Favorite

Monday

Today the boys were home from school since its President's Day. Hunter spent the day laying around with the puppies, watching Netflix and YouTube. Tyler went to his Dad's to see the Datsun 260z that he's restoring. Tyler took his friend Kyle C. while Hunter stayed home. Then Tyler came home and helped his friend Denton cut down a tree. He was paid in donuts, a teenage boys dream. 

I got home from work and we decided to go to Sonic to eat since Jim was gone to Chapter and Council. The hotdogs were a dollar tonight. Score! I, however, went to Taco Bueno to get a bean burrito. Score again!

Tonight we've been lazy sitting around watching TV. Tyler actually sat and watched the Grammy's for a little bit with me. It's fun sitting around with the boys just goofing around. That's kind of scarce since Tyler drives now. 

Rule breakers.

Happy Heart Day

Jim thinks he's funny pouting while I want to take a cute picture.

Hunter and his Nana

Tyler thinks he's funny brushing his curly hair out to an Afro.

We took my Momma out for lunch at Lone Star Steakhouse in Owasso for Valentine's Day. I think she really enjoyed it and liked visiting with the boys. We spent time with her at her apartment after lunch and visited for a while. It was a relaxing time and she always loved to get out and about. I came home and payed down for a little bit, then made chicken pot pie with a biscuit topping. It was good, even though Hunter told me the bottom of the biscuits were soggy. I guess you can't win them all. Ha! Our niece Madie came over to visit us before going back to OSU, which was nice. It's nice to keep in touch with her, since we don't with any of the others. 

My life

Tyler Schulz overcame partial paralysis to play football - Tulsa World: Football

Tyler Schulz overcame partial paralysis to play football - Tulsa World: Football http://signatures.mylivesignature.com/54488/78/358613D49EB2FFC122DE4385B6DC476F.png

Plant based lifestyle

I need a place to post my new journey in hopes that I keep this darn Lupus at bay. I've gone a good 9 months without feeling horrible, then summer family stress and school starting hit me hard. I'll be posting my meals so I hope no one gets sick of seeing them. I haven't blogged in so long-I'm not sure anyone will notice. 

Breakfast:

1scrambled egg with 1 tbsp cheddar cheese

Sautéed spinach, mushroom, onion and a small piece of a very hot jalapeño

Lunch:

Sautéed zucchini, onions, mushrooms

V8 spicy juice in place of stewed tomatoes

Piece of jalapeño

1 tbsp cheddar cheese

1 tbsp sour cream

Cavenders Greek seasoning and seasoning salt

First real job and other stuff

Tyler got a job at Tastee Freeze last week.  He's the meatboy, which means he makes about 400 hamburger patties a day.  He works with one of his friends that he's played soccer with forever so they have a lot of fun together.  I mean, how hard can it be to make 400 hamburger patties. Ha!

He's always liked getting money and I think the love of having his own will really kick in, making him want to work really hard from now on. 

I'm getting ready to register him for the ACT test.  He's taken the prep course and I'm ordering online study materials so that should help him. I think if you make a 27 on your ACT in Oklahoma, you get to attend any college in the state free.  We would really like a 27, por favor!

Hunter is finishing the eighth grade and is really struggling with organization.  He had 29 missing assignments in two classes.  We've had a serious talk about it and he's going to work hard on keeping things together for ninth grade.  He's growing his hair out like Johnny Depp, which cracks me up.  He's so stinking cute that any hair looks good on him!

Life has been calm this past semester, the boys aren't playing a Spring sport, which, dare I say, is a wonderful thing.  No meets, games, late practices.  I love it.  After all the years traipsing to practices and games, it's nice just to have a break.  It's helped my stress level and my ability to keep from feeling worn out constantly. 

My health is getting better, my doctor prescribed a rheumatoid arthritis medicine for the pain I always had in my arms and ribs, and I haven't had it since the day I started taking the medicine.  It's a miracle.  I don't think anyone around me realizes how horrible I felt on a daily basis.  I was in constant pain but tried so hard not to show it.  I even walked three miles down our nature trail the other night....I hadn't done that in three years.  Three years!

Now I just need to get this Lupus/steroid weight off and I'd feel tremendous.  I hate how I look right now and it's definitely weighing on my self-esteem.  I'm trying to eat mainly a vegetable/fruit diet so we'll see how that goes.  I hope it helps.

Football State Championship 2014

On December 6th, our Skiatook Bulldog football team went to the 2014 5A State Championship in Oklahoma City.  We played Lawton MacArthur in Yukon, Oklahoma. 

