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).