The One About Good Times and Tan Lines

July 28-31, 2017
Holy COW!  These girls are trying to squeeze every last drop of life out of the last few weekends of summer!  I’m exhausted just thinking about it!  But it makes my heart happy to know they have such great friendships and families that treat them like their own.

After a mid-week float trip down the Illinois River with her Eagle Heights Church friends, Lara went to a fun (Almost) Back To School Party at her friend Molly’s house Friday night.  They have a great yard with a perfect hill for a giant slip-n-slide, so they do this a few times a year!  They had water, and soap, a hill, and a tarp – perfect makings for a fun party!  There was a water balloon fight, too.  Lots of fun!

On Saturday, Lara got to play her favorite roll: Basketball Sister!  Jake was invited to play on a team that he’s never played with before, and she was right there with us to make it a fun weekend.  It’s a plus that she actually likes basketball and knows what’s going on!  She’s a great helper for Finn, too.  We were playing at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, so she got to see another University, too!

Lara also has a J-O-B of sorts for the next week.  Our friends the Hatfileds are taking an end of summer (before the CRAZY resumes) summer trip to the lake.  And they have chickens.  LOTS of chickens!  So, Lara (and the rest of us it seems!) are helping care for the critters while they are out of town.  This means we had to leave EVEN EARLIER for basketball this weekend so she could be the chicken lady each morning!  She is very good at it, and makes it look good, too!

Emma spent the last half of last week with her Nana and Grandpa.  My mother has declared she is too old for teenagers!  LOL!  (She said she was too old for pre-schoolers about this time last year with Finn.  My kids apparently wear her out!)  On Friday, Emma went to White Water with a friend, his brother, and some other kids they know.  Emma and Lukus were friends when they both went to school in Stillwater.  She’s at the M-O, and he’s now is Cushing, but they are still great friends!  (His mom was my sorority sister and roommate in college; they live in Perry). Emma and her new friends had the best time at White Water and stayed for the summer movie night.  They decided since it was so late getting back to Perry, that Emma would just stay with the neighbor girls that were on the trip, too! She said they stayed up most of the night playing video games!

Emma’s Saturday night was spent at an open rodeo in Chandler with another friend of hers, Dylon, and his family.  This was the first rodeo of this kind Emma had been to and she said she learned a lot.  She also said that Dylon drove home from the rodeo because his mom doesn’t drive at night, and he’s an angry driver. LOL  She also leaned that all 5-6 year old younger brothers are annoying.  She thought Finn was bad, but then she said his little brother might have been worse.  But, another fun night of memories for her!  She got back to Nana’s sometime around mid-night!

 

Sunday, believe it not, we were all back together for a little bit.  All EIGHT of us!  Nana, Grandpa, me, Dad, Emma, Lara, Jake AND Finn!  Jake was back to the basketball tournament in Tulsa, and Emma came with my folks to catch a couple of games.  We had a late morning game, then a long break so we all went to McAlister’s for lunch!  It was loud, crazy, and too many conversations to track!  Just the way I like it! 

Emma had to head back before the tournament was over to go take care of her horses.  We were sad to see her go, but it was nice to all be together for a minute!  Lara was a trooper and stayed with us through the end of the tournament.  It was a long day with long breaks between games, and even though I know she was bored, she was a pretty good basketball brother fan this weekend.  We ended up second, and finally made it home about 9:00pm!  She ate well this weekend, though. I loved just having her there and getting to have spontaneous and random discussions!

I'm pretty sure they are both spending this Monday trying to recuperate from all their weekend shenanigans!

We turn our calendars to August this week.  Emma has enrollment on Tuesday.  My boys have it Wednesday, and Lara has schedule pick-up the next week.  Football practice starts in a week.  Summer is truly closing down.  I am so glad I am writing these weekend memories down!  What comes next? Another busy weekend I’m sure!  School starts in 2.5 weeks!  These girls will get every last drop out of summer 2017!

The One With the Lazy Dayz of Summer

July 21 - 24, 2017
Another weekend in the books! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!?  But it is now Sunday night, everyone is settled in, and Monday will be here before we know it.  This weekend was pretty lazy - just the way three days in a row of over 100 degree heat should be!

