THE LAST FIRST DAY

I waited until 4:00 to write this blog. Jordan left this morning for his first day of senior year. That CANNOT be right. How in the world did this happen? Most of us have been there already...the first day of kindergarten for our babies. Jordan went to kindergarten in Bakersfield, CA out in a field. Really! His school was in the middle of an almond field. But honestly, first day of senior year?


(taken at 6:20 A.M and not sure he's awake)


I don't have a scanner to scan his first day of kindergarten in 1996, but I have one from the 4th grade so thought I'd post it. Wasn't he the cutest little thang?





Clint has called me at least 10 times today asking me to help him with buying books, checking class locations (wasn't he supposed to do that yesterday?), course questions, you name it....what would he do without me? His picture is from 7th grade. What a charmer. Did you know he's attended school in five different cities?




His apartment is beautiful! Way too nice for college kids.....

He's doing just great too! God has really blessed him this summer. I should go back to the comment I made about him earlier about being grouchy and delete it. We had a wonderful time on our vacation and he seems back to normal. I'm very thankful for that.

Yay, no hankies needed.

CHURCH UNDER THE BRIDGE

I went to church yesterday under an overpass in downtown Houston.

I've been to quite a few churches in my life, but never one with 18 wheelers passing overhead, or people mowing in the background, or with homeless people.

Our choir participated in this ministry. We led worship first then one of our pastors brought a message. We then fed over 200 homeless people. Talk about an eye opening experience. Very humbling for me.

Did I mention it was hot, smelly and exhausting? Did I mention the humbling part? It really put my "problems" into perspective for me. A swift kick in the pants would have worked too.

THE VACATION POST

If I don't start this today, it won't get finished until next summer. We had a great time at Lake Eufaula in spite of the crazy Oklahoma weather. We left here Friday afternoon and drove 7 hours to get to the O's amazing lake house. They started planning the house before we moved in 2002 and it's finally almost finished. At least it has a drive-way this year. Last summer we had to park on the road and take a four wheeler to the front door in the mud! As a special bonus, The M's were there too! What a treat to visit with them. The above picture is Clint, Heather & her fiance, Aaron. Clint & Heather caught the same fish! We caught lots of catfish and let them all go. Then on Monday, we decided we'd fish to keep and eat them and of course, we caught about five all day. Clint got us started with a huge catch but we didn't have a stringer for him to put it on and the fish died before we could get it strung. No worries, he caught another one right after that. We got that puppy strung up and he caught another one! In the process of stringing this one, it slipped away (or probably finned him and he let go) before it was completely strung and it got away and took the stringer and the already strung fish with it!!! This is where the luck turned for us. We're pretty sure those two fish swam out and told all the other fish to swim away from the dock....just look what happened to them. In the next four hours, the six of us caught only fish stick sized fish. We gave up and had breakfast for dinner.

We did manage to get in some good tubing, wakeboarding and wakeskating in the next few days. We didn't see the sun much, but it also wasn't hot.

Our hosts....

Clint (this is actually at Beaver Lake in Arkansas) and Jordan at Eufaula


How cute is this.....


Bonus friends....



This pic shows the amazing view from the house, the guys with laptops out and a commercial during the olympics


From Eufaula, we went to Collinsville which is north of Tulsa to stay with Dewayne's parents. We also got to visit with our best friends in Owasso. We moved from Owasso in 1997 and they moved from there to Sandia, New Mexico in 1999. It's with them we learned to snow ski and have some really fun vacations at spring break (I should say my family learned to ski; I never quite mastered it and had a pretty bad accident that resulted in a torn ACL). They moved back to Owasso last year. Their daughter, Alli, second from the left, is an amazing dancer and from the time she was a little girl, wanted to be a Rockette in New York City. Well, after only two auditions, she made it!!!! She leaves next week and will be in the NYC Christmas shows. So if you see them on TV, she's one of them. Also in this pic is her sister as well as another little neighbor girl who's all grown up too. We hadn't seen her since 1999! Another bonus friend.


We drove over 1600 miles in one week. Here's Jordan on the way home from the funeral which is how we pretty much all felt....



