Our first camping trip

We decided to go to Lake McMurtry for our first camping trip last Saturday. It was hot. Very hot. Probably wasn't a good idea to go on such a hot day but we did. The boys had fun roasting their marshmallows for S'Mores and they liked eating outside, peeing outside, cooking outside and sleeping outside. We went swimming for a little bit to try to cool down and eventually the boys both got into the water all the way up to their necks. The water was warm though so it didn't really cool anyone off. It was still fun and we'll do it again, when it cools off. I'll post pictures whenever I get around to uploading them but since we have Storytime Live! tomorrow and Day Out With Thomas is this weekend it won't happen until at least this weekend.

This weekend

What should we do, what will we do? There's hiking, there's camping, there's the zoo, there's the drive-in, there's the State Fair and so many other things.

One of the biggest deciding factors is that Jerry is on call again, many of the places we've gone hiking don't have cell service which is not a good thing when on call and in need of a cell phone.

Another factor is our fall weather that was supposed to show up this week, did not. It supposed to be in the 90s yet again but at least the humidity has gone down.

So I have no idea what we'll be doing, hopefully sleep will be considered because I'm tired...

Hiking boots

Two weeks ago we decided, on a random Saturday, to go hiking. Jerry and I have discussed it often in the past and we've even gone to a local park to 'hike', it's more a walk with some hills. We weren't sure when we'd be able to take the boys, I mean Kaleb is only 3 years old, he's only been walking for 2 years. But we really wanted to get out of the house and not do the same things we always do like go to the zoo so we decided to give it a shot, what was to lose, if Kaleb or Zachary weren't able to do it we could find easy trails which we know they can handle and wait a year or two more for the intermediate and advanced trails.

So we drove about an hour and a half away to Red Rock Canyon State Park and did some light hiking. We really liked the park and enjoyed the hiking, the boys called it jungle hiking because the whole trail was through bamboo.




The next day we drove about two and a half hours to Quartz Mountain State Park, we did some more intense hiking and I decided we all needed hiking boots. We hiked to our first cave and Zachary kept asking if the giggly bears were going to come back to the cave. He also started with emphasizing everything by saying "soaking" like "soaking hot" or "soaking fun".



On Labor Day we went out and all got some hiking boots.


We broke in the hiking boots the next Saturday in the Wichita Mountains. Zachary kept asking if we were going to hunt witches, no amount of explaining the word Wichita convinced him that witches didn't live in those mountains. We started with a short walk at Medicine Park



...then we went into the wilderness area. Zachary was sure the black marks on the road (in the next picture) were witch tracks.


We conquered our first mountain, Elk Mountain, all 2270 feet of it. Kaleb hiked up himself (with very little help from anyone), we impressed some other hikers when we told them Kaleb was only 3.






1/2 way up the mountain



Top of Elk Mountain!


On the way back out of the Wildlife Preserve we found a Buffalo on the side of the road...no fences or gates, free roaming Buffalo and prairie dogs. We also saw some long horns but some noisy motorcycles scared them away before I could get my picture.

Frustrated...

First let me preface this (though this is MY blog and I can say whatever I want to) by saying that I don't mean to offend teachers or people who love their kids' teachers.

From day one, well, actually well before day one of kindergarten I have not clicked with Zachary's teacher. See, last year I started checking into the Kindergarten teachers at what would be Zachary's school to see what to expect and was not impressed. Two of the three teachers use Skittles as an incentive for behaving in class which I do not like at all. Then at back to school night, the am parent's were supposed to meet at 5:30 pm and the pm parents at 6:00pm; because 2 parents from the pm class showed up to the am class meeting the teacher went over pm procedures and routines and dismissed anything about the am class. This teacher also said that she updates her website at least weekly, which I know is a lie, I've been checking since early 2010 and she hasn't updated one of the pages since November 2009, one since Easter and there were never links to any homework. This teacher said that all homework was accessible on-line...no surprise, it's not.

So Zachary got his first "homework packet" sent home today. It consisted of 2 sheets of paper, one a note to the parents explaining that the homework should not take more than 15 minutes and the other a homework sheet. The instructions are so lousy and hard to understand it's horrible. Then there is a section that says to complete a "Mm" worksheet, so I e-mailed the teacher to ask about it since it was not sent home, she said they aren't doing those this year but she might send some home with other letters later in the year. WTH!?! So apparently M is an unimportant letter, why learn how to properly make it or get any practice with it. And if she wasn't going to use this worksheet why not cross that item off the sheet since she already had to write each kids' name on their paper so they could practice tracing it, it literally would have taken a fraction of a second to "X" it out. I'm not impressed with the lack of attention to detail. She seems like she just gets things done as fast as possible without caring. She's been teaching for 29 years, 28 of those as a Kindergarten teacher at Valley, maybe she's worn out but if she is she just needs to retire.

