OKLAHOMA

At one point during the summer I flew out to Oklahoma to look at houses with Matt.  On my flight back to Cali I just so happened to run into Mr. Cool J in the OKC airport.  I knew I'd love Oklahoma from that moment on. ha.



soooo, after a long, fun summer we packed up our van and drove 20 hours to Oklahoma. 

To arrive at a ghetto apartment that Matt rented for our family to live in while our house is being built.

I cried when we got to the apartment.

More than once.

More than 10 times even.

It's hard to go from living in a home with all of your belonging, to living in a pretty ghetto apartment with a mattress on the floor and none of your belonging.

I haven't seen my shoes in 5 months.

Poor me.

Anyways, shortly after we got to Oklahoma Hallie turned 7, then the next day

I turned 30.  THIRTY.

Sorry Hallie, my birthday wins this year.
Above picture is me on my 30th birthday when I wasn't crying. 

I partly blame PMS and partly blame too great of expections for my 30th birthday meltdown.

I also partly blame this apartment.

I'll just say there was lots of crying, and poor Matt received the full force of my crazy wrath.

The guy got me a kitchenaide mixer I've wanted forever.

He just didn't know I didn't want it for my 30th birthday.

I acted like a TOTAL brat.

And he now uses it (still in its box) as a nightstand.

I'm excied to bust it out when we get into our house.

Moving right along.  I'm 30 now, no biggie.  (throat clear).

We didn't waste any time once we arrived in OK seeking out Horrocks family kind of fun. 

We found an awesome lake whose awesomeness is on display behind me in this picture. Paige and I liked hanging out on the shore.

And staying hydrated in the blistering heat.

My kids were in heaven.

And Paige is absolutely gorgeous.

We are big believers that you can find fun and beauty everywhere you live.  That's why every time someone tisk tisked and said they felt bad for me that we were moving to Okalhoma I cringed.  Firstly because every person who said that had also never been to Okalhoma.  Secondly because if there is one thing I have learned from all of our travels it's this:

We live in a beautiful world and you can find happiness anywhere you live.

It's all in the mindset and the willingness to explore.  Oklahoma is already proving fun and beautiful and we are looking forward to years of exploring it and it's surroundings.

Oh my cute kids.  Hallie started 2nd grade and Chase started Kindergarted a few weeks after we got to OK.  They both LOVE school and LOVE their teachers.  The transition for Hallie to a new school has gone better than I could have ever hoped for.  She's made friends quickly and easily. 

And as for Chase: he was made for school.  He loves rules and learning and being good.   Perfect for Kindergarten.  His teacher loves him.

Oh my pretty girl.

And my cute boy.

Hallie walking into her classroom on her first day.

 And Chase outside of his room.

Happy Mom and Dad get a little more one on one time these days with a napping baby and two kids happily in school.  

A few weeks ago we got to experience the joys of the Oklahoma State Fair. 

It was truely a beautiful thing.

Deep fried everything you could imagine....on a stick.

We ate ourselves sick.

And I start to feel sick just thinking about it.

However it was something that had to be experienced.

Look at his drunken fair food face.

Remember that house that I've mentioned a few times?  Well this is it.  This is the start of it anyways.



It's going to be amazing. They started the brick a few days ago and finished the drywall on the inside.  I'll keep the progress posted on here as we go.

And then there was summer....

Just as we were leaving Germany our friend Nicole took our family pictures.  I'll post all of my favorites on another post.  This one below is my very VERY favorite though.  It will be hung above the fireplace in our new home...when we move in to it.  Have I mentioned we are building a house?  It's going to be beautiful.  In the mean time we live in a notsobeautiful apartment.  More on that later.

 

Nicole also did a 6 month old photo shoot with Paige (about 6 months ago..) and this is my very favorite shot from that shoot.  I'm thinking huge square canvas print?  Maybe near my entryway?



 

Here is a run down of our summer.  Swimming, swimming, swimming.  Since Mary was getting married in CA right after we got back from Germany, and we were homeless, the kids and I just vacationed and road tripped for the summer while Matt got our lives set up in OK.  We missed him alot, although he did fly out to see us 3 times which made it feel not so bad. I love the above picture of Chase.  

 

The one theme of the summer was definently cousins.  My kids were in heaven spending so much time with all their cousins and we miss them so much!  (side note: moving back to America brought with it cell phone contracts and iphones.  The big draw back to my iphone is I never get out the camera.  Hence poor quality pictures.  I'll try to do better.)

 

Mary's wedding was really gorgeous.  And Mary of course was gorgeous.  I'm dying for an original of this picture of all 8 of my siblings to hang in my house as well.  They are all just so good looking.

 

I love this picture Mary.  Love it. We are so happy for you.

Shortly after Mary's wedding the kids and I drove up to Utah to spend a month hanging out with my older sister Lara and her family.  We had such a good time.  Hallie was is baby heaven.  Lara has a set of twin girls that are 3 months younger than Paige.  They were all so cute together playing on the floor.  How lucky is Paige to have 2 automatic college roomates?  Lara and I will insist that they go to the same college.  haha.

Did I mention that Lara also has an awesome trampoline in her backyard?  And two increadibly cute boys for Chase to play with?  Yeah, they had a really good time.

