then she gave up and blew it out herself. :)

Originally Melinda wanted us to sing during the ceremony itself, but Cathy had mentioned that sometimes people have a live song at their reception, so that's how it was arranged. We almost decided to leave before we got to sing because it was getting late, but we were able to stay long enough and we got to sing. Justin and Melinda danced as we sang about the long, tough road that people sometimes travel until they find their soulmate... by the time we were finished, Melinda was crying so hard. She let go of Justin and started hugging Cathy... and hugged her and hugged her and hugged her. Then Melinda came over and gave me a hug too. I think the song meant a lot to her, and it also meant a lot to her that Cathy, who also traveled a long road before she finally found me, was singing it for her. It was worth every minute of the extra wait to be able to provide that moment for our friends.

Mikey just now told me that he was sad the night didn't last longer.:)

This morning at 9, Mikey, Papaw and I went out to Home Depot to this month's Kids Workshop. The project today was a bank in the shape of a fire station (it's safety month) and Mikey did a great job on it. We've been doing these things for several years, and it's great to see how independent he is now with the work. Seems like the Home Depot projects make him grumpier than the Lowe's projects... the Home Depot ones are a little harder. :) He was done inside of an hour, and we were off to get Papaw home and pick up Mama and Hannah for the first soccer game of the fall season for Mikey's soccer team, the Outlaws!

The Outlaws are awesome. Mikey is so privileged to have gotten involved with Coach White and his team... many of the kids had been on the team for a year or two before Mikey, and he has grown so much being around more experienced players and learning from them and from the coach's excellent training skills. Justin (Melinda's new husband) is actually a soccer player himself, and hopefully he'll be able to be in town sometime for a practice or even a game! The Outlaws beat their opponent handily, and Mikey definitely did his part. He kept his head in the game, snagged the ball and got it going where it needed to go, and one time I saw him make a terrific pass to a teammate that got the ball out of traffic and headed toward the goal. It was AWESOME! If these kids keep working hard and learning, I don't see how they could avoid winning their division. I know, I say that after one game and without ever seeing their other opponents play, but I sincerely believe it. Those kids are GOOD!

After the game we went out with some friends of ours that we met through our boys both being on the Outlaws team... they are missionaries, and also music lovers like we are, so we had a lot to talk about over lunch at Monterey's (oddly enough, my whole plate of food, including a taco, was cool, like it had come out of a refrigerator... it tasted good, but it would have tasted better hot!) By the time we finished with the 11:00 game and then lunch, it was almost 1:30, so we headed right off to our neighborhood library, Martin Regional, for the annual Renaissance Faire (which had already started at 1!)

The Martin Regional Ren Faire isn't a hard-core Ren Faire like, say, the one that happens every year in Muskogee. It's definitely a "for the kids" thing, but they do have mock battles, costumed characters, dancers, people talking about life in the Middle Ages, and they even always have a guy with a real live hawk (Hannah LOVED that... she's a big animal fan!) On top of the regular Ren Faire stuff, they have crafts for the kids, puppet shows, and people who do things like tapestry weaving, wood carving, and doll making. Hannah is a year or two from being able to participate fully, but she and Mikey had a great time anyway! If you are in Tulsa and have kids or grandkids, I highly recommend looking it up next year around this time. It has a distinct "home-grown" feel, so don't expect glitz and flash, but it's a great time anyway. Many thanks to Martin Regional Library for hosting such a great event every year!

So now we're home. Hannah went straight to bed... then so did Cathy. So Mikey and I are batchin' it for a while until the ladies return to consciousness. Tomorrow we have church in Bixby in the morning, a Dallas Cowboys game that we may or may not watch in the afternoon, and then a fellowship back at the church in the evening. Alternately, we could go hear Jesse Duplantis at Grace Sunday night, but I think we may just stick with The Bridge this time. We love Jesse, but we want to get our feet wetter at The Bridge before we start going elsewhere for a service. :)

Monday night: Mercy Me at the Tulsa State Fair! And then Tuesday is Cathy's dad's birthday. This weekend is going to last all the way to WEDNESDAY!


Update: We did not go to the Mercy Me concert; it was chilly and drizzly and Mikey went to his Webelos meeting instead. I just realized that I never explained what the "crown" in the title of this post was! Mikey made a paper crown at the Ren Faire... Cathy made a little tiara for Hannah, too.

Rest In Peace, Lava Rock

Mikey's pet toad Lava Rock has passed away. This was his first pet that he took care of all by himself; Fire-Bellied Toads aren't known for having incredibly long lifespans, so we think Lava Rock probably died of natural causes rather than foul play or neglect. Mikey got Lava Rock for Mikey's birthday last April, and he's done a good job of taking care of him, reading up on toads and learning what he could in order to make Lava Rock's life happy and comfortable. Services are planned in the back yard for 5:30pm today (or whenever I make it home from work) and interment will likely be under the big tree in the middle of the yard.


Good-bye, Lava Rock... we'll miss you.

