The Oklahoma Season

Well, well, well, lookie here....I've got quite the catch up game to play considering it's almost July & I haven't even written about our Easter holiday.......................................ummm.....what to do.......

I'm not sure if this will be a post of a bajillion and one photos, OR I'll give a brief summary of our lives at this point..................

.............who am I kidding, you will be getting both especially since I've got photos all over the place of our time there- from phone, camera, tablet...etc...

Right now I am sitting on a bar stool at my in-laws house in Idaho, where we have been living the past month.  So, let's rewind back to our days in Oklahoma.  I have a little documentation to do there first.

OUR OKLAHOMA SEASON

As you know, from my last post, we were living in a Best Western Hotel!  Yep, the whole 10 weeks!  I will not feel the need for another belgian waffle for a VERY long time!

One event that we looked forward to (and brought some sanity back into our lives) was General Conference.  We cozied up on our king-size bed & enjoyed listening to the words of our prophets & seeking guidance from them.  It was extra fun to be sitting there listening to Elder Rasband's talk when he spoke on the topic of the massive tornado that hit Moore, OK last year.  The little girl he quoted in his talk was one young woman in our ward! This talk really touched us because we could see first hand how the disaster effected the community and how it still is a burden to some.  Our tradition at the April conferences is to munch on "chocolate easter bunnnies" in preparation for Easter Sunday.

Oh yeah........and that good looking guy in Sailor's drawing is the one and only Pres. Monson! :)  I really don't know why she added all that length to his ears. :)

One thing I noticed about OK was that they do everything BIG!  This Community Easter Egg Hunt was no exception!  They had 5 taped off areas for different age groups.  And each section was COVERED in candy....I mean it was no hunt.

Chase & I celebrated our 6th Anniversary while we were there.  Woohoo! Time has flown!

So as a family we spent the day downtown OKC on a water taxi, checked out the sights, & ate some yummy BBQ lunch. 

The size of the food portions in OK are gigantic!  Curly Fry=6 years!

That evening, we spent the time with our good friends Dr. Massengale & his wife. They had us over for dinner which ended up being more BBQ (which we didn't complain about).  The girls had a blast on their 10-acre lot filled with playground toys, a horse, 4 dogs, and a tractor which they were able to go for a ride on.  We were spoiled for sure!

A little bit on this Dr....

A few years ago at the beginning of Chase's schooling he started looking into optometry regulations/laws around the country.  Each state has different laws, but in OK optometrists can do everything they are trained to do and some surgeries as well. One thing led to another and Chase's determination was fired up when he learned about this doctor.  This guy knows how to practice!!!  He ended up being really nice and for a few years Chase and him exchanged emails and what not and eventually planned this rotation at his practice.  It was always really random, especially because it was in a weird unknown place to us in Moore, OK.........? (that is until the tornado hit and all of sudden I didn't want to go to the Moore place...yikes)

Well, eventually we get there and Chase and this doctor became really fast friends--VERY fast and in a very cool, unexpected way. Without a doubt we KNOW he was put into our lives & especially Chases'.  Chase has learned more in those few months with him then all years combined in his schooling and they are buds and still chat to this day.  I couldn't even start describing all the little details that reassured us that we were MEANT to be there to meet and become friends with this special man---I'll explain that all in my memoir if I ever write it...;)  Chase even ended up living with him & his wife for the last couple weeks while the girls and I left and stayed with my parents--again so many blessings we've been blessed with.

Moving on.....one thing we were so fortunate to do was visit with the Larsen's--some old friends from AZ!  It was such a blast to visit with Tiffany and let our kids run around at the zoo.  Other than spending time with this awesome family, the zoo highlights were holding parrots & running alongside the otter tank.

Seryn was in love with the parrots!  Every time they would fly off of her she was off searching for the next one that would sit on her arm.  She held at least a dozen of them!

We were also fortunate to spend some time with some more old AZ friends, the Spark's.

Is it lame that this is the best and only picture I got??  Yes it is! I love Monica and we had a great time visiting and the girls had fun playing with Matt and all of his toys....because gosh, according to Sailor, "Matt's toys are a lot more fun then ours."  I had to tell her it was probably because they are all different, since we revolve around girl 'stuff.'  She still insisted that we needed some new toys.

Easter came quick this year. And like every year the girls put together a new Easter puzzle & scavenged...that a word?? for the Easter loot.  I had to be real clever trying to set that hunt up in our tiny little room.

We colored eggs as well....we boiled eggs and while they were hot, we colored on them with crayons.  This was a very nice and clean alternative to dyes!

