Meeting Randolph the Bull: City life vs. Country Life

Drew and I live in a suburb of a large city.   Although we live on a corner lot, houses are very close by and it just feels very "suburban".   So, it is always nice to visit my parents at their home in Oklahoma, where they live on about 22.5 acres (their lot is 2.5 acres and they lease a 20 acre lot behind them from the city).  Life out there is just different....in many good ways.   Even though I live in the city and truly do enjoy a lot of the city's amenities, I feel I am a "country girl" at heart.   My parents still live in the house that I basically grew up in.  Therefore, visiting them always brings back fond memories of life as a child.  I also love letting our kids enjoy so many of those things that I enjoyed growing up.  Even though they live on quite a bit of land, my parents also live in a suburb (Broken Arrow--about 100,000 residents) of a fairly large city (Tulsa, OK).  

Since we planned on spending an entire week there, we decided to visit an aunt and uncle that live about an hour away from my parents.  They have always invited us to visit, but it is so difficult to find time on our short visits there.  So, we were excited about the special treat to visit them at their farm, since we were in town for about a week.  My aunt Clara Sue and uncle Randy live in a very small rural community. So, it is even a drastic difference living there compared to my parent's house.  They built their house over 30 years ago.  And, when I say "they" built their house, I don't mean that they had it built.  I mean they built it.  They carried every single stone and put it in place--the same place where it still stands (they did a good job!)  They also built a lot of the furniture in their home.  And, although they no longer have goats and chickens, they do still have cattle and horses.  The kids don't get to experience life like that very often, so it truly was a special treat for them.

Here come some of the cows...they know we have treats for them at the fence.

Here is Luke meeting Randolph, their Bull. This guy is quite the bull.  He's huge and probably weighs 1200 lbs, according to my aunt.

Here, Drew is feeding Randolph a treat.  When he was at the fence getting treats, the other cows stood back.  They know who rules the farm.

Abbey and Luke thought Randolph was pretty cool.  Abbey just giggled every time Drew fed him a treat.  Luke thought the "moos" were funny.

We tried some fishing in their pond.  Grandpa taught the boys a little bit about fishing.

My brother, Jeremy, and my nephew, Traber trying to catch a fish.

My aunt bought some bubble wands for the kids.  They had a lot of fun playing with them out there.  You can watch your bubbles fly for hundreds of yards when you are out in the country!

After a delicious, completely homemade lunch (my aunt is a wonderful cook, so this was a really special treat!), we headed back home.

We enjoyed some country life at my parents' house as well:

Luke, checking out my parents' garden.

Picking some bell peppers for Grandma.

Horses have funny noses.

Abbey loved feeding the horses.  Little Miss Independent would often pick a tiny blade of grass and head toward the horse barn to feed them.

Eagerly awaiting Abbey's daily feeding.

Luke was slightly more timid around the horses than Abbey, but still enjoyed feeding them (with long blades of grass).

Here is a little video of Abbey feeding the horses:

In the country, you can feel free....and run forever and still be safe on your property. I loved that growing up.

Perhaps in the city, Abbey hasn't noticed her shadow as much.  She noticed it one evening when we went for a walk, and it frightened her a bit.  She kept trying to run away from it.  You can see her looking for her "comfort spot" in this photo (her finger in her belly button).

The air is fresh in the country and there is plenty of space for dreaming and imagining.  The weather also happened to be pretty much perfect while we visited last week.   Needless to say, we spent about 80% of our time there outdoors.  It was divine!

And lastly, when you spend time in the country, "city-things" matter less.  Technology isn't as important.  (I barely picked up my smart phone or used the computer for the entire week we were there.  I was too busy enjoying God's creation and my family.)   Linnea, Lilly (our nieces) and Luke are enjoying God's creation and each other in this photo.

Independence Day Fun!

We were thrilled to be able to spend a whole week with our Oklahoma Family last week. We did something fun and exciting on every day of the week. I plan on writing at least a couple of blog posts about our fun times there, to continue our family's online journal. But first, I just wanted to share a quick pictorial post of our fabulous fun on the fourth.

We started the day at a super-cool park and splash pad. Look at this huge slide!

