On Friday, Will had his "Dawg Dash" race. The 3rd grade has been practicing and working on running longer and longer each time with their distance. It was pretty rainy off and on all day Friday so we didn't even know if the race would be on. I grabbed my umbrella and headed up to the school to cheer on my oldest. Lord knows, he has cheered me on for countless races over the years.
There was another 3rd grade mom who bought all the boys in his class this awesome pink shirt. Each grade was given a class color to wear on this race and, of course, Will's class drew the color he has sworn he would never wear. Thankfully, there were other boys that must have thought the same thing so an awesome mom came up with the idea that if she got them all matching "manly" pink shirts it wouldn't be a problem. She was right! Will loves this shirt and color now and even wore it under his jersey on Saturday morning for his flag football game (which he scored 1 TD and got 1 interception in).
Also, on Friday Owen came home with a drawing lesson for me. He has recently begun Art this quarter and he couldn't be more excited to show me what he's learning (almost daily). One day was his profile that he learned how to "add details" to. Friday was his "Liberty Bell". Once I learned what he was actually attempting to draw, I didn't think it was half bad:) I really like that he's loving something at school and enjoying coming home to show off his new knowledge!
Saturday morning I awoke at 5am to get in our LAST training run for the Tulsa Run (which is Halloween morning). Melinda, Kristi, and I are Uber thankful that we have not scheduled anymore early runs. Whew, that feels good! We did a new route this weekend that had quite a bit of inclines on it in hopes that our bodies would get used to them a tad more since the Tulsa Run is one of (if not the most) hilliest race I have ever ran. Best of luck to all the runners on Saturday! I know how much time and devotion it takes to train for these races. I'm ready to tackle it and move on and even more ready for SLEEPING IN on Saturday's. Oh yeah, baby!!
Monday was my dad's birthday. My dad's 58th birthday. Man, I'm thankful he's healthy, active, loves to spend time with my boys and his family, and thankful he's gonna be my neighbor for many years to come.
For his birthday he wanted to go mini golfing with the family and eat dinner at Cheesecake Factory. I can never turn down good dessert, so we went. Okay, that wasn't the only reason we went but it was a factor:)
My Papaw made the trip down from Bartlesville to see his son (my dad) and spend time with his grandkids and great grandkids. He got through the few hours with us, we spoke of Mamaw, and there weren't tears (although he does always sound right on the brink). I could tell he enjoyed his time with his family and missed his wife. Who wouldn't after that many years together. I know it was good for him to get out and do this so I'm happy he came!
Steven let my dad win (by one stroke) for his birthday (these are Steven's words and not mine) and then we were all off to CF for some cheesecake...I mean dinner...I mean cheesecake. Okay, stop hounding me. I ate both!
I am thankful for all the great men in my life, in Steven's life, and in my boys' lives, but on Monday we celebrated my dad. I literally wouldn't be here and wouldn't be a mother and wife without this man. Words can not express my love for him and I will be forever thankful to God for giving him to me.
Happy birthday Dad! We love you so much! I leave you with an oldie but a goodie of Pappy with his WP (Will Parker). GO ROYALS!!!!
The second half of FB was just as good as the first half but you have to throw in some tired parents, cranky kids, and tears (mostly from the kids:) Thanks to late nights and shows that didn't even begin until 8pm, we had some children who broke down at certain points of the weekend over this or that. That's to be expected though and I think, overall, the kids did great. I do believe that we made it through with only 3 of the 5 having breaking points at some hour on the trip! That's a success in my book!
Thursday night was the Acrobats of China I'm gonna be honest with you and tell you that we weren't too sure how this show was going to pan out. I mean, it didn't even start until 8:00, we had been going for 2 days now, and how long can you really watch little people fly around? We were WRONG! This show was awesome, it held all of our attention spans, the kids were captivated the whole time, they served snacks before, during, and after the show...and did I mention the flying little people? Geez! Do these Chinese acrobats have bones? We watched an 11 year old boy hold his body sideways on a pole, upside down, inside out, on one arm, ON A POLE. He was 11. We watched grown men lift grown men over their heads on one hand or balanced on, wait for it, just their heads. We saw men fly through hoops at incredible speeds, flip handsprings like they were Gumby, and swing on ropes as if the ropes were glued to their bodies instead of just hooked on a toe or in between their teeth. It had me on the edge of my seat, gasping for their safety, for 2 hours. It helped that we were on the 2nd row. First hand action!