One of the many creative moments the girls' had....use toliet paper for pirate masks!

Ok, I wasn't kidding when I said we colored and drew ALOT.  We even did so at the local library!  That was the first thing the girls wanted to do when we would get there. Sailor wanted to learn how to draw a unicorn so we found a book with one on it and I drew it up and had her follow along with me.   She wanted to add her own twist and make it a "Rainbow Unicorn"--she was really excited rainbows while we lived there...

One of the last things we did in OK was go to a fun place called "Unpluggits."  A children's play place that had EVERYTHING a child would love to do.  A big playground, dress ups, painting, coloring, playdough, stamping, etc...

We spent this time with our friends that we miss so much--Julie, Quinci, & Mabry.  

And of course, the pool!  I couldn't talk about OK without mentioning the pool.  "OUR POOL"--because we were ALWAYS there alone...

Nothing else to say but the girls loved it and didn't forget for a second how to swim--they picked it up right from our AZ days.

Sailor is funny and does this eyebrow lift frequently.

We swam and played til we had to sleep. :)

The morning that we flew out of OK to WA I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.  Because I was up, I figured I should try to do something worthwhile.  My mind went to photography...what could I take some pictures of??  I quickly thought of  the city of Moore & how I didn't get to get any photos of the place, so I drove over to the May 2013 tornado path and thought I'd grab a few shots there-- I 'm so glad I did.

Obviously, it's been a year since the disaster so much of the destruction has been fixed throughout the town, but in many of the neighborhoods it looks half fixed.  From talking to several people who were affected, many couldn't and still can't afford to fix up their houses so it forced them to throw up a "for sale" sign on the lot and sell as is.

There were construction companies all over the place and constantly working- I'm sure it hasn't changed since we've been gone.

I was driving primarily in the neighbors that went to Plaza Towers Elementary (one of the two elementary schools that got hit).  After the incident happened, the kids made these signs...and it's so sweet that a year later they are still up!

In the background of this photo is the Plaza Elementary.

As I drove out and ready to head back to the hotel to pack up and leave, I drove right by a yard sale.  This house was right next to the school so I stopped to wander.  I over heard the homeowner talk tell someone that most of this stuff being sold was her's and her siblings' families things.  They had a sister whose house was hit in the tornado & they were trying to make a little money for her to continue to be able to fix it up.  I immediately thought I'll buy something!  Unfortunately I only had a few bucks on me, so I picked up a cute clock & metal book mark (a souvenir for my sister Madison who collects them).  Then I drove back to one last wreckage sight and grabbed a piece of broken wood from a house that was obviously destroyed last year.  I was glad to leave with a few pieces of Moore since I figured I probably wouldn't be going back there anytime soon.

Like I said, I wish I had the time to write out every detail of our whole experience there.  

Our family was meant to make the trip there even under all the crazy circumstances & issues that kept coming up; regardless, we enjoyed our time-- it was such an adventure and we were fortunate to have gone.

  

Life is like a 1,000 piece puzzle....

You know those seasons in your life when you have a million and one things on your mind at all times that seems to paralyze your productivity & desire to complete anything at hand because there's so much to think about  that you simply can't stay on track? And you have a decision and then another astronomical decision to make right after you are still transitioning from a recent decision you just finalized?  Those seasons when no matter what choices you make you feel like you have no control anyway which then forces you to learn patience, hope, & faith all at the same time?

THEN, more falls onto your plate and you are more deeply overwhelmed with the new roadblocks that stand in your way.  Uneasiness follows because all your previous decisions now hinge on this simple fact that the roadblock may cause all your plans to fall through the cracks leaving you with nothing else but an empty plate waiting to be filled with more decisions and a whole new plan.   Once these roadblocks sabotage your preparations, you wonder if it's a sign of "that was the wrong decision,"  or "hold on tighter, you just need to have patience to see everything start to fall into place."

----ok this was a very specific scenario I just described....you may have never felt all these feelings all at once, but I'm sure you've grasped & experienced parts & pieces......

Things "falling into place" is a phrase that has felt non-existent in our lives the past few months, but I guess any pessimist could easily feel that way.  It hasn't been until just recently, after looking at our situation in a more "the cup is half full" perspective, that we have seen and felt the generous blessings and can honestly see the step-by-step process of things working out for our benefit.  Things that seem weird or "just happened randomly" NOW is evident that we had a higher power looking out for us and we now know without a doubt we've received help from our Father in Heaven this whole time.

These feeling and emotions can sum up the past 6 months for us.  I was telling Chase we could write a small memoir of all the blessings, trials, inconveniences, surprises, & tender mercies on this particular season of our lives.

