Tenkiller 2013: Day 1

This October marked the sixth year that our family has been traveling to my aunt and uncle's house on Lake Tenkiller in Northeastern Oklahoma. And in that time, it has become one of my very favorite places on earth. It's one of of those special places that evokes a large collection of fond memories. Our family has traveled out there most every summer and spring as well, but there is just something about the fall. After living in Oklahoma most of my life, I've come to the conclusion that October is God's gift to our state. We survive through a cold, icy, windy winter, then an unpredictable spring with tornadoes dropping at any time, a long hot summer with temperatures soaring over 100 degrees most days, and then comes October-- a breath of fresh air. The wind dies down from hurricane force to balmy breeze. The sunlight is golden and mellow. The temperatures stay somewhere between lows in the 50's and highs in the 70's with the occasional 80 degree day. It's light jackets in the morning and t-shirts in the afternoon. The air conditioner goes off and the windows come open. Heaters don't get turned on until November most years. If you ever plan on visiting our state, please consider October. It's glorious. With that said, our little house in the woods is a perfect place to enjoy this wonderful fall weather. Perched at the top of a hill, the front of the house has a great view of the lake below and the deck off the back is nestled into a quiet woods. 

We drove in late Wednesday night just in time to put the kids to bed, unload our coolers and go to sleep. But that means when we open our eyes Thursday morning, we're there. The kids waste no time getting dressed and heading outside to play. They basically stay outside the whole time with the exception of eating and sleeping. This year, they were excited to add to the fort we built last fall. 

My view from the woods looking back at the house. 

Looking back into the woods. Doesn't it look enchanting? Like fairies and wood nymphs are hiding there somewhere. The only sound to be heard was the gentle wind shaking the leaves and the occasional acorn falling to the ground. Oh to breathe deep.

And then I heard the sound of my husband snapping a picture of me. Followed by hoops and hollers from the six children running my way to play in their fort. Those are glorious sounds too.

Here are Hannah and Eli deeply involved in some sort of creative drama. From what I could hear, they were brother and sister left to survive in the woods alone. 

The back of the fort. 

See the awesome rock wall we built last year? And by "we" I mean the three dads.

While the kids run and play, this is where the adults hang out. We light the chiminea (even if it's warm because the cool ambiance overrides temperature). We drink our coffee here in the morning and our glasses of wine in the evening.  Many a conversation has taken place on this deck both deep and emotional and light hearted and funny. I have laughed until I nearly wet my pants sitting here and I have wept big salty tears as well--especially the fall after my mom died. Man, the heart can really heal when left to spill its guts in a quiet place surrounded by safe friendships.

After a morning of playtime at the house, we ate a quick lunch and headed down to the water. Our annual rock skipping contest had to be held. And I'm happy to report Mike is still the champion with an impressive 10 skip rock! The kids just like to throw rocks into the water and see who can make the biggest splash. This year, because it was pretty warm out, the kids asked to take off their shoes and wade in. We said why not. Which led to them wading out to their knees, then a few "accidentally fell in" which led to all of them swimming in their clothes. This was a first, but they absolutely loved it.

Throwing rocks

Lucas contemplating his next throw.

Love how the sun shimmers off the water

Wading in

Lucas opted for the shirt off-pants on look. 

Fully soaked and loving it.

Once they tired of swimming, we went back to the house for a bath and change of clothes. As my friend Nikki prepared dinner, the kids did a little cookie decorating. Pumpkins and candy corns were covered in icing and set out to harden so they could be devoured after supper.

Parker, Leah, Eli and Lucas hard at work

We saw some truly inspired color combos. 

Eli and Lucas' pumpkins were sort of Jackson Pollock inspired.

Hannah with her finished product

Our first day ended with kids going to bed early (let's just say they were extremely tired after a late night arrival and a full day of play-- in other words they turned into little crying monsters). The adults piled on the couches and watched World War Z before calling it a day. 

Random Post

Get ready to see some bullet points, my friend! Here's to the good old random blog post!

* I feel like I am losing my mind half the time. Countless times a day I stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open trying hard to remember what on earth I was looking for. Or I walk into a room, stop and think the same thing. To combat this problem I have started talking out loud so I won't forget what I am after. Usually it takes the form of a chant like, "Scissors, scissors, scissors." Basically I walk around my house like a crazy muttering homeless person.

