ANOTHER BIKING ADVENTURE...

It was a little chilly but we biked on the Oklahoma River this morning...

Howdy partner!  Nobody was around so we took pics by the Land Run monument

We actually went under a train bridge this morning, and it had a train on it!

 For the first time ever my Hubs ate out of a trash can!  (Truth be told, these bananas were left after a fund-raiser walk this  morning)

 And you never know what kind of folks you might see...this guy looks like he's a long way from home!

WHEN YOUR SON DOES THE DRIVING....

You would have thought we were on a coffee tour...we went to 5 coffee shops in 3 days!  This was on our quick trip to Denver for SIL's graduation.  Even though you may know I'm not a coffee drinker, I DO like hot chocolate and didn't mind stopping since he was doing most of the driving.  Win-win!

Reverie in Wichita, KS - 2 thumbs up for Coffee and Dark Hot Chocolate

Huckleberry Roasters in Denver - 2 thumbs up for Coffee and Granola

Purple Door Coffee in Denver - 2 thumbs up for Espresso and Dark hot chocolate

(This is my daughter's former roommate and this coffee shop is a non-profit she helped establish to teach work skills to homeless people - pretty awesome!)

This lovely girl gets two thumbs up for hosting her mother and brother for an impromptu lunch.  She made us a beautiful frittata!

Another visit to Huckleberry (front view) to buy beans before we left town...my son loves this place!

We did stop again for coffee at Union Station in Hays, KS.  Unfortunately that stop wasn't worth a picture.  :(

GRADUATION TRIPLE PLAY...

What a busy, fun, time to celebrate significant events in our niece, nephew, and son-in-law's life!

This is my sister and niece who lost their husband/father to a car accident last fall.  They are doing okay and still remembering him well.  My sister still knows how to celebrate and had this great party at her house!  They live right here in town with us and my niece will go to college here also.

This is my nephew (in red) and his family from southern OK and he is their second to graduate from high school.  He'll be up here for college and so hopefully we'll get to see him a little more often!

 Finally, my son and I made a quick trip to Denver to see my new son-in-law graduate!  After passing his tests, he'll be a certified Airframe and Powerplant Technician.  That has to do with airplanes, in case you didn't know.  :)

We are super-proud of this guy!  He held down 2 part-time jobs in addition to going to school, and also graduated with Honors (4.0) and was runner-up for the Outstanding Technician award.

ONE OF THE BEST REASONS TO GO TO DENVER...

May I present to you...

The Mango Tango!

I'd thought I'd outgrown donuts until I tried this one...yes, it's from VooDoo Donuts.  You have to park next to the Potshop and Tattoo place.  But so worth it.  I hadn't gotten to go the last couple of visits but we just went up for a graduation and got to make this stop.  Savoring the goodness as I come back to Earth this morning...

WHEN YOUR SON HANDS YOU MILO...

Make Milo cookies!

My son likes to buy new and unusual foods at times...and when it sits in the pantry too long, I have to try to figure out what in the world to do with the stuff!  Milo is a popular drink mix in many foreign countries.  It's similar to chocolate malt drink mix.  So here's what I ended up making:

Milo cookies!  I found this recipe HERE from a blog in Singapore!

WEDDING WITH WEATHER...

So if rain on your wedding day = good luck, my niece should have an extremely lucky marriage!

We went to her wedding in Texas at Greystone Castle this past weekend.  It was meant to be outdoors, but because of rain/storms/tornado threats we never sat in those pretty white chairs all set up in front of the castle.  We never sat under the tent for the reception.  Instead, after a 30-45 minute delay, we all stood inside, cramped in the area meant for the food lines near a bar.  My brother-in-law conducted the ceremony, and immediately afterwards the manager told us to take shelter.  We scattered into the guest rooms in the castle resort.  Finally after another hour (not sure, I lost track of time) the reception slowly started and we ended up just heading out since they were also spending more time on pictures and we were pretty hungry.  We also had a 3 hour drive to my MIL's house.  It was beautiful, so I'll share the pictures I got with you...such a shame that the beautiful decorations couldn't be appreciated more.  But, the couple is married now and that's all that matters!

