Thanksgiving 2007

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone--I still can't believe it! The year always seems to go so fast as we get closer to Christmas. We had a great Thanksgiving down in Texas at Josh's parents' house. Josh's dad built an amazing tree house in their back yard, and it was a hit! Even though it was cold and sometimes rainy, the kids were begging to go out to the tree house.
Well, I'm officially "one of those", that gets up at 4:30 or so Friday morning after Thanksgiving and goes shopping! I've never done it before, never saw a deal I couldn't live without, but both of my sister-in-laws and my mom-in-law were going, so I thought it'd be fun. And it was! I was WAY tired the rest of the day, but it was a good time, and I think I'll plan ahead for next year and have some money saved up to spend. Saturday we went to a big parade in downtown Austin--it has the big floats and everything, the only problem this year is that it was about 40 degrees outside and raining!! YUCK! We went with Josh's brother and his family--and had a blast! We only stayed for about an hour, but saw some cool floats, and santa, and some other neat things, and decided we'd had enough. Luckily we found a great parking space (thanks Casey!) and were able to use the back of our van for the kids so they didn't get soaking wet.


Here are the girls (the only girls out of 10 grandkids!)


Dustin and Quentin:Dylan--can you tell it's cold?Here are all 6 packed into our van (yes, the van is on with heater on high!)Here are the girls in front of Strawberry Shortcake: And Bob the Builder:And the Coca-Cola bear:
Here are most of the grandkids and Mimi celebrating Darrin's 2nd birthday:
Our trip home took an extra 2 hours--because of traffic and lots of rain...but we made it! It's always good to be home. We have started decorating for Christmas--the kids are loving it!

Happy 100th Birthday, Oklahoma!

Friday, Novemer 16th, was Oklahoma's 1ooth Birthday! The kids were out of school, so we went to a HUGE parade up in Guthrie (the first capital of Oklahoma). We took my cousin, Taylor, and my aunt Karen met us up there, because my cousin Brian was in the parade! He plays in the drumline for OSU, and it was so exciting to see him marching.

Here he is (his back, that is), 4th from the left:

Here are our kiddos with Taylor:

That night we went to an OC basketball game--we won! Yay!--and we went to downtown OKC to watch a big fireworks show after the Centennial Celebration. It was great--the kids loved the fireworks!

Route 66 Marathon

What an eventful weekend! Josh has been training for a marathon relay with 4 other guys that he works with, and they did it! This past Sunday in Tulsa they ran the marathon relay--and one of Josh's coworkers ran the whole marathon! WOW--let me just say, that is SO not for me! I don't understand wanting to run 26.2 miles!

We got to Tulsa late Saturday night (I had to judge gymnatics all day in Yukon, so they waited for me), and the kids got to enjoy the pool and hot tub at the hotel. Then, early Sunday morning, we got up, and tried to find the race, and where we needed to be. That was interesting..they were supposed to have a shuttle to take the runners to their part of the relay, but they were missing 2 of the 5 buses, so it was going to be too long for Josh to wait...so what does he do? He jogs to his relay station! He got there in time, and in the meantime, I was waiting with our 3 kids, wondering what to do, because we wanted to see him run. So, I asked the guy in charge how to get to the 2nd relay station, and he gave me some sketchy directions, and somehow, Dustin remembered the numbers of the highways and streets, and I found it....how?? I am still not sure! But we were so happy that we found it--just in time to get a spot on the street to see Josh run by. We were SO excited! He did a great job (with a hurt knee and all!). It was really cool...we made it back to the start/finish line later in the morning to get some food and see his teammates come in and get a picture. One other funny note: the back of their shirts say "Shortcut?"...too funny!

Fall!

The kids have been (impatiently) waiting for "fall"--the real fall, when the leaves actually fall off the trees. We have 2 big trees, with TONS of leaves, so the day finally came and we had a bunch of leaves in our front yard! We raked them up so they could jump in them...

Action shot of Jodee, and enjoying the pile of leaves:

Dylan jumping in, and smiling for the camera:

Dustin "superman"! ~and where is his body?

We had fun!

We also went to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for their last free day of the year, and waited for Dustin to get out of school so he could go too. Here are the three kids in front of the big statue:
This was Dustin's favorite statue:
Dressing up as cowboys and cowgirls--look at how they stood for the pic--too funny!
Sitting on saddles, and of course, Dylan wanted to be touching the longhorn for the picture!
Our friends were their with us, that's the extra kiddo to the left:

I'm glad Dustin and his friend got to go with us this time. Being in 2nd grade is tough, when mom takes the other kids to do fun things in the mornings!

"Pops"

We went to a very cool place called "Pops" tonight! (www.pops66.com) It's on Route 66 here in Edmond, and it was so neat! They sell SO many different kinds of soda in really cool bottles, plus have all the normal convenience store items, and a restaurant. We went just for the sodas, but next time we'll plan on eating there--I've heard it's delicious! The big attraction is the HUGE light up coke bottle in front of the store--we had fun watching it change colors. The sodas were all good, we got a variety, Cream Soda, Orange Cream, and Blue (that, of course, was Dylan's!). While we were there, I kept reminding him to be careful because they're all glass bottles, and I felt a little overbearing, so I kind of quieted myself down, telling myself, he never drops things....and before you know it, BOOM, the loudest noise in the whole place happens right in front of me, as Dylan drops his coke! It splattered everywhere--and he immediately teared up--poor guy! I told him it was fine, and a worker came and was cleaning it up and told us it happens ALL the time, usually the workers are the ones dropping them! She even offered to go get him another one--how sweet! Josh had already done it, and then Dylan wouldn't hold it-I think he was scared. I had to hold it to his mouth for him to drink it until we got to the car! It was fun overall--and the kids enjoyed their drinks. Dustin saved all of the bottle caps and is planning on taking them to school on Monday to show them to his class! I love the simplicity of the life of a 7 year old!

Here, if you look really close you can see the 3 kids by the big coke bottle:

FUN!

We had a great week! We tried not to overdo it with Halloween, there were so many choices of things for the kids to do! We chose to only do a couple (we really don't need that much candy), and we wanted them to enjoy the actual trick-or-treating that we were planning to do on Wednesday. That evening, since it was a Wed., we had to split up our trick-or-treating around bible class. So, before church, we went to downtown Edmond to get some candy with the other hundreds of kids that were there! We only spent about 45 minutes there (Dylan wasn't feeling well, yes, I know, a sick kid on Halloween! He got better as the evening went on!). When we came back home we went up our side of our street to our neighbors that we know really well. It was fun--and they all loved seeing the kiddos! Then we hurried inside to change clothes for church, went to Bible class, and then came home and got back into costumes to go to some friends' houses! It was an eventful, late, and fun night!
Here they are downtown by a firetruck:
Here are our silly faces with the lollipops from our neighbors!
While Dustin was at school on Halloween morning, we went to the Omniplex and played, and saw "creepy crawlers" up close, just for Halloween! It was fun, and the kids painted their faces (as you can see!) Here they are on the big anchor making funny faces at me!This was on our street, notice how light it is, and that we are the only ones out that early!

A quick little "thank you" picture to our Mimi--this is the dress up outfit Jodee received in the mail (along with some adorable pink rainboots), and since Mimi lives in Texas, we thought she'd enjoy a picture of her present on Jodee!

Whew, now that Halloween is over, we can look forward to the busy season of Thanksgiving and Christmas!!!