Good friends are blessings!

This week, my friend Tara, who lives in Oklahoma City, said she had to come up to Tulsa for an appointment and would I like to meet up with her? I was excited about this, because the last time I saw her was about a year ago (we do keep in touch online though). So, we made plans to meet at Chic fil-a for lunch and let the kids play together while we catch up.

The kids played for a long time in the play place, while Tara and I chatted. Then somebody else's kid threw up on the slide....EWWWWW....so yeah, it was time to hit the road, jack! We decided to head to a local park where the kids could keep playing and we could keep talking!

Stephen, Ryan, Emily and Emily walking and talking as they head into the park.

The 2 Emily's playing with sand.

Ryan wasn't so sure about having his picture taken, lol.

Here are me and Tara! We've been friends for quite awhile...we actually met online on a "mommy discussion board" - her and our group of about 10 other moms have all become close friends. I'm glad that she lives close enough that we can spend time together occasionally! We are planning a sleepover next month!

It was a very nice day; the kids all got along; and Tara and I had a chance to catch up on each other's lives. I really enjoyed it!

Family Fun Day...It's the little things...

This past weekend, I really wanted to find something fun and exciting to do. I've really been craving being outside in pretty spring like weather, so I was hoping to find something outdoorsy to do. We looked at going to Mayfest, which is an outdoor art/music festival, and something new called "Spring in the Square" which was a gardening show in a pretty part of town with kids activities and free snowcones (and who doesn't love a free snowcone?!) But, well, this IS Oklahoma after all...the Bipolar weather state. We had iffy weather coming in, and we didn't want to chance it.

So, we kind of played it by ear, like usual. First, we went to the "dollar" theatre and saw the move "The Host." One thing I LOVE about my kids being older now is that we can go see movies that are not necessarily animated, lol. I still pore over the ratings - my favorite website for deciding what is or is not appropriate for my little blessings is James Dobson's Focus On the Family Plugged In site. Click here to check it out. I love how it gives very accurate, and objective, reviews in regards to language, violence, and sexuality, as well as spiritual elements. It is extremely helpful. Anyway, based on the review for "The Host" I decided it would be ok for my kids to see. Other than one scene that was a little racier than I expected, it was a really good movie and my kids really liked it (and so did we!)

We then decided it was snack time, so we went to Wendy's for Frosties - YUM!

You don't know what it took to get this picture...they were not feeling very photogenic that day, lol!

Then we went to Barnes & Noble book store. We knew we were going to go eat dinner somewhere, so where better to kill some time, right? I didn't buy anything, but came out with a long list of books to request at the library, lol!

After breathing in the lovely smell of books and coffee for an hour, we went and ate dinner at one of our favorite pizza buffets, CiCi's. It's not the world's greatest pizza, but it's cheap, and has great variety!

After stuffing ourselves, we decided to go home and break out some games. Billy had bought a new one on clearance awhile back and we hadn't tried it out yet. It's called Imaginiff.







Here is another benefit to having older blessings...the games are a little more fun! We had a lot of fun and laughed a lot!

Sometimes the best days are ones that aren't perfectly planned out. The little things can be just as much fun as big, exciting events!

Summer Reading Program Kickoff!

In case you don't know me...I kinda like books. Ok, not really - I LOVE them! Reading is my passion; I am going to school to be a school media specialist, and I currently work as a library assistant for our school system. So, one of the summer activities I most look forward to is our local library's summer reading program. My kids all love to read, however, in the summer they tend to veg out with their electronics more than I like. So, I try to find fun ways to encourage them to read every day. The library's program rewards them for visiting the library and reading by giving them these really awesome coupon books upon completion of the program. There are usually coupons for free passes to the zoo, aquarium, space museum, sporting events, and free food at local restaurants.

Today we went to a "kickoff party" at one of the local branches. They had lots of little activities going on, but they were more geared to the younger patrons. (waaaaaaah, my kids are big! lol) However, they did have cookies and punch, so Natalie, Emily, and Stephen were happy, lol! And we got signed up for the program, and of course did some browsing!

 

Yep, they managed to find a "few" things to read (and yes, I found a few more for myself too!)...Stephen came home with more than 10 books! We look forward to many hours of reading, and many more visits to the library this summer! 

A return to summer....and blogging!

Alright, so if you look at the posts on here, you'll see that I am basically "resurrecting" an old blog. My sister-in-law, Tracy, has been "hinting" that I get back into keeping up this blog with all my family's happenings. Our life is so incredibly busy during the school year (between working, going to school full time, soccer, basketball, color guard, opera, etc.) that I just couldn't fathom the thought of sitting down at the end of the day to blog. Now that summer is here, and our hectic life has slowed back down, it's a great time to blog about the things we are doing during our break. I can't promise that I'll keep it up once school starts up again...but, we'll give it a go anyway! :)

By the way, you should really check out Tracy's blog here. She is a terrific blogger and has an adorable family!