 Greystone Castle Sporting Club entrance

 Waiting for the storms to move past

My niece with a few of the bridesmaids

Family

Not bad for a quick switch for the ceremony

Wedding cake set up

 Some of the table decorations that unfortunately never made it to the tables

One of my favorite shots after the storm passed

RECENT READS...

THE ARTISAN SOUL by Edwin McManus

Enjoyed this one!  The author pastors a church in California and it has a lot of thoughts about how creative our God is, and the natural result of that is that we are also creative people.  God is an artist, you are an artist.  What kind of art will you leave behind?  My favorite of this group today.

THE POWER OF FULL ENGAGEMENT by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

I didn't read all of this book, because it ended up being a lot more about business - not the reason I got it.  But I did read enough to get one of the basic concepts, you should think more about managing your energy, rather than your time.  Use your best time of the day for things that really matter, not mindless tasks.

BREATHING ROOM by Lauren Rosenfield and Dr. Melva Green

Decluttering exercises - one I liked was to stand in a room and think about it's purpose.  What needs to stay and what needs to go? They challenge you to declutter yourself spiritually as well.  Some things are just holding us down and they need to go.

10% HAPPIER by Dan Harris

I listened to this book on CD - it's about meditation and our preacher has recommended meditation several times to us.  The author, a national news reporter,  had dabbled in drugs and even had a panic attack while on live TV and became interested in meditation.  He got to research several related subjects for news assignments and ended up becoming a believer in meditation.  I'm breathing deeper now and paying attention...

THINKING WHILE BIKING...

Let me just say, biking is one activity you CAN'T really think about much beyond the path, avoiding puddles and traffic.  It's kind of relaxing to just focus on one thing.  Good break for the mind! We biked Saturday on my favorite trail that ends close to Bricktown in OKC.  Unfortunately everyone else in OKC took advantage of the beautiful day too!  We had to watch out for some military people training on our trail.  Then we noticed a lot more traffic towards downtown which we soon found out was due to the Autism Walk.  Our street we usually turn on was also blocked for the walk.  So we had to navigate a new path through parking lots and unknown streets.  Then our Starbucks stop had a line of about 20 people going out the door!  Argh!  But we found a new place to grab a bite a few streets away, Urban Taco!  We ended up biking back down 4th street toward our bike trail.

Always an adventure!  I just let the Hubs do the thinking on this one.  

 We were trying to catch the train going by on the bridge behind us...we failed!

Urban Taco - yummy bacon breakfast burrito!

WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU WANTED...

One of the things that sold me on our big, old(er - 1978) house 15 years ago was the storage.  There was lots of it.  Only problem is, I took advantage of it and filled it up.  I stashed lots of things to go through "later."  My organization was up-ended by kids.  I'm also a scrapbooker.  Well, it makes for an overwhelming amount of stuff.  It makes things hard to find.  I've known this for several years - was just "too busy" to do anything about it.  (At least I didn't put all this stuff bugging me ahead of my kids and volunteering)  Anyway, you know my mission when my baby moved to college was to organize and declutter!  I'm making progress, little by little.

Some nights I pick a drawer and just set it down in the middle of the living room while the Hubs is watching TV and I go through it, saving  what we use, trashing some, maybe even filing away some "important" papers.

These last few days I've been making some headway into the DREADED CEDAR CLOSET.  This was the awesome storage that helped make the sale on this house.  I had surgery a couple of days after Christmas a couple of years ago, and the family put all the decorations away - I was grateful, but of course it was put away nothing like I would have done it.  Unfortunately the cedar closet has no heat/no air conditioning so it makes it hard to want to spend any amount of time in there most of the year.  So that's why I've been in here lately...great temperatures.

 Pretty horrendous, I know!  You could barely walk through this mess.  

It's getting better!  Two carloads donated and my burden is lighter.

You have to be careful when you get what you want...you might discover it'll consume you.