Friday morning was Silver Dollar City (along with most all of Branson and near cities). Honestly, for as busy as it was the lines were not uber terrible. I think Saturday would have been worse so I'm glad we decided to come on Wednesday so we could leave by Saturday because by then the traffic in the city was becoming challenging.
Let me preface by saying Steven and I had a massive parent fail while at SDC. No, we didn't lose our children (thanks in part to one of my friends brilliant ideas to dress the boys in neon) BUT we mistook a ride to be "not scary" when in fact, it was probably the fastest most scariest roller coaster Steven and I have ever ridden. I mean, it was wooden! How scary can a wooden roller coaster be? We've never seen a wooden roller coaster that can go ON IT'S SIDE and UPSIDE DOWN! Ooooopppssss. We got the boys to go on it with us (Owen was being incredibly brave this day because he wanted to do everything Paxton was doing). After the ride was over and I was almost in tears, I fully expected to turn around and see my precious children missing a head (mine almost flew off), puking (insert Will's name), or crying hysterically (insert either boys name). Instead, I saw two boys that were in such shock they didn't know what to say. They weren't crying, they actually weren't talking at all, and they had a look of sheer terror written all over their faces. So, like I said. Massive parent fail as we should've rode it first to be the judge of whether or not our offspring should have risked their lives to be on it.
Thanks to getting older, rides effect me way more than they used to. I just can't ride ride after ride over and over and feel normal. Thank you to the roller coaster from HELL for making me feel like (same word as used before) for 2 hours after. Will and I just couldn't do anymore so while others were riding fun things, I took that precious opportunity to teach Will how to take selfies. I mean, why not right? This was the first one he took on his own. He got half his face. Great first attempt!
Fall Break is over, kids are back to school, I am now caught back up on laundry, Norman is happy his family arrived safely back home to feed him dog treats, and now...many days later, my head has forgiven me for riding that stupid roller coaster. I hope my boys have forgiven me too.
200% parent fail. It happens.....
Every Spring Break my boys sit back and watch all their friends go to fun and thrilling places, like Disney World (that you to those parents by the way). Spring break is NOT a time of year that we can go anywhere. It's hard for us to even get away to a city as close as Branson, Dallas, or Kansas City. I think the most we could do would probably be an overnight in a local hotel so the boys could play and swim a few times. Whew! Now, that's a SB to remember! Thanks to crazy work schedules in the spring, our family does Fall Break!
This FB we loaded up and headed the 3 1/2 hours to Branson. We went with our good friends and neighbors, Olen and Tanya, with all their kids that might as well be siblings to our boys. These 5 do everything together, most times without tears, fighting, and drama. Note I said "most times." Owen had never been to Branson before (insert GASP) and Will had only been once when he was 4 years old. To say our boys were excited was not a strong enough word.
We loaded up on Wednesday and off we went to Ozark, MO to get filled up at Lambert's Cafe: Home of the Flying Rolls. They should also add...home of the pass around. They literally walk by with okra, fried potatoes, macaroni, green beans, black eyed peas, etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting things but how one human can possibly eat all that food is beyond me. Steven's dinner, no lie, arrived in a full size skillet. Oh my heavens....If they only knew that Steven does not eat that much food!
Our first fun activity was Thursday morning with a trip to the Branson Belle on Tablerock Lake. This is like a dinner (in our case it was lunch) and a show type of deal, while floating around on a paddleboat in the middle of the lake. The kids loved it, the food was good, the show was okay (typical Branson show), and Steven won a dumb question game which awarded him with a free strawberry banana smoothie in a light up mug. The kids drank on that the rest of the show. Yes, kids, as in plural. I'm pretty sure all 5 children ate and drank after each other the whole time we were gone!
I'm thankful for friends who want to live life with us. Friends who make us laugh, who've been with us off and on (mostly on) for almost a decade, who raise our kids with us and who are now moving with us again into our THIRD neighborhood sometime in the next year or so. I'm thankful for a fun and safe FB even if it was "only" to Branson. How these parents squeeze out Disney over these small school breaks is beyond me. I'm not jealous. Okay, maybe a little.....
I've always loved football. College is my favorite, with NFL being my least favorite and high school right in the middle. There's something about the food, the lights, the sounds that just take me back.
HS football takes me back to high school (obviously) and how much I loved standing on the sidelines cheering on our team. I loved being a cheerleader and my senior year I LOVED watching Steven play on the field and screaming for HIM.