We were able to make a very short trip to Dewayne's brother's house in Rogers, Arkansas. We don't get to spend nearly enough "one on one" time with them. We had a blast and finally, a perfect day on the water.....


And of course, this post wouldn't be complete without a pic of Bailey. Here she is in Grandma & Pa's backyard thinking she's running with the cows. My in-law's live in town, but their house backs up to a pond and pasture. How cool is that?


If you're still reading (lol) I want to share a praise with you. The last day Clint was in CS, his pickup got towed for having a stolen parking pass. To make a verrrryyyyyy long story short, he accidently picked up his roommates pass. The roommate didn't know it and reported his stolen (they are identical). He had to go to the transportation office Monday and "plead his case" before the parking people to excuse the $420 ticket for using a stolen pass. He just called me and said they excused all but $30 of it! Thank you Jesus!

Next post....Clint moves out again and Jordan begins his Senior year (get your hankies out).

MY FRIEND, MELODY

Okay, here goes. One of my oldest and dearest friends passed away last week. She was 44 and had battled brain cancer four years. We grew up together in a small town where everybody knows everybody. Sometimes that's a bad thing, but often times, it's a good thing. I didn't grow up in a Baptist church, but she invited me to go to church camp with her in the 7th grade. That's when my love for Falls Creek began. This blog could go on for pages, but I'll try to keep it brief. [wink] We married friends. I mean, her husband and my husband to this day are best friends. We were in each other's weddings. We didn't live in the same town during the college years, but still managed to see each other once a month or so. After college, we moved to Oklahoma City and they lived about 30 min. away. They bought a boat and our summers were filled with weekends at the lake. We learned to water ski together, we camped together, shopped, everything you do with your best friends. She was the first friend to get pregnant. Oh the fun we had shopping for baby stuff, decorating the nursery, reading baby books. Jessica was born July 12th 1986. She took her sweet time too...it was about 3:00 in the morning! We didn't care, it was fun to be there...we finally had our baby! And it was a girl!! Little did I realize how important that fact would be 18 years later. Years passed and we kept in touch even though we moved a zillion times. Our parents still lived in the same small town so Thanksgiving and Christmas trips home included visits with their families too. We had two boys, they had two girls. We have other friends who live in Dallas now and they had three girls. The first summer we lived here, all nine of them stayed with us. It was wall to wall people and I loved it! We didn't realize just a few months later, our lives would be turned upside down.

I'll never forget the call from Dewayne when he told me there was something wrong with Melody. I was sitting in the Academy parking lot waiting on Clint to buy soccer stuff. They weren't sure what was wrong with her, but they feared a brain tumor. She was 39. For the next four years, they made countless trips down here to go to MD Anderson for her Dr. visits. We've wondered many times if that was one of the reasons we had to move down here. We were able to take care of her and her family when she had surgery. They stayed with us and we picked them up at the airport many times. She had good days and bad days....but she never complained about her situation. Many people prayed for her healing. I'll never understand why she wasn't healed here on earth, why her husband lost his wife, her kids lost their mom, her parents lost their daughter, why my friend died. They played "Live like you were dying" at her funeral. It really means more when you know someone that lived that song. I've learned to not take people for granted, don't sweat the small stuff (and it's all small stuff), laugh more, criticize less, take more pictures (yes, I really mean that), just enjoy your loved ones more. As I was looking through old pictures (the ones that were in a box in the top of my closet, not the neatly organized ones in album), I could only find one picture of Mel and I together. It's from 1986. I have many pictures of her, but only this one of us together.

Well, it wasn't very brief but I really needed to get this post finished. A little more closure for me. I wish you could of all known her....you would have loved her.

I NEED A VACATION FROM MY VACATION!!

We got home last night around 8:00. I went to bed at 1:30. I'm NOT a night owl and will probably need a nap today. I have much to tell you but have even more laundry to do. Clint moved his stuff home about an hour before we left last Friday and I just got a look at his laundry. I don't think he did laundry all summer! Seriously, I bet there's five or six loads of his alone!



