20 year Reunion

Last month, we traveled to Oklahoma City for Bryan to attend his 20 year High School Reunion. Even though he hemmed and hawed about whether he would go, I planned for us to make the trip from the beginning. In the end, he had a wonderful time.

We drove straight through to Oklahoma City on Friday, staying overnight in Purcell with Brenna's godmother, Heather, and Cindy. After dinner in Norman, Bryan and Heather were keeping a close eye on a particular cloud that had developed rapidly. Once we settled the girls in the guest room, Heather & Bryan went back outside to watch the weather. We now knew that the "cloud' had spawned an F1 tornado about a mile from the highway where we had been driving. Cindy and I kept one eye on the tv news and then walked outside to tell Heather & Bryan where it was headed. Thankfully, the tornado passed to the east about 5-8 miles of Heather's home.

Saturday we had a few touristy errands to run in Oklahoma City, including going to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. In a wonderful twist, we were there during the Prix de West competition and were able to see many of the entries, including the 2009 winner, The Dawn of a New Day, a 52 "x 38" oil painting by Tom Browning.

The girls enjoyed looking at the art, the Indian and Cowboy artifacts, and Prosperity Junction (an indoor replica of a cowtown at dusk), but they particularly liked the Children's Cowboy Corral. Cameron played with the saddles-

Brenna played frontier house-

We enjoyed the beautiful sculpture gardens around the grounds.

After a late lunch at Coit's, we went to the cemetery to pay our respects to Grandma Connally. I visited last in 2007, but Bryan and the girls had not been back since the funeral.

Bryan and I returned to Oklahoma City that evening for his reunion. Aside from Heather & Cindy and two others (who weren't attending either), Bryan had not seen anyone from high school for twenty years. I think he really enjoyed himself that evening. If you've seen the movie Grosse Pointe Blank, you know what it was like for him. Every once in a while someone would come up to him and say, "Bryan? Bryan!" "TWENTY YEARS MAN!" One girl was really hugging on him and it wasn't until later he sheepishly admitted that she had been his prom date.

He appeared at least once in the home movie compilation playing in a loop throughout the evening. I loved watching for that clip of him playing the bass drum at a football game. I think I enjoyed his reunion better than my own last year.

While we were at the reunion, Heather & Cindy spoiled the girls by taking them to water bumper boats, rock climbing, miniature golf, arcade games, and racing cars.

Then they went to their favorite Japanese restaurant and ended up getting frozen custard. When we called to let them know we were on the way home (just before midnight) they had just walked in the door!

Sunday we were pretty exhausted when we left early to drive home. We arrived in McKinney right on schedule to see Brad & Amanda's new house and have some lunch. Back on the highway, we hadn't gone more than 15-20 miles when our Odyssey tire warning light came on, quickly followed by the "run-flat" warning.

Yep, a flat tire. On a normal car you would just pull over and change it with a spare. Or head over to the open Discount Tire shop for a patch or a new tire. But not with the Honda Odyssey. They have special Michelin PAX tires, which are gerat tires, with the one exception being that a flat can only be changed or patched by a "specialized" Michelin or Honda dealer, neither of which were available on a late Sunday afternoon.

Long story short, we called the PAX tire hotline listed in our car owner manual (who knew?) and were told to get a local hotel room and they would send someone to repair/replace the tire in the morning. Calling our bosses to explain that we wouldn't be in the office on Monday because of a flat tire was not a lot of fun. The next morning brought a series of problems as Michelin kept delaying our appointment and their customer service department was less than helpful. Finally I tracked down the nearest Honda dealer (back in McKinney) and they replaced the tire in about two hours. We pulled into Houston about 9 p.m. Monday night.

I had been tweeting our experience and it caught the eye of someone in Michelin's public relations office. Tuesday afternoon a senior member of the Michelin Customer Care Center contacted me to straighten everything out. What a whirlwind weekend!

VBS

Growing up we never went to anything like Vacation Bible School. These days I see the signs for them everywhere around town and I hear friends in other cities talk about sending their kids. It seems every church is having a VBS. I've never checked it out because the girls have always been in summer daycare, but this year we have them in a different type of summer care. So for one week I took them out to attend VBS during the morning and hired a babysitter for the afternoon. It worked out great.

The theme was Rome: St. Paul and the Underground Church. Each day was a new lesson, activity, craft, and song. Cameron's friend portrayed Brutus, a guard, and the friend's dad portrayed St. Paul chained to Brutus. The kids were brought in to see "St. Paul" and hear his teachings. One of the side rooms served as an underground cave where Christians would meet. By the end of the week St. Paul had converted Brutus.

Friday the kids "performed" songs for the parents. For the rest of the weekend, at CNMC, I had two of the songs stuck in my head. I've almost gotten them out of my subconscious which is why I'm not singing it right now in order to remember the titles to write for you. Argh ... And they know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.

Father's Day

A few weeks ago Bryan and the girls enjoyed Father's Day.

After church Bryan opened his presents. In hindsight I should have taken video, because Bryan was very animated playing around with the girls and they loved every minute of it. He opened Cameron's present first.

She gave him a Mercy Me CD with the song I Can Only Imagine. She also made him a piece of "art" with a photo of us from DisneyWorld on it and the words Love is Beautiful.

Brenna gave Bryan an audio card that said, "Dad when it comes to knowing all of life's really important rules...." (open it up: the audio is from the movie League of Their Own, Tom Hanks' character is saying There's no crying... there's no cryin' in baseball!) "You're in a league of your own." She also very proudly picked out this t-shirt for Bryan.