Abbey felt like a big girl pushing her younger cousin, Natalie, in the swing:

Brody and Luke had so much fun at the splash pad. Actually, I should clarify that—Luke had a blast watching Brody get soaked by the large buckets of water that were being dumped on him at the splash park. Luke wasn't as interested in getting soaked by the buckets, but thought Brody was pretty funny. 

Then, loads of immediate family, extended family and friends arrived to my parents' house for the annual Independence Day extravaganza. My favorite part of the evening is simply enjoying being around all of these fun people for the fourth celebration. It is the only time of the year that I get to see some of these special folks.  And, of course, there is a ton of delicious food to eat and beautiful fireworks to watch.

Little Miss 4th of July!

My brother, Jason, pulling a booby trap.

Our niece, Kaylee, tossing "poppers".

Hey--that's not a firecracker in the air---it's Kaylee!

Traber, our nephew, concentrating on riding the tricycle.

My niece, Linnea, taking in all of the festivities.

Even though he wasn't a fan of loud fireworks, Luke enjoyed throwing the "poppers" and trying to catch the parachutes.

Traber caught a parachute.

Abbey loves to give daddy kisses!

Drew and I enjoyed playing with sparklers and camera settings.

It turns out my handwriting with sparklers is no better than on paper.  I am trying to write the word, "hot," with my sparkler here. 

We even made sure to capture some formal family photos this year in our red, white and blue attire.

Grandma, Grandpa and their grandchildren

One of our family friends offered to take a photo of my immediate family.  Thanks, Brandy!

Fun times! We are already missing hanging out with these wonderful people and are looking forward to the next time we get to visit.

Our First Taste of Our "Crop"

We decided a couple of months ago to try our first "garden."  I have been wanting to build a container garden for quite some time, but Drew was not as much on board with the idea. The "realist" that he is saw a lot of work involved, whereas the practical optimist in me saw fresh vegetables and herbs and less trips to the grocery store for those items (as well as some money saved--can you tell that I can really be a "salesperson" sometimes?)  So, we compromised (after several sales pitches by yours truly) and used mostly pots that we had around the house, as well as a couple of "topsy turvy" planter kits that I bought on clearance at Ross ($2.99).  I love the topsy turvy containers.  The plants in those are extremely easy to take care of, bugs never seem to reach them, and you cannot over-water them.  They have grown rapidly with very easy care.

I will admit that I feel a little bit like a kid with the amount of excitement that I get "checking" the plants every day.  It is fun to watch the fruit or vegetable plants begin as a little sprout or seedling, grow flower blossoms and then morph each day a little bit into something that we enjoy eating.  Even though watering the plants daily is actually a task that has to be done, it is something I really enjoy.  Therefore, it never seems like a "chore."  And, it only takes a few minutes--a few minutes that I get to check the progress of our little plants!  It's so exciting.

Well, the day finally came yesterday--the day we got to taste our first tomatoes.  We have been enjoying our herbs very regularly.  There is nothing like the taste of fresh basil!  I have been putting it on a LOT of dishes. But, yesterday was our first taste of vegetables (or, I guess tomatoes or fruits.)  Besides a variety of tomatoes and several herbs, we are also growing red bell peppers and yellow squash.

Some of our cherry tomatoes from our topsy turvy planter.

Luke was excited to help make dinner...which even involved picking our own tomatoes.

Some of our "crop"

Rolling out the whole wheat pizza crust.   Click here for the very simple recipe.  The dough literally takes 5 minutes to prepare.

Teamwork!

Brushing on the sauce.  We like our pizzas thin, so the dough recipe makes two pizzas.  We made one with tomato sauce base and the other with a lemon olive oil base.  They are both delicious~

Time for our toppings, including freshly picked lemon basil and cherry tomatoes from our garden.

Into the oven it goes for a few minutes.

And Voila!  Here is one of our pizzas which would soon be devoured.  Luke said it was his favorite pizza ever!  I think it had something to do with him being the chef!  :-)

Our Semi-Annual Date

Drew and I had a simply divine semi-annual date this past Saturday.  It happened to be our 5th wedding anniversary a week and a half ago and this past year has been quite a year.  So, we were thrilled when Drew's parents offered to come up and watch the kids for a day, while we enjoyed some quality time together sans kiddos.  We truly don't have enough quality time together without the kids.