From all the craziness, I'd say we are fortunate that our eyes have been open enough to simply witness the lessons we have learned.  These lessons continue to hang over our heads, but not in a haunting kind of way, rather as a blessing to remind us to be grateful in our circumstances no matter what, because quite honestly, things could ALWAYS be much worse-- I mean much, much worse!

And being grateful in our circumstances isn't the only thing to be mindful of-- obtaining hope and faith that everything WILL work out and will eventually start to "fall into place" can bring immense peace, IF you let patience run your way of thinking.  Its like putting a ridiculously hard 1,000 piece puzzle together.  First you plan how you will start and execute the puzzle.  Then you organize the pieces into categories or groups to hopefully keep things easier to handle.  Once you start putting pieces together you feel great and the pieces are easily "falling into place."

Quickly you learn that success is short lived and the pieces start to look all the same, you lose any real direction, you get consumed with the overwhelming task of completing the puzzle that you become paralyzed in a sense and you want to quit.  It takes a lot of trial and error, patience, & persistence.

After time, that feels like forever and after many moments of wanting to quit, you get a piece in the right spot and then another, and then another.........this slowly but surely causes a little bit of peace & confidence within you that fires the light at the end of the tunnel that makes it seem possible again to complete.  The pieces literally start falling into place and you are soon looking at the completed product and reflecting at your recent process and realize how it really wasn't THAT hard.  The process just took patience, hope, and some faith.  In most cases in life, you know the general destination or the final puzzle and what it should look like, but there are some individual pieces that you swear are from a different puzzle.  You are forced to hold on to these unrecognizable pieces until later down the road you start to see why you couldn't use them before.  They start becoming bridges to different parts of the picture.  Once these puzzle pieces seemed annoying and frustrating but now are very vital pieces to the final product.

Maybe all this is just me up on my soap box ranting about something that makes no sense to anyone.  I have felt the need to write these thoughts down because what we go through in life and the feelings associated are short lived in only in those moments.  You quickly forget those feelings you previously had and move on to the next phase of your life.  That being said, I didn't want to forget these feelings I've written about, not only to look back and laugh at how easy my life was and how sissy I was to cry and endure through it, but also, to strengthen or remind me of how God works sometimes.  He is ALWAYS there, if we have patience or not, we will see his hand in all things......

..........eventually! :)

Life Lately

Oklahoma is exactly how you would expect it to be.  At least in my opinion, if anyone ever mentioned "OK" I would quickly envision a flat, open, desolate, place....well, that's pretty much it.  Of course, you have your big cities like the capital that looks like the typical downtown- tall buildings, ballpark, eateries, etc. But if you were to drive out right out of town you will find lots of open, unused space-ALL OVER the state.

Our drive over here actually felt just like that.  It's funny how each state has it's own feel & cultural atmosphere.  Wyoming was COMPLETELY barren...holy cow.  Rocky terrain and straight, long, long freeways with lots of truck spots--true cowboy land.  Colorado seemed like a quiet, spread out (more desert-like) place, with lots of wind.  Colorado was surprisingly OPEN and had so much growing room everywhere. It seemed to be a nice place. Kansas was also just how you'd think it would be.  A lot like OK, but even more flat and empty. It was fun to witness all the pumping jacks along the freeways, and all 10 billboards in the whole state that advertised a "Wizard of Oz" museum. We didn't go, even though that would've been fun. Then we reached Oklahoma, both Chase and I were surprised how different each state; the the very moment we passed a state border we could tell it was a new state.  I couldn't help but feel happy for our country and it's diversity yet still all feeling like every state and all the people belong.  

Yay USA.

This is what we've been up to the last several weeks:

We have first and far most learned to entertain ourselves in our little hotel-suite.

We have a medium fridge, small kitchenette that includes a stove top with 2 burners, microwave, and pantry space.

When we decided to stay here we ran to Walmart to grab a few vitals like a cheap pot, a pan, a plastic spatula, a couple plates & bowls, & a $0.88 can opener that quit working the second week here.  DON'T WORRY, we've figured out how to manage.  It doesn't turn so we manually clamp down on the can all the way around the top in a quick repetitive manner. We've gotten pretty good at it.

The kids color multiple times a day.  I have at least a dozen sheets of paper lying around daily. We either grab out the cheap spiral notebooks or go downstairs to 'our office' to print off coloring pages. Because Sailor has developed an interest we have taken lots of time learning how to draw. She will tell me what she wants to learn and I will get online to find a "how to draw...." tutorial for kids.  It's been a lot of fun and I love to watch Sailor continue to get better.  Seryn hasn't taken much part into that but draws right along with us.  She usually likes to follow along with the tutorial but then gets bored and wants to finish her own way. 