It was Emma's weekend to be in Stillwater with us.  She was coming off a week of being on the Oklahoma State University campus at Big 3 fields days where she worked hard and ran in to a lot of her Stillwater friends!  We picked her up later in the evening on Friday night, and she stayed through the morning on Sunday.  We were so lazy!  She wasn't feeling 100%, plus it was so very hot, so Saturday we just hung out at home all day.

Riding in to Stillwater!  The OG Three!

Saturday morning we watched the movie "Forrest Gump" as a family on Netflix, went out for lunch, then took another lazy approach to the afternoon. Emma took a long nap, and Lara went went with her friend Molly out to Molly's grandma's house for some pool time.  She had a blast - and this time didn't come home with a sunburn.  Britt and I sure miss her when she's gone like that, but we remarked about how lucky she is to have another family to love her like their own.  We never have to worry about her when she is with them!

Lara came home in the evening, and we all SIX hung out as a family watching "Family Fued" best answer clips from YouTube until bedtime. Steve Harvey is one funny dude!  It was SO MUCH FUN to hear big belly laughs from both Emma and Lara!  And the boys, too!

Sunday, Emma left mid morning to go to church and lunch with her other family.  We slept in, then went to lunch as a family of 5.  Since we go to church in the evening, everyone came home and played video games and/or napped.  SO LAZY!  (In Lara's defense, she wasn't feeling to well today, either.) We got up and went to church where we got to see Week 3 of At The Movies.  (I think it is so cool that Emma went this morning and we went this evening and we ALL got the same teaching!).  This week's movie was 2016's "Lion" and the message was about never giving up.  That applies at all ages!

One more weekend in July, then it will be AUGUST - all the back to school stuff will be up on us quicker than we would like!  Here's to a great last week in July!

The One About Lake Life

July 14 - 17, 2017
Another weekend has come and gone.  Seems to be going even FASTER since I am trying to document it!  The weekend, Emma and Lara spent all their time at the lake with their Dad, Step-mom, and her extended family.  Fishing, Sailing, tubing – you know, all the fun lake stuff!  It started a little earlier than the “weekend,” too!  Lara joined Emma out there mid-week, and they stayed through Sunday.

But I was lucky enough to CATCH them for a few hours on Friday night!  My cousin, Jane, and her two kiddos (Ages 7 and 6 – 14 months apart!) are visiting for 2 weeks from New York (Long Island, to be exact).  Those of us not at the lake had a dinner play date with them on Thursday night, where an impromptu trip to the Cushing Aquatic Center was planned for Friday night.  I texted my girls to see if I could come get them and drag them along, and they agreed!

After work on Friday, I drove out to Lake Carl Blackwell and picked Emma and Lara up from their camping location at Pine Grove.  We met up with everyone else, and off we went!  We got there and got settled in, spent less than 20 minutes in the pool, and the lifeguards saw lightning!  OUT OF THE POOL!  We waited out the lighting for about an hour, but just before they let everyone back in, we left since we were already dry.  Back to Stillwater to get the boys in bed, then back to the lake to drop off the girls.  It was a GREAT night despite the changes in plans!

Even though we weren’t together on Sunday, we all learned the same lesson.  The girls attended Life Church in Edmond, while we attended in Stillwater.  It is Week 2 of At The Movies, and the movie we saw was “Collateral Beauty” from 2016.  The clips we saw really made us want to see the whole thing!  Maybe we can do that as a family soon! 

After an evening out in Stillwater with her sister and her friends, Lara finally made it home Sunday evening.  She had a GREAT weekend – Sunburn and all. 

Two funnies – Friday night in the car Emma was telling a story about the road between Mulhall and Guthrie and how they call it Wildcat Curve.  Then she was saying the bridge on that road (which is in bad shape) will be taken out next summer.  To which Lara replies, “That’s a year from now!” And then Britt says, “If they take it out – how will anyone cross the river?”  Probably had to be there, but it was pretty funny.  Then late last night Emma tells me how Lara gave a coin to the barista at Starbucks and said, “Here’s a quarter!”  They guy looked at her and said, “This is a nickel.”  She shrugged and smiled.  Emma said it seems as if this might happen a lot…  J

Here’s to another weekend!