Roman's day

Tuesday Lego Harry Potter the video game came out, and Roman was sooo excited. He had been saving his allowance for months and months for this game. He had already preordered it last week, and was impatiently counting down the days, eagerly crossing each day out on the calendar, waiting for this day to come. We had gotten out all of his lego Harry Potter sets and worked on them, and watched the first 4 Harry Potter movies for days in anticipation of this game............



Needless to say I think he clocked in 4 hours of playing it before dinner.....


And that night he earned his yellow belt in his karate class. Yes, he's the only kid in the class without a Gi (uniform), lol. But last time he did this class,he joined and we bought him the $30 outfit and he decided after earning his yellow belt that he didn't want to do it anymore. That was about 3 years ago and the uniform no longer fits him, so when he decided to join again (and he had to earn his yellow belt again since it had been so long) we told him if he earned his yellow belt and wanted to stick with it after that, then we would get him a Gi. So now he is super excited that he gets a Gi. :)








Daddy & Starla at Roman's class






He got his perfect attendance medal too, which he was super excited about. He talked about how he is going to pass it down to his children and how special it would be. :)






Then daddy escorted us to Braums for celebatory ice cream cones!



What a good Roman day! He then came home and played his video game for another 2 hours before bed. :)

Farm goodies

Our sweet farmer woman always puts extras into our basket each week, she makes homemade pasta, cut flowers ( I LOVE having fresh flowers on my table each week!) and such. This week she gave me a book that she read and liked, and she made a tye-dyed sheath dress (a hippie mumu, lol) for me!! It is sooo stinkin' comfortable! I have spent the entire day in it today.....



Starla is so silly. :)

Paper Dolls

I bought this paper doll craft kit for Starla and it was a big hit. She spent HOURS putting together the dolls, then we used construction paper to make a house, and furniture, and cars, and everything her little imagination wanted. She made all of her family. She played all day before nap....













And then after nap, when we ran out of supplies from the kit, we broke out all the pieces from the paper doll cartridge on my cricket, leftover from my student teaching project................










Roman had fun too.....










This is us. :) I like how Bourbon is shorter than everyone else, and Roman's overalls don't quite fit, lol.





Tex & Bonita





This is Daddy with his truck




This is me & my van





This is Nanny & Papa





This is great Nanny and great Papa. (My grandparents)





This is Poppy & Grannie. I have no idea why Poppy has a mustache & goatee, lol, it started out being another daddy doll and she changed it.






Our paper doll family



Hours of fun entertainment!!!

What summer is all about...

afternoon naps........






catching frogs.......





running through the sprinklers.....






root beer floats with homemade vanilla ice cream.....





time at the farm....

Dealing with death

I knew Roman would take his great-papa's death hard. This is the kid that cried when I read him "Charlotte's Web". He is sensitive. So it was no surprise the he cried and cried and cried some more throughout the whole process of dealing with Grandpa's death, from the news, to the viewing of the body at the funeral home, to the funeral. I didn't tell the boys until we got home from Flint Ridge, I didn't want to ruin their fun time, or make them have grandpa's death forever linked in their minds to Flint Ridge, making it a sad place to be. So when we got home friday night, I put Starla to bed and then told the boys. Roman cried and cried and cried. Bourbons eyes teared up, but he played it off "I think I got something in my eye mom", and that was the end of his diplay of sadness. I think he's alot like me in that regards, I like to mourn and be sad by myself, I don't like to share that with other people, I think it is a personal and private thing. I just want people to leave me alone when I'm sad, I know people mean well when they offer themselves up as support, asking how you are, giving hugs, etc. But that is just not my thing when I am sad, I like to deal with it on my own. I see alot of that in Bourbon too. I really thought Starla would be the easiest to beak it to, she's 3, how much can she really understand? So the next morning, I told her. And she surprised me, she immediately teared up and stated crying, and kept crying for about 10 minutes, saying how she didn't want great papa to be dead, she wanted to talk to him and for him to talk back to her. It surprised and upset me that she comprehended it. So we sat and cried together for a while. She did better at the funeral home, the day before the funeral, I was leary about letting her see the body, but I figured she was going to go to funeral so she would see him there anyways, so I might as well. This was Roman's 1st experience with seeing a dead person in a coffin as well, and he of course was a mess. Bourbon's uncle passed away 6 years ago, and he saw him in the coffin, but I'm not sure how much of it he remembers, but this was not his first experience with death. He did ok, I'm not sure how he took it on the inside, but on the outside he was cool, calm and collected. Starla kept saying things like "His life is in heaven, but his body is here." She still had a few days where she would tear up, and her little face would just crumple and she would say "I miss great papa, I want him to talk to me", which of course broke my hear, because I of course want the same thing. She was pretty well-behaved during the funeral, which I was so thankful for, I didn't want her disrupting, but I didn't want to have to take her out and leave either. Roman cried and cried and cried during the funeral, Starla actually kept hugging him and trying to console him during it, it was very sweet and cute. She would say "When you die, you will see him in heaven". She fell asleep on the way to the cemetary,so Jamie stayed in the car with her during that part, and later when she woke up and we were home, she was VERY upset that she had missed it. I had explained that we were going to bury him at the cemetary, so when she didn't get to do that, it just messed her all up. She cried, "But I wanted to bury great papa! You said we would bury great papa! I had to explain that we already did, but she was alseep. I will have to take her out there sometime soon so she can see it. He was buried in the Little Cemetary, in Little Oklahoma, which of course makes me smile since that's my last name. I'm sad that she probably won't have any real memories of him, and that he won't be a big part of her life. I hope that the boys keep good memories of him. I hope that they learn from Papa how to work on cars and tinker and build things, so that Grandpa Reynold's legacy will live on through them.