 

For the 4th of July my cousin Chad came over to Lara's house and partied with us.  It was fun to see his beautiful family and get to know his cute girls.  Love having a big family.

On one of Matt's trips out we went and hiked Timpanogos with the kids.  They were such troopers and loved exploring the caves up at the top.  If you live in Utah, take your family on this hike.  It's a fun one.

I don't particularly love carrying a baby up a mountain.  Luckily she's reallly cute.

And I have a husband who will take turns carrying her.

 

 

So there's a REALLY brief recap of our summer.  There's a lot I didn't get pictures of because I was too busy having a really good time.  I'm grateful for a good family who put me up for the summer, their poor homeless sister/granddaughter.  Matt's family fed us and played with the kids and relieved me when I started feeling overwhelmed with being a single Mom.  I'm grateful for them and how good they are to my kids.  We are blessed.

Up next....Oklahoma adventures.

Last glimpses of Germany.

   Putting this post together nearly left me rocking back and forth in a corner crying.  I miss my life in Germany so SO much.  So much more than I could have imagined.  Now that the excitement of all the things that we missed in America has worn off, all that is left is an aching heart for the people and places I love in Germany.  I'm sure things here in Oklahoma will be a lot better when our house is finised being built and we are finally out of this spider infested apartment.  I'm talking about spiders the size of small dogs.  Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating.  Only a little though.  Anyways.

I miss Germany and miss our friends and miss the farmers market in Sittard and miss our house and our local ice cream shop and Geilenkichen Elementary School and I could go on and on.  You get the picture, I miss it.  These pictures are the images of our final couple weeks in the country we came to love so so much. 

 Our friends the Barkers threw us a going away party with just a few of our closest friends.  It was such a nice afternoon to spend eating yummy foods with the kids playing out in the sunshine.  I love all of these cute little faces.

 For Chase's last day of preschool I brought in cupcakes and a camera to get a few shots with all of his buddies.  He really loved his preschool and these kids were all so much fun for him to spend time with.

 I also brought cupcakes to Hallie's school for her last day and got a few shots with her class.  She cries when she thinks about or talks about her teacher that she misses so much.  I cry when I think about class sizes of 11.  We miss that for sure.  Although she is doing really well at her new school and loves her teacher and has made lots of friends.  She has a knack for making friends which will serve her well living a life as a military child.

 This is Hallie and Justice.  Justice was Hallie's NOT boyfriend.  She knew that 6 year olds were not allowed to have boyfriends, but they are allowed to have crushes.  So they agreed that they both had crushes on eachother.  I have a feeling that my life is going to be full Hallie's mutual "crushes".  She still talks about how she loves Justice and she misses him so much.  Ah, young love.  Much much too young.

Moving right along.  We took one last trip before we left Germany with our good friends the Barkers.  We spent a few days in the Bavarian Alps staying in some cute cabins next door to eachother.  It was a slightly rainy, but really great weekend.  Relaxing, swimming, hiking, playing settlers (I'm pretty sure I won....I mean, I ususally do), stoping for random photo shoots, going to Church in Innsbruck, etc. We miss the Barkers.

 I just want to eat her up.

 I've noticed a pretty serious lack of castles for backdrops in Oklahoma. 

 Just a bouquet of wild flowers from the Bavarian alps.

 Like I said, delicious.

 Baby tricks.

 

 We went and hiked a gorge in the alps that was gorgeous.  It was supposed to be a 1 hour hike that turned into a 4 hour hike because of taking a wrong turn.  (The men decided they knew a better route back to the cars...haha).  I didn't mind though, because it was gorgeous.  We all had a death grip on our children for this part of the hike though.

 Now THIS is my kind of camping and my kind of settlers.  Can you see the clash of healthy/caffeine/sugar?  It all balanced out to equal zero calories.  Trust me, I did the math.

The kids at Eidelweiss.  Love this resort.

We are flat Stanley failures.  If you are ever considering sending us your flat stanley, don't.  We never sent him back.  May have even lost him.  But he lived a good life, even though it was short. Sorry Owen.

In the hot tub at Eidelweiss.

 Another important event that happened before we left Germany was Chase learned to ride his bike.  Two years younger than Hallie did.  Over achiever.

 I think these pictures are the ones that hurt my heart the worst. This was the walk from our house to the local icecream shop that we went on a few times a week.  It was a stroll through farm land and horse pastures and it's all I want in life.  I mean, just look at what my life looked like!  It's hard for even me to believe.

 All the horse pastures around our home were filled with these Norweigan horses.  They were just gorgeous and were always up for a little petting from the kids.  Or our old apples.

 We loved the spring time when the babies were out with their Mothers.

 Chase and cute little Norah. 

Oh my heart...aching.

 

This is the final image of Germany that will forever be in my mind.  When I think of Germany, this is what I see.  Germany friends: We miss you.  Know that we think about you everyday and miss you every minute.  I'm so grateful for the impact that each one of you have had on our lives as a family and my life personally.  At a time when we were so far from family, you were our family.  And remember, our house in Oklahoma is going to be awesome and it has a guest room with YOUR name on it!