Honestly, we have been so extremely busy lately that we didn't even plan anything for the day.  But, we did browse the web the evening before and got an idea of a few things we wanted to make sure we did while out together.

First, we decided to enjoy Austin like tourists do.  We visited several murals and snapped some photos while there.   We also checked out a downtown farmer's market.

Remember, we snapped a photo of this when while out with the kids a couple of weekends ago.  We found that this was sort of difficult to do with the kids.  So, we decided this would be a perfect thing to do together on our date.

We discovered this cool place with a lot of "art".

We were fairly close to whole foods downtown (the Huge Flagship Store), so we decided to stop by for a quick refreshment.  We sat down for a moment and drank some cherry limeade, and then I told Drew that I was needing to use the restroom.  I asked him, "Do you want to just meet me?"  I was pretty sure he mumbled, "sure."  Then, I headed to the restroom while he finished cleaning up the table area.  After I came out of the restroom, I searched for Drew, who I assumed would be waiting there outside the restroom.  Drew had my phone and his own phone in his pocket, because we decided to leave my purse in the car (and my phone wouldn't fit in my pocket).  I paced back and forth from the table where we were seated just minutes before (at the other end of the store), to the restroom several times--and without success.  After about 15 minutes of searching, I decided to head to the parking garage to see if he happened to decide to head to the car.  He wasn't there.  After 20 minutes of searching, I went to the service desk and said, "I know you probably haven't heard this request in about 20 years, but can you page someone for me?"  The nice lady at the desk told me that it happens more than you think.  So, over the loud speaker, she said, "Attention Whole Foods Customer, Drew, would you please meet your party at the self-checkout?  Drew, please meet your party at the self-checkout." I stood there like a little sad puppy who just wanted someone to adopt it.  People at the check-outs glanced over, and gave me little looks of pity.  I waited for about 10 more minutes, then I glanced over and finally saw Drew entering the store via escalator from the parking garage.  Oh my goodness!   Never was I so happy to see him but also so frustrated at the same time.  What a weird feeling!  Although the situation now seems pretty funny, at the time, I was just so upset at losing a good half-hour of our quality time together pacing back and forth looking for Drew.  It wasn't for about 15 minutes of good discussion later that we would be laughing about it.  Apparently, Drew thought I wanted to "meet him" at the car.  In my mind, he was meeting me at the bathroom.  When I entered the escalator to go to the car in the parking garage to look for him, he took the elevator to the store from the garage to look for me.  This is why he wasn't in the car when I searched for him there.  Either way, we decided that the moral of the story is that we would each have a phone before getting separated in a store again.  Now that we are laughing at the story, I decided it was a pretty funny situation on a "date" and a comical series of events to share.  We love each other so much and even in frustrating times like this we can tell what a huge blessing our relationship is to each other.
We had a pretty amazing rest of the day.  We did some shopping:

We had lunch at a new food truck.  And then, we had dessert at a new homemade ice cream store.  Oh. My. Goodness. We had dessert.

Lick offers the most delicious ice cream I have eaten in my entire life.  Seriously.  Can you tell from my goofy face above?  This place sources its seasonal ingredients locally to create some pretty eclectic combinations, such as roasted beets and mint and goat cheese, thyme and honey.   But, they also have some of my favorite combinations, like dark chocolate with olive oil and sea salt, and caramel salt lick (with homemade caramels and a hint of sea salt).  My small homemade waffle cone was divided with these two amazing flavors.  Drew chose the fresh mint and chocolate chunk.  This place even offers dairy free and vegan options.  We. Will. Be. Back.  If you come to visit us from out of town, you will be coming with us to this place.

Then we did some more shopping and exploration of Austin.  This kind of stuff is normally tough to do with little ones.  Abbey normally takes two 2-hour naps per day.   On the weekends, we usually consolidate it to one nap, so we can do more fun things together as a family outside of our home.  But still, it is normally difficult to get in and out of the car with the kids as much as we did on Saturday.  So, this was a special treat.

We finished the day with a delicious dinner and headed home to say goodnight to the kids.  Having these dates (even when infrequent) always reminds me how awesome it is to be married to my best friend in the world.  I told Drew on Saturday that I couldn't have even created in my head a more amazing life partner than what God has blessed me with.  God always has a way of reminding me that His are better than mine.  Feeling SO BLESSED lately!