Birthday Girl

 

Ruh Ruh Roker Face

Earlier this week, Emi and I participated in Rokerthon 2017! I wasn't sure what to expect from the description of the event, but I had friends there and also, AL! We got up way early, getting to the stadium before the 4:45 deadline, and the wind was whipping around already. The students were giving out breakfast burritos, water and Kind bars (yum!). We were ushered to a specific section to sit and await further instruction.

Sometime later, a guy came by and handed out Roker Faces. I ended up wearing mine like a turtle shell when I needed to put my hands in my pockets (or take a selfie).

Tooling Around the Town

Just Finding Out

Last night at dinner, the youngest family members found out something "new" about themselves. Emi was talking about a group of girls in her class and after she listed them by name, Scott asked her if they were all black (based on their names). Emi repeated the names of the 3 or so girls who were not black.

Then David chimed in with "That's weird" and when we asked him what was weird, he said that there were so many blacks in Emi's class. Then we moved on to discuss the various shades of brown in Emi's group of friends, and David started pointing at Emi saying "Emi's black", sort of teasing her. 

That's when Scott said "Guess what, David, you're black too." David looked surprised and said "What?!" We explained that because his birth father is black, he is half black. He looked confused even though he's always known his Papa Dave.

We explained the term "mixed" and that his Mama Bri is white and Papa Dave is black so he is "mix". I explained that I am also "mix" because Lola is Filipino and PeePaw is white.

‎So we were reiterating that he is half black when Aubri pointed at David snickering about his also being black. David said "I'm coffee with cream!" That's when we let her know that SHE is black TOO! The look on each of their faces when the realization hit was priceless.

By the end of the discussion, we all agreed that Emi is "milk chocolate", David is "coffee with cream" and Aubri is "kid coffee".

Skating By

This picture flashed up on the iMac earlier today and I had to hunt around on the network drive to find it later because I wasn't quite sure when it was taken. Emi's first time at Skateland! It was still Skateland back then and she wasn't obsessed with going there every Friday night. Now it's StarSkate and everything's different.

December 2005

She was 3 then, Daddy's little girl. Now she's 12 and sometimes she's daddy's little girl, and other times, she too cool for that. Our pretty little girl has turned into a pretty young lady who likes to remind me how soon she'll be driving...

A month ago

Si Doux*

* So Sweet (en francais). 

I took 10 hours of French in college but  I don’t use it much on a daily basis. Surprise! One of my Living List items is to read a favorite book en francais (also in tagalog) but yesterday I thought of a wonderful way to incorporate French into my life now leading up to a book -  make up my grocery lists and to-do lists in French! I already mix in a lot of French words in text messages and e-mails so it wouldn’t be a big stretch and it will exercise a part of my brain that probably needs it. I bought some cerises (cherries) off my list last night and “si doux” was right there on the package helping me to incorporate more French into my life.

So anyway, Friday we trucked it up to Tahlequah to visit Scott’s grandmother for a few hours before heading to see Emi get baptized at church camp. Visiting camp was a fun experience….also stinky….and loud. I mean those things in the nicest way possible. We showed up early so we could go through the chow line and before they go to our table, we got to see campers get mail from their parents and a few campers sing renditions of their favorite songs. I was amazed. I would NEVER had had enough chutzpah/guts/intestinal fortitude to get up in front of my fellow campers and sing!!

After dinner we toured the campground with Emi and saw copious amounts of poison ivy and bugs along the way. Then we made our way to the pool to witness the baptisms.

Side note: Back when Scott’s dad was a camper, the baptisms were performed in the lake. Of course that was before they installed the pool. Among other things that have changed in the past forty something years, swimming is now co-ed (it wasn’t when I went to camp either thirty something years ago) and now they celebrate afterwards with fireworks out in the open.  Grandaddy-o had to pull the weeds growing over the septic tank for setting off fireworks when he was a camper. My how things have changed!

So Emi told us earlier in the week that she was going to sing a solo Thursday night and we thought we might try to make the trek up to see that (although we already know the girl can blow it out the box) until she told us she was going to get baptized (be still my heart). I can’t tell you how proud we were to hear those words. Being a parent to a tweenager has never been easy but nowadays it is much harder with entitlement, instant gratification/entertainment, and so many other distractions. I think it’s harder now for the parents who are actually raising their kids whereas it WILL be harder later for those parents just phoning it in right now, or giving up/in with their kids.

It was so sweet (si doux) to see the children getting baptized by their dads, so choked with emotion that they’d have to take a break from speaking before dunking their children. I had to explain that to David and that sometimes people cry when they are not sad.)

Emi chose to have a friend baptize her.  We all looked on with wet eyes and tight chests.