* I heard the best joke today. Are you ready?

How much does a Hipster weigh?

One Instagram.

BUAHAHAHA!

* Last weekend my kids decided to have a parade. It turned out to be something that occupied them for at least an hour, maybe more. And that is like wining the golden ticket! They brought out our red wagon and spent time decorating it and making signs. Hannah and Leah rehearsed a dance routine to "I've Got a Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas. It was some sort of cross between rhythmic gymnastics and interpretive dance. I gave them scraps of fabric which they used to make scarves and ribbons to tie on to everything. They even had a patriotic moment when they waved the flag and played "God Bless America" on their iPod.

Hannah was proud that she wrote "parade" in cursive

And please excuse Old Glory on the ground. I promise it was being waved in the air most of the time.

Lucas' job for the parade was to sit in the wagon and pound on their little piano. 

He took his job very seriously.

Even Molly, Leah's American Girl doll, was waving to the crowd.

* Season Two of Call the Midwife came out on Netflix last week. Only nine episodes and I have been slowly savoring each one, making myself watch only one every day or two because the way BBC shows go, it will be another year before Season 3 is released. That show is just so, so good. Also, Mike has been trying to get me to watch Mad Men, one of his favorite shows. This past week, I made it through the first two episodes of Season One. It's good, but I've got a long way to go. And finally, since I'm on a TV rant, what is the deal with Breaking Bad? I know it just ended, but do I need to start watching it? I have been wanting to learn how to make meth. I kid! I kid! Just seeing if you are still awake.

*Finally, I will leave you with a few funny songs. My kids are obsessed with Big Block Singsongs and honestly I sort of am too. I think the tunes are catchy and the lyrics are pretty funny. We sing the "Eat" song at just about every meal. It's kid music that won't have you running for the hills. You might actually enjoy it! Here's a few of my the kids' favorites. 

"Eat, Eat, Eat!"

"Different"

Favorite line: "I live with a squirrel, his name's Phil."

"Brave"

"Salad can be scary sometimes!"

You're welcome!

Have a good Tuesday!

Oklahoma Sky

I sure love the sky here. It's wide, open and always changing--from dark, brooding clouds to brilliant sunsets.

                  Rain moving in

Watching the sun set from my front porch

   Wispy white clouds on the drive home

   The sun breaking through after a storm

         A cool front over the lake

Growing Up

I may have shed a few tears just now. 

Because when did this little girl?

Hannah Fall 2008

Become this little girl?

Hannah this morning before school

And when did this little girl?

Leah, summer 2007

Turn into this little girl?

Leah, this morning

Time, could you please slow down just a little? Because I swear, I just blinked and these beautiful daughters of mine went from toddlers to young girls.

Oh Lord, let me mother them with wisdom. Let me teach them respect, kindness, generosity, and strength. Help me to be a good example-- not of perfection, but of love in action. What incredibly precious gifts they are.

"Children are not casual guests in our home. They have been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving them and instilling a foundation of values on which their future lives will be built."

--Dr. James Dobson

State Fair

For two weeks every September, Oklahoma City hosts the "Great State Fair of Oklahoma." When I was growing up, we got a day off of school and a free ticket for "Fair Day." Sadly, kids these days don't get out of school for the Fair anymore. So we decided to remedy this situation. We checked the girls out an hour early, and off we went to check it out.

I absolutely love the Fair. Yes, I know it has it's downsides: The Midway, obnoxious carnies yelling at you, crowded streets, the smell of manure and beer mixed together, and an array of interesting outfit choices. However, if you avoid going on a busy weekend and try to be there during daylight hours, it's not so bad. In fact, it's pretty darn fun! We hit up my favorite building first: the Creative Arts Building. This is where all the classic fair competitions are like blue ribbon pies, cake decorating, sewing, jams, jellies, kids' art contests, 4H projects, etc. There's also a kids area where they can paint, build, and play games.  All three of ours made "spin art" while we were there.

 Leah and Hannah showing off the enormous pumpkins. I'm ready for fall, but I don't think this would fit on our front porch!

Watching the blacksmith

 Next we headed across the street to Centennial Village where we saw a group of older women doing a clogging performance to various country music songs. They were really into it, and the kids wanted to stop and watch for awhile. We also watched a blacksmith at work and saw a soap making demonstration. 

 My Frontier Family

Mike is riding that horse like a boss.