If I knew that we were staying at this house I'd go to the office and have Zachary moved to another class or go to the district and have him transferred to another school but I don't want to do that now when we could be moving in the next month or two. He's already made a good friend in class and I don't want to disrupt him more than once. So I guess I get to be frustrated with his teacher until at least October, then we should know if we're staying or moving and I'll be able to decide what to do.

Successful Open House?

How is success measured with an open house? Is it just sheer number of people who showed up? Is it how many (if any) offers are, well, offered? I don't know.

In my opinion our first open house a week ago Sunday was somewhat successful because a few people showed up to look at the house and no one had anything negative to say about the house. The 2nd open house, yesterday, was even more successful because more people showed up...apparently, a lot more people. There were 2 very, very interested families. One was a newly wed couple, not looking to make any changes up front but they run a seasonal business so they may not be able to get the financing...but there probably would not be a contingency for selling another property to get into this one. The 2nd family was a couple who just finished remodeling another home which they leased and were talking about putting in stainless appliances, granite counter tops and so on...again, probably no contingency and likely to get financing without a problem. The only negative comment was about "Red Neck Bob", the neighbor to the west of us...the inconsiderate dweebs were out 4 wheeling during our open house...come on, we had signs out, there was traffic into/out of our drive way...it's obvious, you can't wait until after 4pm to ride the dang thing. They don't ride them often, which is good, but their timing to ride them yesterday was horrible. Whatever. Our fingers are crossed for an offer from at least one of the two interested parties.
So again...now we wait.

Need to make memories

I don't know why I've always felt this need to make sure we make memories at every chance, but I do. On Friday night we went to the drive-in with the boys, the movies were horrible (in my opinion) and I slept through most of them anyway but it was still fun and the boys always look forward to going.
Yesterday we went to our first Lowe's Build and Grow Workshop, (getting up for a 10 am activity when we didn't even get home until 4am because of the drive-in was so not appealing) but the boys loved it so we will plan to go to all the future workshops. Then we drove to Okarche for lunch at Eishen's where they happened to be having their local fair so we walked around that for a little bit. We really didn't want to go home yet when we were through so we drove north through a few small towns and to Enid. There is a park run by the Kiwanis Club where they have a train, carousel and some other rides along with normal park play structures. We rode the train and the carousel then let the boys play for a while. We also found an old metal, very high slide, you know like the ones that were around when we were kids? The boys loved it, and the best part was it was in the shade so it was actually enjoyable.
The boys had a lot of fun and I'm sure will ask in the near future to go to the 'train park' or the 'fast slide park' again. I'm not sure for how long they'll remember all the fun they had or even how long I'll remember the day but it was fun and a good way to spend the day.

Today we, as in I, have to clean the house for our 2nd open house in 2 weeks. The good news is that since the last open house was only 7 days ago the house is relatively clean, I just need to vacuum, dust, clean the tile floors, spruce up the bedrooms and I'll pretty much be done. I really need to get moving but my sunburn across the small of my back and my need for a lazy weekend day are getting in my way. I have until 2pm to get the house clean, and it will happen...just not right this moment.

Shower remodel

I don't remember exactly when, but a couple years ago the shower floor in the master bathroom cracked rendering it useless. We've wanted to replace it but the cost was always just too much so we all used the 'boys' bathroom shower. When we decided to list our house we had to fix the shower. When the old shower was taken out we realized the drain was at least 2 inches too high which is what caused the floor to crack, basically the drain was causing a tent like angle in the floor and for a rigid floor that is not good. Also the old shower was about 34"X34", small and the ceiling over the shower was dropped so it was small and cave like. We had the plumbing moved to the wall it was originally on so we could put in a longer shower, we ran into the problem that the drain is in an odd spot; with a cement slab sub floor it would have been too expensive to move the drain, we finally found an offset drain and didn't have to special order a shower floor. We also took out the wall between the shower and toilet, which made it feel like you were peeing in a closet.
I found 13"X13" tiles on clearance (regular price was over $28 per box for 10 tiles, I got 2 boxes for $20 total). Jerry cut down the tile to 6"X13" and used a running bond pattern, I found some tumbled travertine Noche 3"X6" tile ($47 for 7 sqft) for the trim, it turned out awesome.