I Know, I Know…

I’ve been A.W.O.L. a lot this summer.  I have no excuses.  I could tell you that it is depression related or that I’ve been tired from working out in the heat although I rarely have been outside from noon or one in the afternoon BECAUSE of the heat.  Or I can just flat out say that other than the garden stuff I haven’t been very inspired by much to tell you about in new or old stories. 

Sue Sue is all ears now… mom is making a BIG announcement…

I’ve been doing some research and if  a person, in this case moi, does something for thirty days in a row it becomes a habit.  So instead of sitting on my butt playing on Face Book (my bad habit)  I’ve challenged myself to do a post every day in September to make a good habit.  It may only be photos of flowers or the dogs or it may be a childhood story or a grown up story but I’m going to write something every day in September to try to re-habitualize myself back to posting. 

Chloe’s saying, “Yeah right, mom… I wanna see this happen.  If you don’t post every day I get an extra treat!”  She threw the gauntlet down.  She needs to lose some serious poundage (as do I but we all know I take better care of my girls than myself) so now I’m locked into this challenge. 

Anyone care to make a friendly wager whether or not I’ll succeed?

Same Song, Second Verse…

Here we go again… second day of play!  There was volleyball going on…

Steve (the dad and husband of Nancy Lu)  and David (my sister’s son, my nephew)were taking on Chris and Jeremy (not in these photos) Steve and Nancy’s boys, my great nephews in more ways than one.

  After each game into the pool to cool off and water to rehydrate and get ready for whomever else calls out to take on the winners.  David was a definite plus for anyone that played with him because he is one tall young man.

Melanie, Nancy and Steve’s daughter, talking to her husband Dave there in the corner, her #2 son and her nephew are getting ready to go into the pool.

Melanie is reaching for her nephew, Kaeden, to help him into the pool. There are very strict rules that no one goes into the pool without an adult outside with them and, amazingly, all the kids understand that rule.  When Kaeden goes in by himself, without someone helping him, he always gets in his ring and along with his floaties on.  All of the little ones that don’t yet swim well are limited to the shallow end of the pool unless they are with an adult and all have their floaties on their arms, even in the shallow end. 

Grandma to most of the little ones, my niece.  Her kids are some of my greats and her grandchildren are my great-greats. Lord, that makes me feel old.  I diapered most of the people that you’ve seen in these photos of the last couple of days.

Not bad for being a grandma!  Nancy has always loved having a pool to play in since she was little.  This is her first in-ground pool and thankfully it’s a big one because three of her five children have children and Jeremy’s fiancé has a daughter that we all consider his.  Her and Steve’s fifth child is adopted and is only four so it will be a while before Melissa adds to the grandchild brood.

Melissa with Steve… one tired little girl having some lunch before her nap time.  This child loves tomatoes more than any child I’ve ever known.

Jeremy, come home again as soon as possible… we all have missed you and I enjoyed getting to meet Heather and Haylee.  What a wonderful addition to our family and what a great reason for us all to be together for some summer fun and catching up with each other.  There may not be a beach in Oklahoma but there sure are a mess of family that loves you all.

What Do You Do?

When the temperature is 102 F. and the heat factor is 108 F.?  If you are as lucky as me you have a sweet niece and her husband that have a pool and family visiting from out of town that gives me the excuse to drive about an hour to Bethany, a bedroom community of Okla. City, and jump in and play with my nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews and a few great, greats.

Yours truly and my great, great niece Brooke.

A whole mess of heathens…  The young man closest to us with the love of his life and her daughter and his baby sister is my great nephew and his family visiting from Florida.  Jeremy, not to be confused with another Jeremy in the family, brought Heather and Haley home to meet the family.  Melissa (baby sister) and Haley hit it off from the airport.  Where you find one you find the other. Those little girls are having too much fun playing.

  This is what we call fun in our family… get a bunch together and play volleyball in the back yard and play in the pool and eat.  I’ll post more on the eating because we are doing this all again today after church and there will be more of our wild bunch in from Ft. Worth and Nancy and Steve have quite a spread planned for our lunch.  In the meantime I thought I’d post a few pictures for those of you suffering through the sweltering heat with us that don’t have a pool and a mess of kids to play with in it.

My great nephew Chris, brother of Jeremy…

Jeremy, home from Florida, for a few days of mama’s hugs and brother and sisters loving and teasing and story telling…

He’s making sure to get the point of his story across…

Aunt Helen trying to help get the fourth person in the big ring… they all tumped over. 

My sister is up from Ft. Worth for a visit and she and Sandie Kay, another great niece, are talking about Sandie’s nursing courses she’ll be taking this next semester.  That handsome fellow that you can kind of see between them is the other Jeremy, Sandie’s husband. 

My nephew Bill, probably telling his niece Melanie, some kind of story.

Dave is Melanie’s husband.  There is an abundance of tattoos in this family but I have to say, as the old auntie, they are all in good taste.  No nasty uglies, either words or pictures.

My great niece, Sandie.  She is such a doll and I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like because she and Jeremy live up north and east of Tulsa and she is busy with school and being a mom and wife.  When the weather cools off I’m going up for a visit and teach her how to bake a potato.  It’s one thing that I can cook and she says she can’t cook them so I’ll help her with that and Jeremy will grill the steaks…  Sounds like a fair swap to me.

I’ll take some more pictures today but I just thought I would throw these out to you all and ask you what you do to cool off in the heat of summer?

Oklahoma Simmers This Summer…

This is the home I grew up in from the age of about four and a half.  There were six of us kids spread out over a 17 year period and I’m the next to the youngest.  Before this home the only home I remember was a much smaller shotgun home.  For those of you that don’t know what a shotgun home is it’s one that you can open the front door and the back door and shoot a shotgun and it will go straight through.  I don’t remember for certain but I think in was a three bedroom, one bathroom for all eight of us… six kids and mom and dad.  Any way, my dad worked hard in growing his and his partner’s company and dad and mom both were very frugal and so they were able to buy this home about four blocks away from the capitol in Okla. City.

This is the ‘big house’ as I call it from the back.  The reason I decided to post and write about the home I grew up in is because back in the day we had no air conditioning.  The house was built facing the north and there were lots of windows as you can see from these photos.  In the summertime the windows were open and if there was any southern breeze at all even on the hottest of days at night time it cooled enough to be able to sleep good.

Today the a/c quit at Cuz’s house.  It’s 2:45 a.and it’s almost cooling down enough that I may be able to go to sleep.  It was only 104 F. today and is supposed to be 105 degrees tomorrow with 100 + degree heat all week. It’s down to 82 degrees right now, I have the windows in my room opened and the fan blowing on high and it is almost comfortable.   Hopefully the a/c  people will be out tomorrow and be able to repair it.

Ya know, 50-55 years ago the heat didn’t seem to bother us… now it’s almost  impossible for me to deal with in my 60’s.  All I want to do is sit very still in front of the fan turned on to high and for once I can definitely say it’s not a hot flash… It’s just H.O.T.