We have really been enjoying our time here in Oklahoma. Never fear mom, the tornadoes alone will encourage us to return home after these 4 years of residency are up. Still, this area continues to offer us a plethora of activities to enjoy and after a nice Sunday drive today, we have discovered that Oklahoma is a hidden gem that we never knew existed.
Jonathan seems to love emergency medicine more and more each day. He likes his colleagues, he has accelerated, and he brings home a great story each day. I love having a doctor in house. Having a husband for an ER doctor is extremely convenient for me. I love being able to ask him all of my paranoid questions.
I continue to make friends and Oklahoma is starting to feel more like home. I don't need to map out every single outing anymore. I am also LOVING the cooler weather. Seriously, I have never sweat so much in my entire life, as I did this past summer.
Jacob has made some really nice friends and is doing well in school. While he still struggles to stay focused on his work, he currently has all A's in school and is well-behaved. We'll take it.
Claire makes friends extremely well and continues to really excel in school. She loves to learn and learns quickly.
Olivia is loving pre-k. She was ready from day 1. I miss having her home with me, but love how excited she is to go to school each day. Olivia's reading has really taken off and it is fun to see her make sense of the letters in the world around her.
Lincoln continues to be the king of cuteness. No one can ever get enough of his hugs. Here is a recent conversation between Lincoln and I:
Lincoln: "Halloween!"
Me: "Yes, Halloween is coming up."
Lincoln, correcting me: "Halloween is coming down."
Here are some of our happenings from the past 2 months:
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| Claire is ready to head to a daddy/daughter dance with Jonathan and Olivia. |
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| Olivia and Claire love their weekly gymnastics class. During the Olympics, Olivia and her classmates all received gold medals. Olivia couldn't contain her excitement. |
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| I had to capture a picture of our living room after a trip to the library. We head to our amazingly stocked library almost weekly. I love seeing the kids head straight to the living room to unlock each book. Jacob is currently in love with the Harry Potter series. He just finished the fourth book. He loves to share every detail with me and read sections from the pages. Jonathan and I both love this series and are enjoying watching Jacob as he dives into the books as well. |
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| First day of school picture!!! Our first day started with Olivia getting a bloody nose 5 minutes before we had to leave for school. We have never had a bloody nose in the family and it picked an extremely convenient time introduce itself. If you look closely, you can see drops of blood on Olivia's shirt. |
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| Olivia is ready for her first day of Pre-K!!! Here in Norman, pre-k is the standard at all of the elementary schools. Olivia attends pre-k (for free!....minus our tax dollars) every day for about 2 and a half hours. I pick her up at the same location and time as the other 2 kids. |
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| Since the school is so close to our house, we walk back and forth to school each day, three times a day. Once in the morning, once to drop off Olivia at pre-k, and once to pick up the kids from school. I love being able to walk the kids to and from school. |
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| Someone got a hold of my camera.... |
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| Hot days are meant for sprinklers. |
These next few pictures are from the Brookhaven run. Jonathan ran the one mile race with Claire. Jacob ran ahead them. Claire and Olivia ran in the kid sprint and I ran the 5K. It was such a fun race. I am blessed to have a husband who is willing to wake up early on a Saturday morning and come out to support me (with kids in tow) as I run.
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| Lincoln is not crazy about my running hobby. We had to wake up all of the kids to get to the race early enough. |
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| At the finish line there were a few free bounce houses for the kids to play in. |
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| Lincoln already has quite the runner's spirit. I am not exaggerating, he really does love to run. |
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| The kids are enjoying a local band. |
Derek and Natasha came to visit us!! These two flew into Kansas City to catch a baseball game, then made the trek down to visit us. After they left us, they went on to Texas to visit more family. We were really excited to see them and the time went by way too fast. We decided to take them to the city (Oklahoma city is about a 20 minute drive from us) and walk around the Myriad gardens.
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| Here we are reading one of the Knuffle Bunny books. My kids loooooooooooove these books right now. |
As this was our first visit to the gardens, we unexpectedly came across this gorgeous splash pad and couldn't resist letting the kids get wet.
We went to the zoo!
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| The kids are petting sting-rays. |
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| The kids were loving this social seal. He was easily their favorite animal in the zoo. |
Ummm.....so this happens every time it really pours here. Our street has flooded multiple times since we have been here. We have also had multiple power outages and a handful of small earthquakes. The homes on are street are all set on a slope, so we have not ever seen the water get even close to flooding our home.
Jog-a-thon 2016!!!!! For those of you who are unfamiliar with a jog-a-thon, it is a major fundraiser for the elementary schools that participate in them. Our elementary school, Cleveland, has raised over $40,000 from just one jog-a-thon event (and this is typical)! Before we moved here, I did as much research as possible about the local schools. While the schools here are generally all good, we heard from multiple people that Cleveland was one of the best. We have been very impressed with this school thus far. With 3 kids running in the jog-a-thon, we spent most of our day at the school. I have to say I was really impressed with how much each of the kids pushed themselves to run as many laps as possible.
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| Lincoln finds a friend. |
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| This is Claire with her wonderful teacher. No, Claire is not losing oxygen, they had free snocones for the runners. |
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| The national champion men gymnasts from the University of Oklahoma frequent the Cleveland campus. They are pictured here high-fiving the students and cheering them on. |
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| Olivia ROCKED it! I wish I would have ran with her with my garmin to see how far she ran. |
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| Lincoln also ran the entire time the pre-k kids ran. |
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| Olivia is here with her class. |
Oh, and this happened.....
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| Meet Ranger! |
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| Claire is showing off the ribbon she received after she climbed the rope at gymnastics...all the way to the top....twice. Be impressed. |
Jacob has been wanting a dog for quite some time. I like dogs, but I did not want to get one while we were transients in medical school and I really did not want to have to care for a dog while being pregnant or with a new baby. Now that we have said good-bye to the child-bearing years, we decided to make the leap. Ranger is a great dog. His owner had him cooped up in an apartment ALL day and really wanted him to go to a better home. Interestingly, Jacob had been praying for a dog, and Ranger's former owner was praying for the right owners. After weeks of searching, we brought the lovable dog home.
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| Jacob has taken up tennis!!! He loves this sport and Jonathan and I love playing it with him. He is taking a break from lessons right now to play basketball, but he continues to practice with Jonathan and I. |
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| Watching the garbage truck is one of the highlights of Lincoln's week. |
And lastly, "Cars" has returned...
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| Anyone who has known us for more than 5 years, knows that Jacob had a mild obsession with all things "Cars". Well, "Car's" has once again invaded our home. Ka chow! |