Afterwards there were fireworks and swimming and we headed  back to Scott’s grandmother’s house to try to get some rest before we retrieved Emi from camp in the morning.  With a belly full of cobbler, it should have been easy to catch some z’s but the guest bed we sleep on is the lumpiest I’ve ever known, and we had the requisite amount of coffee with the wonderful cobbler Scott’s grandmother made. I should have traded with the Little Ones but their bed was being guarded by an old doll;  the type whose eyes open when she sits up… When I got up to straighten my back and use the restroom in the middle of the night, that little doll was on the floor of their bedroom (!) and when I was finally able to get back to sleep, I had fitful dreams of reconnecting with a girl I used to work with in the OU computer labs.

After breakfast, we picked Emi up from camp and made the almost 3 hour drive back to Norman with Emi sleeping much of the way. Good thing too because she went directly to a basketball tournament when we got back home. ..

One Dozen Years

Our little girl has turned into a little tweenager!  She was treated breakfast in bed...






I can't believe it's been TWELVE years!!! It seems like just yesterday when....

Girls Day In

The guys went to watch the Bedlam game and the girls stayed home to veg and relax.

Fall Contrasts

I am loving the color that Fall has brought to our world...

This red is not in my yard but I wish it was....

Speaking of changes, this picture was from last year:

 

And this was from this past weekend. I thought about the top picture when I was snapping the bottom picture.



Some changes are more subtle than others...

Cut Short

David finally got his summer cut (at his request/insistence) and Aubri wanted her hair buzzed too.

Of course there was NO WAY I was about to cut off ALL of her gorgeous locks but she did need a haircut so I obliged her.

He looks so handsome!

Still a curly girl!

And this summer in between Ketiesha's hair appointments/dos, Emi has been working on caring for her own hair and it's been really nice. She can even straighten it herself if she wants. I think she's doing a terrific job.

Lovely twists

Weekend in Frisco

This past weekend we spent a lot of time in Frisco, TX for Emi's basketball tournament. The weekend started off with us having dinner at La Hacienda Ranch with both of my brothers and their families. It was a big, crazy crowd of us (as always) but it was cool to see the cousins hanging together.

The only picture I got at La Hacienda Ranch

Birthday Girl

My baby girl turned 11 recently and I can't believe it. She starts middle school in the fall!!



She had a typical pool party and the Make the Pie Fly game again, but then she decided to have a few friends camp out in the back yard.











She's growing up too fast....

Winning

My baby girl played softball for the first time this spring and guess who came out a winner?

The Lollipop Stranglers!!!

Then and Now

Emi and Calum, Feb 2010

Emi and Calum (and Aubri and David), Jan 2013

Ten Ten

Yesterday we celebrated Emi's TENTH birthday! (I am still having trouble processing that.)

I have a 5th grader!!

I remember when she was just a little preschooler...

My baby girl when she was 3

Now she's into the double-digits and acting all teenagery...

Baby girl at 10

She opted for pie over cake this year so I picked up a Coconut Cream pie, a Chocolate Cream pie, a Millionaire Cream pie and an Apple pie from Pioneer Pies. Everybody loves pie, right?

Emi got pied:

Emi was left holding on tight to the pie

Aubri got pied:

Fear the Beard (the whipped cream beard)

And David got pied:

Somebody ensured that the pie got into his lovely curls that are growing back...

Later on we had some Nutella Gelato that we made earlier in the day (Giada calls it Chocolate-Hazelnut Gelato but we call it like it is!) It was di-vine!

This is all we have left now....it's all over but the crying...

It was an exhausting weekend for a couple of us with getting the yard in shape for the party (in 100+ degree weather) and then hosting a sleepover after the pool party. I was falling asleep in church and then later at my folks' house I snuggled up in a chair and succumbed to slumber....

Now, I am ready to slow things down a little for this short work week and am looking forward to taking it easy for the 4th...

How about you, any big plans for Independence Day?

Savoring the Weekend

Well, it was a marathon weekend for the Morgans! Actually, tournament weekend is more appropos.

Emi's basketball team had a tournament in Edmond starting Friday night (when they had their butts handed to them late Friday night by an awesome team that must have been out of their league....) and went on through today.

Friday night was brutal for Emi's team and for those of us on the sidelines with easily bored children distracting us from watching the game every 17 seconds. But we got through it.  It was great to see Emi playing with a team of this caliber. So proud of that girlie!

Saturday morning we were up early taking care of some yard work (trimming/weeding/watering) while Emi was getting a new hairdo. There were some surprises involved here (in the yard, not Emi's hair). I found that my asparagus is still producing so I don't have to wait until next year to harvest some. And I found that my oregano planted YEARS ago in my trying to be Moosewood Kitchen garden has survived all these years.



I think we are going to plow through much of this bed again (carefully avoiding the asparagus beds) and start anew. As you can see, it's a bit overgrown.

FYI, I have a Cardinal family nesting in that Rose of Sharon up against the house. Love it!

I also spent a good deal of time clipping branches from the neighbor's trees as they are growing into the power lines and my DSL line. I don't want a repeat of the 2007 Ice Storm damage. I obviously have more work to do, but Phase I is complete.

Look at that sweet Gracie girl hanging out with me in the yard...