To say that we were excited is an understatement.  Our little town hasn't had a state championship in football since 1974.  I've never seen the entire town so united in a common goal in my life. 

The week before the game, people were posting pictures of themselves in their letter jackets from high school on Facebook.  It was the funniest thing to see all of the football players' dads trying to squeeze into their twenty five year old letterman.  Jim pulled his out and put it on.  He had to suck in a little but, by gosh, it fit. 

Our downtown area had all the windows painted for the football boys with their names and encouraging words.  It was so wonderful to see how much excitement there was for our football team.  We weren't expected to do as well as we did at the beginning of the year, which made it even better.

New Year's Day luck



New Year's Day is always a time of tradition in our house.  My Momma is from deep south Alabama, where you don't break tradition, no matter what.  She's been following the same Southern traditions for years.

The most important tradition for the New Year is eating Black-eyed Peas.  You have to eat them for good luck in the coming year.  It's also a tradition to eat greens for wealth.  Believe me, we eat the greens because we could always use a little more wealth! Ha!

I was so proud of myself after cooking our Christmas ham, I took the bone with some good chunks of meat left on it and froze it wrapped in tin foil.  I use three or four layers of tin foil just to make sure the ham doesn't get freezer burn. 

I started the ham cooking in two tablespoons of olive oil.  It's best to get some color on the meat, bringing out all the flavor.



It doesn't look very appetizing coming out of the freezer.

 

Put your dried and soaked black-eyed peas in a pot with just enough water to cover the peas.  Add one onion, rough chopped and let the ham and peas cook until the peas are soft.  You'll have to add water occasionally as the peas soak it up quite a bit. 

 

We've been forked

Tyler picking up the forks some of his "buddies" left for him

A couple of mornings ago, Jim came back into the house and said, "We've been forked!"

I thought, "What on earth is forked?" Then I remembered.

I glanced outside and was instantly impressed. I mean, how on earth did teenagers put so many forks into our grass? It had to have taken at least 30 minutes to get all of that work done.

It took Tyler at least 5 minutes to get it all out of the yard.

Teenagers-they just kill me sometimes!

Letterman

#gagecancook2015

My bestie visits

Last night my best friend Becky and her husband Bobby had to come to Tulsa for an insurance class and we met for dinner at Texas Roadhouse.  They didn't bring their kids (they have 5) and we definitely missed them.  We took Tyler and Hunter to dinner, I always want my friends to see how much the kids are growing.  Becky's oldest is leaving for college in a couple of weeks and that makes me feel so old. Geez.

We had the best time catching up with each other and discussing the crazy antics of having 6 boys all together.  Yes, 6.  Crazy, huh!?  In college, if you told Becky and I that we'd have six boys between the two of us, I would have laughed my head off!  I'd have never thought we would be responsible for that many humans, ever! Ha!

It's amazing to me that no matter how much time has passed between our visits, we can always just start right off where we last stopped.  I love that. We've been friends for twenty-five years now.  Actually, I think this year is our 25th friend anniversary. She's one of the only friends I've ever had that has been with me through thick and thin.  She's always supported me in everything I've done and been a shoulder to cry on when I needed one.  That's a true friend and I'm so thankful for her.

 

We think we're selfie queens!

With the family - Hunter loves to look goofy in our pictures

I'm even wearing a necklace she gave me

My hometown

Our niece Madie is going to Oklahoma State in the Fall for her Freshman year of college.  Jim and I wanted to go to Stillwater with her and scope out her dorm etc.  While there we drove around Stillwater, which happens to be where I grew up until I was twelve years old. I still consider it my hometown and have the best memories from living there.  I think it's because my Aunt and Uncle lived in the same town with my older cousins as well as my Grandma.  Every week on Wednesday night, my Aunt Nila and Uncle Carl would come to our house with their dog Fritz and have an ice cream cone with us.  I looked forward to it every week.  

That's the only time I've ever lived with family in the same town that we did things with all the time.  Now that I have very little family, I really miss those times.  I wish my kids had family like that to spend quality time with on a weekly basis.  

When I was a kid, my Grandma (Mama Lou) was a fraternity housemom.  She lived in the fraternity house with her own little apartment throughout the school year.  She ate every meal with the boys and taught them manners and etiquette classes.  When I would eat dinner at the frat house, I would have to eat ribs or fried chicken with a knive and fork.  

Imagine being eight years old and having to eat like that in front of 100 cutie pie fraternity boys.  It was so embarassing but I loved every stinking moment of it.  I think this is where my boy crazy started.  OSU fraternity boys!