College football takes me back to my days at OU. You remember those days in college when you totally thought you were 100% adult but really you were just a 18-21 year old experiencing some true freedom for the first time in your life. Looking at those times in my life now, I realize that I was just a child learning the ropes of life for the first time without daily parental involvement.
I guess NFL ranks last because I don't have memories to take me back while watching those guys play. Yes, there are good men out there but so many of them are haughty, proud, arrogant, and wealthy beyond most of our imaginations yet so many of them do nothing with that money other than to squander, waste, and spend it on things that don't matter. Maybe that's why NFL ranks low on my list of football loving players.
If you haven't been to a local HS football game in awhile, I would say "Go!" It's cheap, it's fun, it's out of the ordinary for a date night and it will bring back loads of great memories.
GO BULLDOGS!!!!!
If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time you probably have read all the entries about our family visiting MarVal Family Camping Resort in Gore, OK. If you have never been, and you have a family, and you don't mind camping...I would highly recommend this place. Sometimes, we don't even have time to get all the things done we would like to do in a weekend because there's SO MUCH to do here that we run out of hours in the day. This last trip we didn't get to go fishing. We all brought our poles, we all planned to do it, but the hours just got away from us and now that's its super chilly in the mornings and gets darker earlier that night, we just didn't find the time.
This is the first camping trip ever for our family when we went in the Fall. I have to say that I'm pretty spoiled now to the fall. When I compare my comfort level to that of NON COMFORT in the dead of summer it's pretty hard to beat. I love summer, don't get me wrong. It actually is one of my favorite seasons BUT I also love fall and I love not sweating to death with every single activity you do while camping.
I was worried that our family wouldn't have enough to do while camping if we took all the water activities off the table. I was wrong. The boys didn't even mention not getting to do water balloon's, not swimming, not rafting, not playing in the water splash pad, not jumping in the river. Of course, it was pretty chilly so I don't even think the water things were a thought inside their brains.
MarVal did a really cool thing (they actually do it all of October) with the kids and a hayride. You pay $5 and you get two tickets to ride the hayride. Inside your packet of tickets is a pumpkin seed. The kids ride the hayride and plant their pumpkin seed. The magic fairies (teenage girls dressed to the gills in fairy costumes) sprinkled their magic fairy dust all over the pumpkins. You ride the hayride back. In two hours you get on the hayride again to go collect your pumpkins that magically grew full in 2 hours. Will had this whole process figured out in about 2 minutes but was a very good brother and didn't ruin the surprise for his little brother who wholly believed everything and the whole process of the magic pumpkins:)
So, if you have time and you want to go camping with your family this is the place for you! One last word of advice...if you decide to go with MarVal as your camping destination I would book early. Like really really early. I booked this trip (we took in October) back in January. This resort is crazy filled all the time. It's small so you don't feel packed but it's so small that they fill up quickly. Book it now and also book a golf cart. Your kids will thank you:)
For as long as I can remember my sister, Angela, has had the nickname "Bangela." Of course, I was too young to understand and actually remember the birthday cake that said "Happy Birthday Bangela" but I do remember the stories and can hear my parents talking about how that was so funny because how could ANYONE think they named their daughter Bangela?!
Well..........it lives on. How could anyone think I married a Stezen?! Apparently, someone thought I did. Come on people! The little teenager working the counter thought I would be mad when she opened up the cookie cake for me to inspect and she saw my face. I wasn't mad. I was just simply confused as to how anyone could actually think this cake was correct. She told me she would fix it and I almost laughed because then I remembered the Bangela episode. "Heck no, you aren't fixing it", I said. I'm sure this really got her all confused. I mean, what a story to tell and remember for Stezen's rest of his life! This entire birthday weekend that he has had people have been laughing with him, calling him Stezen, and cracking up at all the Stezen cookie cake comments. Come on now...that's funny! Really I should be thanking the Great American Cookie Company (Woodland Hills Mall lower level by the Starbucks) for this laughable and memorable cake. Now, that's a cookie cake for the ages!
Stezen's birthday was filled with friends and family. He enjoyed a weekend of camping with us and his parents and then came home on Sunday to even more hours of fun at the fair with some friends and about 1/2 million other Tulsa natives. The fair always falls around his birthday and this year was no exception. Food, fun, friends, tons of money, and lots of people watching and walking. That's the fair. We go every year and never miss it. Although, I will admit I cap out after about 3 hours. That's my fair limit. I guess I'm getting old....