Me and my two favorite 8 year olds.

Next we wandered around and found a "fire safety show" complete with real firetrucks and firemen talking about what to do in an emergency. The kids begged to stop and watch, so we did. At the end, they got to crawl through a "smoke house" where they learned to get low and crawl to find their way out. They crawled through that house approximately 100 times before we moved on.

Lucas narrowly making his escape

What to do next? Head to the rides of course! Unfortunately to get to the ride area, you have to walk through the Midway. The Midway is the area where all the "lovely" games are. You can choose to pay $5 for three tries at throwing a ring on some coke bottles in order to win an over sized stuffed Tweety Bird. No thank you. But of course, all the Midway workers yell at you as you walk by, and my kids begged to play every single game. It was a long walk through, but we made it to the rides. We gave each child a set amount of tickets and told them they could choose which rides they wanted to do. They were in heaven.

Hannah and Leah chose to ride this one called The Himalaya. It went around at lightning speed blaring a few fist-pumping club songs. Hannah loved it. Leah thought it was just "ok."

In this photo, the ride was just starting out. It sped up so much I couldn't get another picture of them. 

A view of the classic skyline ride. It's been there forever. 

Leah and Lucas went through this fun house complete with a maze of mirrors. 

This picture cracks me up. The girls are just people watching and Hannah's expression says it all. "What exactly am I looking at?" 

On this particular day we saw:

A man with a long, braided rat tail

Many ladies with bedazzled cowboy boots

Too many t-shirts with the arms cut off to count

A few cut off jean shorts that were a little too short, exposing some cheek

What can I say but it's all classic state fair wear.

Hannah and me waiting on the rest of our fam at the fun house. Hannah didn't want to waste her tickets on things like that. She likes the thrill rides.

Like this one! She rode it all by herself. She looked so small, but she was brave and she loved it.

She's on the fifth row from the top on the left end.

This is what happened when Lucas ran out of tickets. 

Temper tantrum on the dirty fair street. 

Leah used her last tickets to go down this slide. I wanted to do this one too, but no adults allowed. Boo!

After we were done with the rides, our next mission was FOOD. When you ask most people why they go to the fair, the answer is mostly "for the food." It's one time a year to indulge on junk food. Corn dogs, funnel cakes, roasted corn on the cob, cinnamon rolls and just about anything deep fried on a stick. This year, in addition to chocolate covered fried bacon and deep fried butter (now that's gross), the new fried item was deep fried watermelon bites. They were everywhere. Personally, I think that sounds terrible, so we didn't partake. But it is certainly fun to look around and oh my...the smells. I actually opted to skip fair food this year because....drum roll....I got to judge a crock pot cooking competition! For a mere $2 I went through the line of 21 crock pot contestants who dished me up 21 bowls of their tasty creations. That breaks down to 7 soups, 7 main dishes, and 7 desserts. The ones I liked, I licked the bowl clean. The ones I didn't, I took a few bites and moved on to the next. Mike and the kids also helped me taste test and we ended up choosing our favorite for each category. It was a lot of fun. 

Our night ended with walking through the car show. The kids loved getting in and out of all the fancy new cars. They were blown away that some SUV's have TVs in them! Haha! I drive an 11 year old minivan, so they are not privy to new technology. From there, we made it out to our car just after the sun slipped down below the horizon. Lucas conked out in his car seat and the girls were quiet on the drive home. I suppose we'll do it all again next year. 

Hannah declaring, "This is the one I want when I'm 16!"

Start saving, kid.

While You Cook Dinner

Please tell me I am not the only one whose kids turn into crazy hooligans right as I am trying to cook dinner? It never fails that when I sneak into the kitchen at 5 o'clock the whining, fighting, and complaining begin. In order to keep the peace and ensure our food gets cooked, I have to be creative in how I manage the chaos. Yesterday, I pulled out an old favorite: potato peel soup. 

Here's how it worked. After I peeled a few potatoes (which I had peeled for mashed potatoes) I put all the leftover peels in a bowl. Then I poured water into my biggest stock pot, grabbed a spoon and the salt and pepper shakers and called the kids in. They were in charge of making potato peel soup. Let me just say, they loved it! It was cute seeing them put on their aprons and work together to create a delicious soup. I ended up sacrificing a perfectly good carrot for the cause as well as an older looking lemon found at the bottom of the fruit drawer. They "cooked" and I cooked and dinner was done in no time. And no one ended up in time-out. 