My parents would even go on vacations and leave me with my Mama Lou for the week.  I loved it.  She had a cook named Amy that would make me cinnammon toast in the mornings with chocolate milk. In the afternoons, about ten of the boys would come into my grandma's apartment and watch Jeopardy with her. Every day they did this.  Now that I'm an adult, I realize how sweet that was to spend time with their Mama Lou.  They loved her just like I did.  She was the best. 

Delta Tau Delta fraternity

My first church, Salem Lutheran

After driving around campus, we went by Eskimo Joe's and my church, Salem Lutheran, where I was baptized.  My Dad was best friends with our pastor David Turner, who was our backyard neighbor.  We are Lutheran because my Dad just loved David.  He was such an interesting person and very sweet.

We finally drove by the house on McDonald Street I lived in when I was in Kindergarten and First Grade.  My parents rented this house and I remember it being a little odd.  They had a basement that had two poles on either side of the house and I used to spend hours roller skating down there.  There was also a mud room that really freaked me out. It seemed huge but in all honesty it probably wasn't. I used to think the window on the second floor on the house right in front was soooo big.  In my mind, it was a gigantic, huge picture window. Funny how things look so small as an adult when they were gigantic when you were a child. The hill on the right also seemed like a mountain.  I remember running up that hill all the time thinking I was king of the mountain.  Now that I look at it, it's barely a hill. 

This house looked much better in the 70's



The house below is our final house in Stillwater.  When we moved here, we thought we had made it.  It had a swimming pool and my parents were so proud.  I spent my days hitting tennis balls against that brick wall.  That's when my love of tennis started. 

The last house we lived in in Stillwater

The temperature guage on the wall below is the original one that my parents bought for the pool area in the early 80's.  I thought that was awesome that it was still there.  Old looking but still there. 

This backyard about killed me. 

We had a beautiful pool back here with gorgeous landscaping that my Dad worked so hard to put in.

Who fills in a pool?  I was so mad that I called the real estate agent (it was for sale for $182,000) and asked when they filled in the pool.  It's sad when you have such great memories of pool parties, swimming all summer with your friends and it's gone.  Just dirt.  





This is the Country Club where I first took golf and tennis lessons.  I played golf here every weekend with my Dad, my Uncle Carl and my cousins Brian and Craig.  I'm seeing a pattern here and now know why I prefer being with men than drama filled women. 


My greatest regret is that my boys didn't get to grow up next to a Country Club with a pool, tennis courts and golf course.  They've missed out on a lot of fun being stuck in a boring small town.









My elementary school Sangre Ridge.  I loved it.  It was an open floor plan, we had no structural walls separating classes, just partitions.  It sounds strange but it was the best place to go to school.  My favorite teacher was Mrs. McPhee, she was the first teacher to really convince me that I was smart.  I love her for that. 




This is a picture of my last school, the Paul Miller Journalism school at OSU.  I still work at the same job I was recommended for by my public relations professor Brooks Garner.  I love that.  So thankful!

Soccer State Championship Game

Last Friday our Bulldogs played for the soccer state championship in Norman at the OU soccer complex. To say it was nerve-wracking and exciting would be an understatement. Last week was a complete roller coaster of emotions. 

It all started when we played NW Classen in Oklahoma City last Tuesday. It was the third round of the playoffs.  It was such an exciting game and we pulled off a 2-1 win. The boys went ballistic with joy, even walking towards our bleachers full of fans and giving us a round of applause. That might have been my favorite moment after the win. Coach Campbell wanted to make sure the boys thanked the fans for all of the love and support they've received throughout the season. 

Fast forward to the end of the week. Our town was so excited. We hadn't had a state championship in 10 years. All the businesses had signs up wishing the team good luck. It was incredible. We planned a send-off for the boys and they didn't know about it. 

I don't know if there's anything more exciting than seeing your team being led through town by the police with sirens. So cool to watch!

We left around 3pm for the 7:30 game in Norman so we could stop and eat. We ended up running into traffic so we met our friends at Taco Bell for a quick bite. I was so nervous, I could hardly eat. 

We arrived at 6:30 for the game and were so impressed with the OU soccer stadium. Biggest soccer complex I've ever seen. 

The game started and two minutes in I knew our boys were scared and playing like it. I didn't even recognize some of the boys, they playing so nervous. The other team was phenomenal. We were in trouble from the first goal four minutes into the game. We ended up losing 6-1 but we were so proud of our team. What an honor to even make it there!