Remembering Grandpa

Howard Lewis Reynolds
October 3, 1927 - June 17, 2010



Oh how I loved this man. He was the best papa. I loved his big grin, and the way that his ears were slightly bigger and more protruding than the average person. It gave him character, and spunk. He was a very charismatic and colorful guy.







Grandpa was a self-employed mechanic, salvage yard owner, and wrecker service for most of his working life. I've heard him tell stories of working at a gas station as a young man, I think he may have owned one as well. But mostly he worked on cars. I remember spending time at his salvage yard (they lived on it as well) in Guthrie as a child, I loved watching all the guys that worked there tinkering on the cars in the garage, I liked hanging out in the office, doodling on notepads. I would go exploring the salvage yard, checking out all the cars in various disarray, wondering what kind of "life" they had led. Grandma had a big garden, and I would spend time out back with her working in it, and picking veggies. She had grapevines that she would grow and dry out and make beautiful grapevine wreaths out of. I loved spending time at their house. My cousin Keisha said when she was little, she would love riding in his wrecker, and how she thought it was just wonderful that her papa was a hero and would go pick up people stranded, but not only that but he was nice enough to go ahead and pick up their broken down cars too! :) Time spent at my grandparents was lots of fun, times of catching grasshoppers in the yard, helping grandma fix lunch, watching wheel of fortune in the den in the evenings with them. I have lots of great memories.

Papa carried this same picture in his wallet the entire time they were married, his copy was bent and frayed in places, but he kept the same picture all those years, and he was buried with it on his chest.




Grandma & Grandpa were married for 59 years. Grandma always took such great care of papa, she was always cooking, cleaning and tending to his needs. They were the very picture of what marriage should be; dependable, faithful, loving. Papa used to call grandma 'my lil' maulki' (pronounced ma-ul-key)and my cousin Kiesha who spoke at the funeral said after he passed, she was so sad that she had never asked him where he got that nickname, or where it came from, my grandma said she didn't even know, he had just always called her that, but that in the end it was probably better as a fun little mystery anyways. You could see how much he loved grandma in the way that he would pat her hand, or call her little pet names, or just look at her. I know this loss is going to be so hard for her, and it breaks my heart. She has spent the last 59 years taking care of him, more so in the last several years as his body and health started to fail him. I'm sure she just doesn't even know what to do with herself now. :(










My grandpa was a good family man through and through. He had 5 children, 11 grandchildren and 18 great grandchildren.


Grandpa, Sharon, my dad (top row)
Leslie, Vickie and grandma (bottom row)



My dad, Vickie, Leslie, Shirley (Grandpa's oldest child from a previous marriage) (top row)
Grandma, Sharon and Grandpa (bottom row)





Grandpa always had a giant, infectious, jubliant smile, and the best laugh I have heard in a long time. He loved telling jokes and stories, and I loved listening to him talk about being a young man and about his past. I've been talking about video recording his stories for about 2 years now, we got about half an hour of him talking about meeting grandma and when my dad was born at Christmas 08, but that's it. I never got coordinated enough to go and do it, and I'm kicking myself for it, I'm so mad that I didn't get it done. My grandma said she had him tell her stories and she wrote them down and will get me the notebook so I can type them up, but it's just not the same as watching him, all animated and livey, telling them. He was such a good entertainer. He also played harmonica and the guitar, I wish I could have gotten video of him playing.



I rarely saw grandpa mad, and probably only a handful of times at actual people, usually it was a tool or car or something like that, that he would be mad at, and then he would let those colorful curses fly, words that would make me giggle when I was a little girl, and just smile as an adult. Shit fire was a popular one, and dagnabit, and other funny, countrified versions of curses.


My grandpa loved hanging out with the kiddos. When we were little, he called us all lil' mousekers, and then of course when we had kids, they became the lil' mousekers. He was always telling me "I love those little mouskers of yours, those are some good kids. You did good."


















My daddy is alot like my grandpa. They are both some of the most hardworking, dependable, honest and trustworthy good ol' boys that I know. Always in overalls and coveralls, always got a hat on their heads, always working and tinkering around on some new toy or project.














This was on Mother's day, the last pictures I got of my Papa. I only saw him one more time after that.






He is going to be sorely missed, he was such an amazing and wonderful guy. I love you Papa.

Happy Father's Day

That's right folks, we no longer have to go to texas and stay in a hotel to enjoy texas shaped waffles! I got one for Alan for father's day, and he enjoyed chocolate texas waffles.....






Daddy's father's day breakfast









Of course Alan gets wrestling toys for father's day (yes that's his "I love wrestling toys" look)....




Daddy with his kiddos