                   Getting started

Hannah got involved and yes, Lucas is wearing a pink apron. The boy is confidant enough to cook and wear pink. Boo-yah!

A few wrinkly grape tomatoes got thrown in as well. It was quite delicious soup y'all. They served me some and smiled big smiles as I acted like it was the best thing I had ever eaten. 

Next time you have some scraps, before they go to the compost pile, let your little ones "cook" with them and they will dub you the coolest mom ever!

Where We Were

August 1998

I know it is typical to say where we were on days when history changed. I know my parents always talked about where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated or when they watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. For our generation, 9/11/01 was one of those days. I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at where I was. And I'd love to hear where you were and what you were doing in the comments as well!

On September 11, 2001, I was at school, in my classroom. I was about four weeks into my third year of teaching sixth grade language arts at Piedmont Middle School. Piedmont is a desirable little bedroom community about 15 miles west of Oklahoma City. It's where people live who want land, but still close access to city life. The morning was sunny, calm and bright. A typical September morning in Oklahoma. I remember that week was Spirit Week. Piedmont High School had a big football game coming up on Friday night, so we were dressing up each day leading up to Friday night's event. Monday had been pajama day, my favorite day because I got to wear pajama pants to work!  Tuesday, September 11th, was camo day. Most of the kids in my class were wearing camouflage pants or vests or hats (allowed for Spirit Week only). Me, not owning a lick of camo anything, wore my gray "Army" t-shirt that I had purchased at the Army Surplus store years ago (along with a hideous pair of black combat boots that I thought looked cool at the time. Sigh...it was the mid-1990's) and a pair of olive green cargo pants I had from Old Navy. It was the best I could do.

Anyway, the day was moving along as any normal day would have. My first hour class came and went and as the kids were at their lockers during the 5 minute "passing time" my friend who taught directly across the hall from me told me her husband had called her saying a plane had flown into one of the Twin Towers in New York City. My first thought was that it had been a small plane, perhaps a touristy type of "see New York from the sky" kind of deal. However, it must have been a big deal because her husband wouldn't have called otherwise. Without much else to go on, it was time to start my second hour class. Once I had taught the lesson and the kids were in their seats working, I quietly called Mike to see what he knew. And that was when I found out. And I just couldn't fathom it. I was in a portable building that held six classrooms just beside the main middle school building. We had no TV's in our rooms and no one had a "smart phone" yet. Even the computer in my room wasn't hooked up to the Internet. It was that old school out there.

Mike was not only devastated by the horrific news, but he was concerned about his family. Mike's parents, sister, brother, grandmother, nieces and nephews all live in either New Jersey or Long Island. They all work in New York City. Mike's dad was supposed to be flying out of the Newark airport on a trip to Ethiopia. He had tried calling all of them, but no one was answering. The lines were overwhelmed and we were in the dark. That was a very helpless feeling.

Finally, at lunch time, we rolled an old television, circa 1984, over from the library and used the ancient antennae to find one channel to watch. And we saw the planes. And the chaos. And the destruction. And the hate. Our mouths were all hanging open. There were no words, just interjections like "Oh my God!" and "No!" The next two hours of classes were brutal. The kids had heard whispers of what had happened and had questions for which we had no answers. No one could concentrate on anything. Finally, school was let out an hour early. I drove home in a daze. Mike still hadn't heard from his family. I pulled into my driveway at the same time as my neighbor who was home early from work. She and I waved to each other as we stood by our cars. Normally we would have chatted awhile, but that was not a day for idle chit-chat. We just quietly walked up to our front doors and into the safety and comfort of our own homes.

For the rest of the night, I did what a lot of people did--eyes transfixed on the television reports. Mike came home early and finally we heard from his family. All were safe. We thanked God for that. Mike's dad's flight had been canceled. His trip to Ethiopia moved back a few weeks. I checked in with my mom and dad. Even though I knew they were in Oklahoma City and not New York, I needed to hear their voices. My mom's voice was always a comfort. 2001 was three years before we had our girls, so thankfully we had no kids to console. It was just the two of us. We spent a lot of time talking about it, then turned the TV off and went to bed. It was just too much.

Today, over a decade later, I still remember the little details of 9/11. Where were you that day?