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.

Yes We Saw PW And Her Family…

To be truthful, that’s the main reason I could talk Carol into going.  Not that she doesn’t like rodeo.  She likes the rodeo almost as much as I do.  In fact I’m hoping to get her to go to the Lazy E Arena the next time that the pro bull riders come to town because we both love watching the bull riders.  You have to remember we were both born and raised in Oklahoma.  Besides OU and OSU football, we both grew up playing basketball although I was in OKC playing sissy b-ball and Carol played in a small town where they traveled around to other towns or the other towns came to her school to play and they were a lot tougher than the city schools.  The small towns eat, sleep and breathe girls basketball.  I mean look at coach Sherri Coale, O.U. Women’s basketball coach.  She was a scrappy and tough as nails b.baller in highschool…

But that wasn’t what you wanted to know about, I hear you saying… get on with it already, Helen…

Any of you all that have 10 or 12 year old daughters might want to try taking them to rodeos to meet the young cowboys.

Or you might want to go to try and meet ‘your’ cowboy.

There was an awful lot of ‘eye candy’'… for everyone…

Guys, girls and young’ uns.  There was wranglin’ and ropin’..

And did I say cowboys?

Here they were running the cows for the wild cow milking event down to the chute.

I have to do the proviso thing… these photos are crap, but they are the best I could do with my point and shoot.  The lighting was about the equivalent of shooting up the ‘rectum of an elephant’ to borrow a phrase from my baby brother.    I also tried a few videos… I don’t know if I can get them to post, but I’ll try… Nope… I’ll have to do some work on figuring it out.

Ree is gonna kill me… You see, Ree is Carol’s niece.  SHE  and the kids are the reason I got Carol to go, well, that and we have a van that we can take her in her wheelchair.  Carol’s legs don’t do very good at much walking with all her crappy discs in her back.  So we went to the rodeo, got there and got Carol settled in her chair and went to looking for Ree.  About the time I spotted here she was taking the older boy down for a ‘break’.  I caught up with her and told her that Carol was here and where we were sitting.  She came over and visited for a bit with Carol, then brought each of the kids  (except for the oldest son, he was busy… you know how boys are), to say hi to their great aunt.

  Aunt Carol Sue and the baby boy.

Aunt Carol Sue and the great wild burro rider.

Aunt Carol Sue and Pioneer Girl…

And last but not the least by any means… Pioneer Woman and Pioneer Girl.

A Question For You...

Do you ever run across old photos of relatives and hope to goodness that you don't look like them?

I mean, nothing personal, and maybe it's because she obviously has lost her teeth, but my great grandmother, Mary Venable, is not my most wonderful example of raving beauty. I didn't know her. She was my granddaddy's mother. As sweet and kind as he was, she must have been a good person...

But I'm glad I don't take after her. I figure I'm older now than she was when this picture was taken and I see no similarity.

My mom always taught us to count our blessings. I'm counting this as one.