We had a good week in spite of the rain. What's that saying....a bad day at the lake is better than a good day of work? Just being with our friends and family means a lot to us. My best friend passed away on Tuesday and her funeral was Friday. She had cancer for four and a half years. We saw people we hadn't seen in many years at the service. Seeing old school teachers was fun for us and the boys got a kick out of them saying they could tell stories on us (we quickly changed the subject). I'll blog about her someday, but not today. Even when you know death is imminent, it's still hard to let go. She's pain free and with Jesus and that's all that matters.



I'd better get busy. I've got blogs to read and comments to make. I also have to go to the grocery store today. I meant to put the loaf of bread in the freezer so we'd at least have sandwiches for lunch, but I forgot. The date on the bread is August 10th.



It's good to be home. I missed ya'll.

VACATION PLANS

I didn't want to leave my blogging friends with such a pityful blog this week, so I thought I'd post pics of previous vacations. Odd, but you know me.


We were very fortunate in 2005 to take a fabulous trip to San Francisco partly on Dewayne's work tab, frequent flyer miles and Hilton hotel points (all from D's work). Total cost of this vacation was less than $500 for a seven night trip for the four of us! He had a sales meeting there and the rest of us tagged along. We stayed in the swanky Westin St. Francis Hotel for the first part of the trip. This Cat was way, way out of place. And don't even get me started on how goofy the boys were acting. We did all the touristy things there: went to China Town and had the most delicious Chinese food, went to Alcatraz (boring), the Golden Gate Bridge (amazing), Fisherman's Wharf, Lombard Street (the crookedest street in the world). We went sightseeing up highway one. We'd never been so far north in Cali nor ever so carsick. We visited the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and didn't like how cold it was. Here are some of my favorite pics.





In 2006, we went on a Caribbean cruise to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel






In 2007, Dewayne and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with another "reduced priced" vacation to The Virgin Islands. He WON two round trip airline tickets in a golf raffle and we again used those trusty hotel points to have an amazing vacation.





Last summer, we took a couple of days and went to Lake Eufaula with our BFFs. It rained cats and dogs and we only had a few "good" hours on the lake. Here's what it looked like most of the time

Is it wrong to pray for no rain in an area that hasn't had rain in a long time? Okay, it would be okay if it rained at night while we're sleeping.



Finally, here's Bailey in "her chair". She's obviously on vacation all the time. 'Cept when she's after the squirrels.


Have a great week my dear friends.

GROWIN WITH IT MYSELF

Girlfriends, you know what's been going on at my house this summer. Heartache seems to have settled in and is rearing it's ugly head again. It's been up and down and right now it's pretty down. C has been back peddling lately, surly attitude, quick temper, just all around grumpiness. When he found out "B" will be at college for at least the first semester, all his growing suddenly stopped. This wasn't his plan. Don't even get me started on plans.



I decided a few weeks ago I would paint his room. My way of "cleansing" the house of old memories for him. I even painted the ceiling (don't do it, it's very hard). We bought a new comforter, took out the dresser, put in a cool chair from Ikea and a TV table. Today I started tackling his closet. It didn't take long before I was standing there crying as I looked through T-shirts that meant so much: his one and only choir tour shirt, jr. high retreat shirts from EHC, the first church we attended here had T-shirts for the youth everytime we turned around, retreats from our current church, his first A & M shirts and tons of OU shirts. His letter jacket he couldn't wait to get now hangs in his closet. It hasn't been worn since 2006. Here's how it looks today











I know it's part of growing up....mine, not his. I'm going to go back up now to try to finish. I'm going to turn the radio up loud and praise while I'm working. There's a hurricane outside and the "bands of rain" haven't made it here yet. It's like a snow day only with rain, thunder and lightning. I could write a blog about "hurricane preparedness" and the ridiculous way the media here goes crazy. You know how the weather people in OK go on and on about storms? It's worse...it goes on for days!

I'm going to try to get out of this funk. The pity party needs to stop. I know three people battling cancer right now. It's just a closet and it's only clothes. Get a grip, Laura.

While we're on the subject of games...

Try this one from tripadvisor.com

http://www.tripadvisor.com/TIQgame

I scored 126 on USA