A View From God's Country

The above is a shot of a sunset I took from the second-floor balcony at the back of our building. Sure couldn't get that kind of view in Berwyn, hmm? I think I notice awesome sunsets more often than planes in the sky.

The rest of the pictures are from a recent day trip. We decided to get out and explore one of the local parks a couple of weekends ago. Lake Sahoma is a popular fishing spot, but there's also a small playground and picnic area that was perfect for a picnic lunch. We then went down the road to Pretty Water Lake, which is... pretty! Okay, they could have come up with a more imaginative name. But it has a nice trail around it which we had fun exploring. Supposed to have a waterfall too, but as you can see from the picture of Amelia (standing in the "bed" of the "waterfall"), there isn't much water to fall right now. It's been very dry for the past month.

It's finally getting cold here, though the snow on Friday just missed us, so we probably won't be doing much more exploring until spring. Now please, no blizzards up north when we drive up for Christmas, okay?

All That Jazz

Nick's school apparently loves to put on big musical productions. Being named Freedom School, they overhype the patriotic stuff sometimes, but they put on a pretty nice show for Veterans' Day. They did one show in the evening for families, then another one during school hours later in the week for local Veterans' groups. The kids seemed to be having fun and, yes, the costumes were all cute. Each grade had something slightly different. Next year Nick's class will get to wear sequined red suspenders!

Not surprisingly, the Christmas program is coming up. I'm sure it will be a blast, but I have a problem with the costume thing this time. The Veterans' Day program wasn't too bad; he just needed to wear a white button-up shirt and dark pants. But for Christmas, he is an elf, and he has to wear either a red turtleneck and green sweatpants, or a green turtleneck and red sweatpants. I found a red turtleneck with no problem. Now I have to somehow find a pair of green sweatpants, for a boy, by December 10th! What were they thinking???

Happy 3rd Birthday Amelia!

Isn't she the pouty princess?

Really, though, she had a lot of fun once Mommy stopped taking those annoying pictures and let her go play some games. You can't go wrong with Chuck E. Cheese!

Halloween in Tulsa!

This year's costumes require explaining, don't they? Nick is Dialga, one of his favorite Pokemon. Look it up on Google if you want to see a picture of it, but it's basically a dragon-looking thing. This costume would not have been possible without that wonderful stuff called "fun foam"!

Amelia is a jellyfish queen. Or maybe the queen jellyfish. I don't know that jellyfish even have queens, but the other thing about fun foam is, in the same aisle of the craft store there are also these nifty foam crowns. We had already decided on making a jellyfish costume at that point, so why not just add an original touch to it?

We had a great Halloween. Our church held a huge Fall Festival on Sunday, and we went Trick-or-Treating last night. I have learned two very important things to keep in mind when selecting/designing next year's costumes.

First, they must be durable enough to survive a Moon Bounce. There were two at the church festival, actually, and the kids probably spent about 50% of their time in them. Amelia's costume was easy to remove each time she went in; Nick's had to be repaired before Trick-or-Treating. There were plenty of girls in frilly princess dresses, and that didn't stop any of them. No kid who is able can resist jumping. The Festival was a lot of fun and at the end, the kids got to go "Trunk-or-Treating" around the cars (of those who chose to participate) in the parking lot -- very clever idea.

Second, out here people like to wait until it actually gets dark before they start Trick-or-Treating. We were invited by two of Pete's co-workers to go Trick-or-Treating with their families in southwest Tulsa. So we tried to take the kids around our apartment complex starting at 6:00, but hardly anyone was ready yet, and we didn't get a single kid at our door before we left to meet the others at 7:00.

But we did have a great time Trick-or-Treating. There were four kids in all, and I'm glad the other parents brought flashlights, because it really was dark! We were in a nice but hilly neighborhood with no sidewalks -- at least Amelia was visible with her fluttering "tentacles". The kids got a workout running from house to house and up and down hills, stairways, etc. The weather was perfect. Fall is definitely the best season in Oklahoma.

It would have been nice to see more of the kids in our complex and maybe meet a few more neighbors here, but on the other hand, it was nice to get out. We can always invite Nick's friends in for leftover candy today, there's plenty of it!