Speaking of old. Happy birthday to my now 37 year old husband. We've known each other since age 12, we've been together since age 17, married since age 21, parents by age 27, business owners by age 32, and best friends for almost 20 years. I wouldn't want anyone else by my side on this crazy adventure.
Happy birthday to my love.
I apologize as I am a little behind on my blogging. We are quite busy around Kueny land with two in school, two in football, two with homework, two with practices...I think you get the picture. Did I mention that we still work, work out, and try to get in some time together as a family? Yes! Those are vital in this family as well.
A couple weeks ago Steven and I took off to Arizona to do just that...have a little time together. Thankfully, we have family who live in AZ so they made the 4 hour drive north and came to see us in Sedona and Flagstaff. Steven and I stayed in Sedona and all the other family stayed in Flagstaff to be closer to the Grand Canyon which we did over a full day in the weekend.
It's always great to see Kasey and I love when we get to have some time together. Normally, she will come with us on our family trips to Florida but this time it was just the adults and that's so much fun too! Her mom (my aunt) had been to the Grand Canyon about 7 times so it was like we had our own personal tour guide with us the whole time who knew the way, knew which areas to view and which to skip over, knew all the bus routes, and knew the cool places along the way that you must stop and visit. I would recommend getting your own tour guide when you see the Grand Canyon for the first time as well.
It is SO Grand that sometimes it takes your breath away. This was both, literal and figural, for me since I have a husband that demands he scare me to death on the edge of the cliff, edge of the canyon, edge of the rock...pretty much the EDGE of anything at the Grand Canyon. It was driving me crazy and especially after I learned that someone dies EVERY.SINGLE.DAY at the Canyon. That one threw me for a loop.
On our last full day in Arizona I went for a run through Sedona. Steven and I had mapped it out the day before so I would feel familiar with the route and know where to turn around and where to keep going. It was a beautiful run and one I would do again purely for that reason. It was probably one of the hardest 6 miles I have ever completed. I failed to notice (while mapping it out) that Sedona is in the mountains (duh) and at about 4500 ft elevation. That's quite a bit higher than our 700 ft here in Tulsa. It only took me about 1/4 of a mile before I realized I couldn't breathe correctly, and only another 1/4 of a mile before I realized that every single street was another hill up a mountain. So, 1/2 mile in and my body wanted to quit but I kept going to finish my 6 mile goal and to snap pictures of my run along the way. I had a terrible time and I went incredibly slow but it was worth it for some of the views I had. Now, I can say I've ran through 6 miles of the Sedona mountains. Boom!
It was a great trip away and we enjoyed our time together and with family. We are thankful for Denise (Nana) and our babysitter Bailey who helped out with the boys so we could enjoy these 4 days away. Oh, did I mention the boys were sick with fevers and even a day of throw up's while we were gone? Even more props to those ladies should go out now!!
Thanks A Million Again!!!
There was another 3rd grade mom who bought all the boys in his class this awesome pink shirt. Each grade was given a class color to wear on this race and, of course, Will's class drew the color he has sworn he would never wear. Thankfully, there were other boys that must have thought the same thing so an awesome mom came up with the idea that if she got them all matching "manly" pink shirts it wouldn't be a problem. She was right! Will loves this shirt and color now and even wore it under his jersey on Saturday morning for his flag football game (which he scored 1 TD and got 1 interception in). 
Also, on Friday Owen came home with a drawing lesson for me. He has recently begun Art this quarter and he couldn't be more excited to show me what he's learning (almost daily). One day was his profile that he learned how to "add details" to. Friday was his "Liberty Bell". Once I learned what he was actually attempting to draw, I didn't think it was half bad:) I really like that he's loving something at school and enjoying coming home to show off his new knowledge! 
Saturday morning I awoke at 5am to get in our LAST training run for the Tulsa Run (which is Halloween morning). Melinda, Kristi, and I are Uber thankful that we have not scheduled anymore early runs. Whew, that feels good! We did a new route this weekend that had quite a bit of inclines on it in hopes that our bodies would get used to them a tad more since the Tulsa Run is one of (if not the most) hilliest race I have ever ran. Best of luck to all the runners on Saturday! I know how much time and devotion it takes to train for these races. I'm ready to tackle it and move on and even more ready for SLEEPING IN on Saturday's. Oh yeah, baby!!