Blue Skies

Never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right
Noticing the days hurryin' by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Can I just say that I am soooo glad that soccer is over?  This week the only activity we had planned after work/school was Emi's choir concert the other night. And it was lovely. Emi got up and scatted while the choir was singing Blue Skies. My sweet little girlie...

13 years ago it was a different story for us...


On May 3, 1999 I was working on test procedures at the National Severe Storms Lab in the "tornado bait" trailer on North Campus. As I was wrapping things up for the day, a concerned co-worker asked if I had a safe shelter to go to that afternoon because the weather was ripe for tornadoes. He showed me the radar image and there was a big red circle around Oklahoma. He knew that we didn't have a shelter and we had joked about me having to dive into a ravine for safety. I reassured him that I'd be at my FIL's office in the city and that we would probably be safer there than at home. My FIL is an optometrist and his office was located at 119th and Western.

On the way to the city I heard the weather warnings on the radio and I was getting a little panicked. When I arrived we turned on the TV in Scott's mom's office to have a look at the radar and hear what Gary had to say. Gary was telling us that if you weren't under ground, that you might not make it...to get underground now!

My husband, his parents and I were huddled in a circle and praying because we didn't have time to do anything else. We thought this might be it for us and I fully expected to feel bricks from the building falling on our backs any second. The wind and noise got really loud outside and as the tornado passed (over/around) us, it sounded just like a freight train.  Somehow the building stayed intact and instead of being crushed to death, we found ourselves outside, incredulously watching the tornado churning with debris over the nearby neighborhood... where my sister and her family lived. I had such a feeling of horror seeing that...

After the storm, there was a eerie silence and darkness. I tried to called my sister immediately and there was no answer. We left my FIL's office to head towards their home, but first we wanted to see if we could get through to my sister's neighborhood. There were power lines across the streets on Western so we couldn't drive through.  We were outside at Scott's parents house trying to get in touch with my sister and listening to the helicopters flying overhead. I imagined that this was what it might be like in the middle of a war at night.

We got a hold of my sister finally and after we confirmed that everyone we knew in the area was safe, we took the back way home (I-44) to Norman and headed straight to the Red Cross. We felt so helpless but we wanted to help so we gave blood. And then we went home (way out in the country by the lake back then) and rested. We got up early the next morning to head up to my sister's neighborhood and I remember it was pouring rain so hard that it was difficult to see. The National Guard turned us away and my sister's neighborhood was cordoned off to outsiders.

My sister's church was in a huge metal ball across the street from its original location. I took off work the next day to help clean up debris on her church property and I remember the mud and the mess and the smell.  No one tells you about the smells after an F5 tornado (or any tornado) hits. Even though there were no human casualties in the vicinity of her church, there were plenty of animal casualties and the smell of death was thick in the air. I heard they found a dead horse in the West Moore High parking lot after the storm.

My mom called from Florida a few days after the tornado after she'd seen the images of the truck wrapped around the tree on TV (and after she'd already confirmed we were safe) just to make sure we were really ok...again.

I feel very fortunate to have made it through such a historical meterological event unscathed (and another smaller event partially scathed). Did I ever mention that I survived Hurricane Camille?

Here's hoping for nothing but blue skies for a while...

#winning

Emi's team won their last game today and they are un-de-fea-ted! I was nervous because Scott said it was a big game against another undefeated team and Emi also spent the night at the Science Museum with her Girl Scout troop last night. A night at the museum! They had science classes and experiments and they had breakfast up there too, but I don't think there was much sleeping going on...and remember last time she stayed at a GS lock-in before her big game(s)?

This was our champ post-lock-in and pre-games...

Well, today we decided to go with Sweet Tea before the noon time game and it proved to be a wise choice. They won 4-0! The girls played so well! It was like they were on fire or something!

Sweet Tea is not considered a performance enhancing drug, is it?

So proud of my baby girl!

My Girl

Yesterday we passed by the super secret location of the Anonymous Tulip Planting during rush hour and noticed several purple tulips! They were hidden in a big patch of dead nettle and henbit and wild onion (what's is UP with the weeds this year?) but they were there for the passersby to enjoy. I am hoping for more pops of color to share with the world on this fairly busy street.

Today I went with Emi and her classmates to the Museum of Art (4th grade students are fortunate to be part of the pARTner Project). Love that we can walk from our house to this museum and so many other wonderful places! It was nice to hang out with her and her schoolmates for a while. We got to tour part of the new wing of the museum and then we got to make clay pots downstairs. It was a very relaxing project, rolling the clay in long "snakes" that spiraled on top of each other to form layers...smoothing the lines in between each layer. We should have our pots back from the museum after Spring Break.

At the Museum of Art (we were getting ready to head back to the school for a picnic lunch...



Some of the masks surrounding us as we worked...



Silent Night

I wouldn't say it was a silent night with so many kiddos in the auditorium but here's my baby girl singing by herself on stage once again (getting a little verklempt even typing about it now):

Silent Night by Emi Morgan from Nolita Morgan on Vimeo.