Well, the wedding I have been talking about is over. It was a very nice wedding, everything went reasonably smoothly and I will probably blog about it later. But today I want to blog about our family.
Yep, my three older girls were all here and we spent a week together. How much fun can we have!!! To Michael (my son-in-law) and Perry (my daughter's boyfriend) what can I say? You obviously have been around at least one of my daughters and you realize what they were like. Perhaps you have had occasion to be around two of them at once. You should have been a little bit prepared. To the general public who had the opportunity to see us together - please keep in mind that we try to maintain a small sense of decorum when we are out in public (but only a small sense). You are not able to experience the full force of our personalities - I'm sorry.
We affectionately call ourselves The Nuts and I guess maybe we do get a little squirrely when we are together. Now; add in the fact that it has been five years since we have all been together and you cannot even begin to imagine what being around us is like. Keep in mind - my girls have very outgoing personalities and love to express themselves.
Now, we devoted the first four days to wedding stuff. My poor grand kids were so bored by the second day. They saw me walk into the kitchen and asked me: Hey, Grandma, can Aunt Charlie come play with us? Aunt Charlie is a very fun aunt. I had to tell them: Sorry Boys, she has to help me with wedding mints. So I had three nine-year-old boys and one eight-year-old girl tired of being stuck at Grandma's house. I kept telling them that it was going to be pretty boring until after the wedding but I promised I would have fun with them afterwards.
So we did wedding work during the day, made mints, prepared food, decorated etc. In the evening we would all gather together and play games either card games or board games. Now this can be pretty entertaining. We have a new game called Say Anything. This game is hilarious and our answers were hilarious. We could put digs in on each other in this game. Now we are typically loud and this game made us louder. And my girls and I have a tendency to laugh. Now when one of us laughs it tends to make the others laugh - I call this contagious laughter. Yep, we suffer from this to an extreme degree. We don't care though. You know that you are having way to much fun if the grand kids are asking you to be quiet they can't sleep. Did this stop us? No! We just shut the living room door and continued to have our fun. This went on every night.
So finally the wedding is over and now it's FUN TIME!! At least that's what I told the grand kids. The adults obviously were already having some fun time. First order of business after lunch on Sunday was a park! Aunt Charlie wanted to go along because she is still such a kid at heart. Since it was such a nice day other people had the same idea. It appeared the park was to busy for some of the kids so we decided to go walk around Turtle Pond (most Tulsans refer to this as Swan Lake) and then to another park on the way back home. So we start walking around Turtle Pond and discover that a couple of swings have been added across the street. YAY! That was exactly what all the kids were wanting. So we went over there and everyone took turns swinging - well except for me. I politely declined the offer. Now it happened that these swings were on a small hill area which had been built up to be level and there was a small concrete wall around the area. At one point the wall is about maybe two feet high. We thought it would be an awesome photo opportunity to catch all the kids jumping off the wall. I did not snap in time for the first shot so a second attempt was made. This turned out to be a good picture but a bad choice for Aunt Charlie to make as she came down on her leg wrong and hurt her bad knee. (Guess she kinda takes after me in that respect. I told her though that she learned a lot earlier than I did that you can't always do what you think is fun when you get older). Yep she hurt her knee and couldn't walk. Chris and I help her hobble to a bench to sit down and I go get the van so we can head home.
We pass the other park on the way home and all the kids holler: Why aren't we stopping? You said we could go to another park. I advise them that Aunt Charlie is hurt and needs to get home. Their response? Can't we at least stop and play for a little bit first? Such sweet youngsters and they show so much concern. LOL When we get home I send the kids inside and tell them to get a pillow for Aunt Charlie's leg and send someone out to help us. They go running in yelling and since it's our family they assume a joke is being played and don't respond. By this time Chris and I have been able to get Charlie partway to the house. Tarinda comes to the door to see what's going on and I assure her that yes we are serious Charlie is hurt could someone help?
Now fast forward a couple of hours. The sisters are going out for some sister time. Grampa and I are going to be awesome and we take the grand kids to Krispy Kreme while the hot light is on. We advise them that this is dinner! Yep, that was a hit with them. They each had three or four donuts for dinner. Can we say 'sugar high'? LOL What fun.
Now it's time for Grampa to go back to work. Boo Hoo Hoo. I'm still on vacation, though so on Monday we decide to go to the Center of the Universe and the Blue Whale and we will also have lunch at Grampa's restaurant. We finally head downtown to find the Center of the Universe (look it up on the Internet if you don't believe me but it is in Tulsa at 1st and Archer). Cool place - you stand in the center of this circle and whatever you say echoes back to you. However, I kind of forgot that Monday was Veteran's Day and the parade was going on and streets were blocked and we couldn't get where we needed to be and so we had to change our plans a little. Now keep in mind, I have one daughter and some of the kids with me in one car and everyone else is in the van following me. They thought I was totally bonkers with my driving but it happens. So what if I kind of forgot that some streets were one way and some weren't I never actually went down a one way street the wrong way. I knew where I was all the time just not how to get to where I wanted to be. So I did a little Fall Foliage tour as we decided to postpone the Center of the Universe for later in the day. We go return tuxes and tablecloths from the wedding then head to Grampa's for lunch. Nothing better than fried chicken. Nothing better than taking ten very loud people into the smallest Church's Chicken there is (seating capacity of maybe twenty) and taking over the restaurant. Charlie did apologize to the two gentlemen sitting beside her and said she hoped they hadn't planned on a quiet lunch. It didn't help that Charlie and K.C. started a straw blowing war with the kids. I'm sure that the entire place was glad when we left.
On to the Blue Whale in Catoosa. What a neat place. The kids enjoyed climbing on it and hiking around the pond area. And we saw a sign for The Nut House. How perfect could this be? Yep, we went on down the road and checked it out. To bad all the nuts weren't with us - well maybe not for the people who were there. Then we head on back to find the Center of the Universe again. On the way we decide we need chocolate cokes from Sonic. So we have our cokes and make it to the Center of the Universe and things are going well. We head towards home with the intention of spending about 30 minutes at the park on the way. Wouldn't you know one of the kids pokes a hole in the bottom of his cup and now we have chocolate coke all over the back seat - a lot of chocolate coke. I find a blanket and put on the seat but when he poked a hole in the cup a whole lot of it went on his pants. It looked like he had a really bad accident and didn't make it to the restroom. Of course, we all got quite a bit of enjoyment out of his discomfort. When we stop at the park, the kids say: But what about Billy? He looks like he had diarrhea. Billy said he didn't care what anyone thought about him or what they said. Good attitude Billy. I think they played a total of five minutes then decided it would be fun to walk home. We adults sat there a little while and decided it might be best if we left the park since we had no kids there. Everyone made it home safe and sound and we went down to pick up the newlyweds and go out for a family dinner.
Yes, it was a great visit even with all the mishaps we had. We have some wonderful memories of laughter and fun and to my knowledge none of the adults got into fights although there were a few incidents with the little kids (it's hard when there's one girl and three boys so close in age). But any misunderstandings didn't last very long. I hope we don't have to wait five years for all of us to be together again.
No comments:
Post a Comment