Below are some of my favorite work from Sailor:

Can you guess these characters??---It's the "Wizard of Oz"  This wasn't tutorial-learned but I loved it.  The two lines on top of Dorothy's head is the yellow-brick road.

Rudolph. I thought she did a fantastic job here.

Hello Kitty.

A striped cat, a bunny, & frog.

Panda

Robot.

A cute Japanese-like cartoon girl & a bat.

Unicorn & other artistic creations.

Owl.

Here's one portrait of myself illustrated by Seryn, which I loved.  If you look close enough, she drew our little baby in my tummy.

And a bandaid.  This was one of her brilliant ideas since we didn't have any real ones at the time.  She noticed I had a hurt and thought to make one up for me.  How darling.

Sailor likes to use paper and tape for everything. 

Puzzles are great for entertaining the kids as well.  A girl from Chases' work doesn't have kids but lives with her in-laws at the moment.  And when she told her mother-in-law that Chase has some kids, she sent over so many puzzles and toys for us to borrow since they figured we had very few with us!  These are people we hadn't met yet...some people are just plain thoughtful!.  The puzzle below is one we brought from home but on the journey misplaced a piece.  Sailor's idea of fixing things with paper and tape made this puzzle complete!  She told me we need to just make a new one and asked if I could trace it on paper and then add the Statue of Liberty to it...since she remembered that's where it went.

We've been fortunate to make some good friends & visit old ones too!  

We spent an evening with the Sparks  who live 30 mins away from us.  We had an awesome time catching up and eating Rob's famous ribs.  Thanks guys!!

We also met and spent some time with our new friends- the Moores.   Chase works with Julie sometimes, who is a part-time optometrist, who has two girls just a year older than mine.  The girls all got along well.  We went to a museum, a tea party cafe for lunch, & played some more at a local park.  We fell in love with them instantly! And what an awesome person Julie is, she hadn't even met us yet but gave us all of her girls' hand-me-downs!  You kidding me??  She is so thoughtful and just figure we could probably use them. Again, how plain thoughtful some people are.
It made my girls' day! :)

As for me, I'm growing, and so is that little baby inside there.

This picture was taken about 24 weeks. I guess I'm almost 28 now...and I feel it.  I'm ready for it to be JUNE!  I feel like the swelling has begun!

We had a great surprise visit from my grandparents!  They are from WA but just happen to be driving through OK to get to TX so we had them over to our ward on Sunday and spent a few hours with them until they were back on the road.  It was the greatest surprise and so nice to have familiar faces in such a faraway land. :)

They drove a full 24 hours STRAIGHT from ID to get here.  My grandpa drove all through the night and even attended all 3 hours of church with us; without falling asleep! :)  We spent our time with them but then left for a dinner date with some friends so they could rest a bit before they were back on the road. My grandma was already snoozing by the time we took this picture.

We like the parks, going to the local library, an of course swimming when the pool is open.

Here's a view from a park.  Chase actually works right at that building on the left side of the picture.  And our hotel is down the freeway a bit.  I didn't know it until we got here but Toby Keith is from this humble little town.

So, we've had a lot of 'firsts' happen since we got here...A LOT of things. Once we got here another issue occured in our car, and because it kept having issues after we had taken it in to get fixed the first time (in Jan) we decided to just trade it in.  We ended up getting a car instead of a explorer like our previous.  While we were trading that in, the dealership gave us free tickets to an auto show not far from us so we decided to check it out one weekend.  The girls were thrilled to meet these two characters who made a presence:

The girls have done really well since this change occurred. 

They could careless where we were, as long as they could run around and be kids.

Plus, sleeping on a hideaway bed every night doesn't get old to them.

  

One weekend we made a trip down south to Dallas, TX to visit some family.  My grandparents (who stopped to visit us) were heading that way and stayed there for a week, so before they left we drove down to spend some family time.

We spent a couple days at my aunt & uncles house where two of my cousins and their families came to meet up.  

I can't express enough how great this time was.

We hung out, did lots of catching up, ate out, & hung out some more.  My aunt and uncle are just a few years older than me, so they had 3 young girls that are around my girls' ages.......you can imagine how fun the "Frozen (movie) Sleep-over" was for them!

To summarize, we are still alive and doing fantastic, & feeling grateful.

I am trying to keep up with our non-consistent, ever-moving, so many decisions to make in the next couple months kind of lives.

We will keep in touch. :)