Rock 'N' Ribfest

Last Saturday we all went out to Rock 'N' Ribfest downtown by the BOK Center. It was also the 1-year anniversary of the BOK Center opening, so they were having a little open house where you could go in for free and see the arena. Here's a pic of Mikey eating some nachos... you can see some more pictures right here!

Da Ma Pa Buh Ye...

Hannah has been getting better and better at talking in recent weeks. She's 21 months old now, but maybe a month or two ago she really started naming people. Don't get me wrong... before that she had been saying some words... "Ap-pool" is her favorite fruit, for example, and has been for some time. She knows the names of a lot of animals and what "sounds" they make (a favorite: any ferocious cat, be it lion or tiger or puma or leopard or whatever, says "RAAAAAR!"). But it made our hearts glad when she finally started saying "Da-da" and "Ma-ma." The next name she started saying was "Pa-pa" which warmed the hearts of both my dad and Cathy's! Now every time we pull up to one of their houses, Hannah says "Pa-pa YAAAY!" To my mom's dismay, however, Hannah always clammed up whenever she tried to get Hannah to say "Me-me." Mikey was working hard on "Mikey," too, with similar lack of success. But finally, at long last, Hannah worked out names for both of them: "Ye-ye" for my mom, and "Buh-buh" for her brother.

This week, though, Mikey has gotten an upgrade. Hannah has started calling him "Bikey" instead of "Buh-buh". So he's pretty excited about that! (Of course, he's also been training her to say "Go 'way!" just by being up in her grill all the time... so quite often we hear "Bikey! Go 'way!" ...not quite sure that's the way Mikey wanted his name to be used!)

Labor Day at Meme's

This past Monday was Labor Day... we went over to my mom & dad's house to hang out. Here's Mikey & Hannah having fun in the wading pool!

Visit to Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum

Saturday we took Mikey to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum for the first time. Actually, we've been to the memorial once before; several years ago we were in OKC for something else and we stopped and saw the memorial. At the time, Mikey was old enough to understand what had happened but we weren't sure he was old enough to not get scared (and he was almost certainly not old enough to remember afterward), so we decided to wait for later. Yesterday was later! Mikey's nine years old now... plenty old enough to understand and process the information in the museum.

Most of the people who will read this already know what the memorial/museum is about, but just for anyone who wasn't as close to it as most of our family and friends were... the memorial is on the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed in April of 1995 by two terrorists from our own country. The put 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate explosives into a rented Ryder truck, parked it outside of the federal building, and detonated it at 9:02am on April 19th, killing 168 people and wounding several hundred more. At the time it happened, it was the worst case of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

We arrived shortly after lunchtime. We didn't really want to go into the memorial grounds to eat our sack lunch, so we sat just outside the memorial on a bench next to the street and had our sandwiches. Cathy and I had forgotten, but we figured it out as we ate, that we were a few feet from the "survivor wall"... the only section of the destroyed building that was left standing (the building was so badly damaged by the blast that it was demolished a month after the bombing, but that one wall was left standing). The entrance to the memorial park on the side where we were is stairs only (there is a ramp on the other side, a block away), so we walked down the street twenty yards or so and entered near the "survivor tree." This tree was in the parking lot across the street from the federal building when the bomb went off. There are aerial photographs of the area from the 1920s that show this tree already there even back then, so the tree was over 70 years old at the time of the blast. The blast was so powerful that cars that were parked around the tree were demolished and caught on fire, and the building on the other side of the parking lot had its roof blown off and the bricks of the wall facing the federal building were physically separated... but the survivor tree is still there, alive today. It's quite a symbol for people who escaped with their lives that day, and the families that did not.

I won't try to tell you everything about what happened that day in 1995, and I won't even try to tell you everything about the memorial itself; you can get that information from Wikipedia, or from the memorial's own Web site. I'll tell you that the whole museum is arranged like a time line, starting at 6am, the way someone who was there that day might start the story ("It was an ordinary, beautiful spring day that morning...") and then continuing on all the way to the capture of the two perpetrators, and then through the history of the creating of the memorial and museum. The things that got me the most were the room where they have an actual audio recording of the blast (it's the taped record of a hearing that was going on at the time it happened) and the little room with the pictures of all of the people who were killed. There were some pretty amazing stories, too... a lady who was in a meeting when it happened, and all of her coworkers just disappeared from sight. A woman who walked away from the building dazed but unscathed, called herself a taxi, went to the airport, got on a plane, slept on the flight, and didn't even know what had happened until she got where she was going and saw it on the news. A doctor who saved a woman from dying in the rubble by amputating her trapped leg... with a pocketknife! Amazing stories. Hannah has no idea what was going on, but she was very good for a 21-month-old who was having to sit in a stroller for two hours. Mikey involved himself in the exhibit more than I expected; at several points he was really engrossed in a video or an exhibit. Afterward we walked across the streets to see small memorials set up by the churches on either side of the site, and then we went on home. (Hannah fell asleep in the car, so she got her nap.)

It was fun being together. It was fun learning about something new (newer to Mikey than to Cathy and me, but new nonetheless). It's not a fun subject to think about, but it was a terrific family outing. It was a great way to spend a pretty Saturday!