At Home in Sugar Land: May 2009

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Prom night

Stephen, Kat, Jennifer and Jeffrey

Stephen succumbed to peer pressure and was finally convinced by his church friends that he should participate in one of high school's oldest traditions ...Senior Prom. Though for the sake of holding true to his principles he refused to attend his own prom. Instead he attended the one sponsored by a near by high school where some of his friends attend. They started out with the girls running late and their parents taking lots of pictures at our local park which took ...forever! I was waiting for them at home, trying to salvage the dinner they had so painstakingly spent all day preparing for their dates. Fortunately I was able to hold off disaster just long enough until they arrived and could take over!

After a tasty dinner and luscious dessert and of course more picture taking, they were off to the prom at the Houston Marriott. (Guess that explains why the tickets were $150.00!!!) I think they had a fun time in spite of the music being mostly rap. (Baby making music was the term I heard used to describe it ...and why he has been boycotting school dances up until now!)

Afterwards they drove over to Jennifer's home where her dad (one of Stephen's seminary teachers) had prepared a 12:30 am breakfast for them. Afterwards they came back to our house for a few games, more snacks then headed out to take the girls home. Surprisingly the only one who had a curfew was Stephen - 2:00 a.m. I guess another tradition of prom is for the kids to stay out all night. Hmmm I guess it's not too hard for anyone who knows us very well to guess that we weren't exactly on board with that. All and all it sounds like the evening was a great success.

It won't be long now until seminary graduation, finals, grandparents arriving, high school graduation at the Reliant Center (home of the Houston Rockets -no longer in the finals thanks to the Lakers!), taking care of wisdom teeth, packing up and leaving for college. The next few weeks should be pretty crazy with all that will be happening. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up!

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Back to our "Okie" roots in Bartlesville

Grandma Stacey, Sabrina and a 4-legged friend.

Ben and Grace aboard the bumper cars at the Kiddie Park.

Grace going for a joy ride.

Grace in the purple car and Sabrina aboard the green tractor.

It's all fun and games ...until someone gets scared!

Poor Sabrina! Going from bad to worse.

Spideyman and his two side kicks.

Fly me to the moon

And last but not least ...Ben's amazing gorilla impersonation.

Finally ...the pictures!

The long awaited pictures from our trip to Oklahoma:

Whitney getting some free time to read ...catching up on the "Twilight" series.

Grandma Kathy and Sabrina

Ben creating a masterpiece

Sabrina not to be out done.

Whitney and Grace joining in on the art fest

Cutie Pie!

Sweet sisters

Grace giving a demonstration of her ballet skills

Showing off the bun cover grandma Kathy crocheted for her.

Grace's ballet class

Monday, May 18, 2009

We are so brave

Last Wednesday my daughter Whitney and I took our old van on a 9 hour drive to Broken Arrow, OK to visit my son Mike and his family. Our old Honda Odyssey survived our odyssey without any problems in spite of hitting shredded tires on the freeway and a speed bump in Mike's neighborhood at warp speed! (Sorry for sharing your mad cap driving skills Whit!) We even made it safely back home in spite of my insistence that "I've driven this way before ...of course I know where I'm going. NOT!

We had a great time visiting Mike and Jess, Ben, Gracie and Breeny. What sweet and cute little ones. I wish I could take you home with me and hug you all day long! I'm sure you would get tired of it after 5 minutes but it would make my day. We watched Gracie at her ballet class, played lots of games, watched the latest in children's programing, had picnic's out side where we saw a bunny streak across the yard, tried to build a bunny trap to catch it, watched the kids ride their bikes, picked up Ben from Pre-K, went to the mall to see a movie, and even made it up to Bartlesville to see our old house.

Thanks to Grandma Stacey we got to see some llama's, chickens, parakeet's and even ride a horse (well ...Whit and the grandkids did). I took Whitney on a tour of her old home town while Jess and the kids visited with her mom. It was fun to see how familiar everything still was. We finished our tour by driving to our old neighborhood so Whitney could see our old house. I think this is the first time she's been back since we moved to Texas 11 years ago. Other than a new red door and a few missing trees it still looked the same. We even had a quick bite to eat at Braum's. Yumm!

Then it was time to meet up with the kids for an evening at the kiddie park. It was so much fun just watching the grandkids having a great time. Hard to imagine what we did for entertainment before they were around! We stayed until the park closed down and just as we were heading to our car a storm front blew through. Good timing ...even though we drove home through wind and rain, we made it to the car without getting wet.

This will probably be the last time we have a reason to go to Oklahoma because Mike and Jess are in the process of moving to Manhattan, Kansas ...home to an f-4 tornado in 2008! They were headed there on a house hunting trip just after we started our drive back home. It will probably be a 12 hour drive for us from Sugar Land to Manhattan but still do able. I think....?!? Hope they are able to find something soon since Mike is already working there.

We had a great time and appreciate Gary and Stephen for holding down the fort for us while we were gone, and for Mike and Jess for letting us come and play! I will post some pictures of our visit in the next day or so.