Well we have been here for a month and we are definitely settling in. We are getting into a regular routine of work and have found lots of things we like to do. It has been a few weeks since our last post so this one will be a little long.
First of all lets start off with the weather! God kept us safe throughout those crazy two weeks of storms. We saw a couple of nights of rain but nothing severe like they saw down by Oklahoma City. I(Adrian) did get to have a weather party with all of my coworkers and patients in the basement of the health center when a rotating wall cloud was spotted in Pawnee county. We were blessed and the cloud never touched the ground to become a tornado and we were all safe.
This is where I work. The Pawnee Indian Health Center. It is about an hour away from Tulsa. I have my own standard exam room and many nice instruments for further testing.
Back to the weather. One Friday night our neighbor and landlord Annie gave us a 30 minute warning to get our valuables packed up and head to the basement about a block away. The storms for that evening looked like they might hit Tulsa so to be safe we decided t go to the "hidey hole" as our other neighbor Ellen who is a native Oklahoman calls it. =0) In true Michigan emergency training I changed into long pants and long sleeves and put on real shoes, even though it was 90 degrees outside. I packed snacks and water and a flashlight. CJ packed his gun and a bag of batteries. Annie packed her husband, dog, and diamonds.
Here is The crew heading down the block to the basement and sweet Henry the dog who cuddled with me most the night. Hello to Dashes! Patty please give her a hug from us!
the basement belongs to Annie's long time friend Betty. She is a sweet older lady and she was well prepared with snacks for our tornado party. We had a great time chatting with our new neighbors and getting to know everyone while drinking whiskey sours and eating chips and dip. The weather passed by Tulsa and we didn't even get rain that night.
On to work. CJ's job has been such a blessing to us. His boss and his wife have been so welcoming and generous. My mom came to visit last week and the Boones took us all to the local Native American/American art museum where Mrs. Boone is a volunteer. As a funny side story my mom and the Boones ended up on the same plane to Tulsa from Detroit. The Boones were coming back from an East coast vacation and got rerouted to Detroit. CJ had talked to them earlier in the day and put the pieces together and when I asked my mom if any of the people waiting for her plane fit their description she said yes and went and chatted with them! Talk about a small world!
The land that the Boones own is beautiful and CJ loves being able to get out of the city everyday. CJ has breezed through his boss's original list of work and his boss has been very happy with his work, even giving CJ a little bonus every time they haul a load of scrap off the property.
The get at the beginning of the driveway announcing that you are entering Boonesboro and a view of the open field in the middle of the property.
This is a picture of the Boones house in the back with the picnic shelter in the front. When they built the property a house was where the shelter stands. They knocked down the house and built one of their own design up on the hill. It is beautiful and unique. They decided to make use of the old foundation and built the nice picnic shelter which houses a hammock that CJ takes noontime naps in when he doesn't eat up with the Boones in their kitchen.
These are the cows that the Boones keep as pets. On the left a Texas Longhorn and on the right a Scottish Highlander. They have been very curious of CJ and his buckets of tools as he has been working on the fences.
This is a before and after of CJ's fencing work. He has been cleaning up brush that fell on the fences during an ice storm a few years ago and repairing and replacing sections as needed. He has also taken down an old barn and is hauling away scrap metal that has accumulated over the years, a redneck savings account.
The ranch also sports some delightful wildlife. On the left a rattlesnake that CJ shot and on the right a scorpion. CJ just shot another rattlesnake the other day and it is now unfortunately in my freezer and he hopes to cook it up and eat it and make something from its skin.
Now for Play! We have been having a lot of fun with the time we have off in the evenings and on the weekends. We have gone to a couple of Tulsa Drillers baseball games and they are a lot of fun. The stadium is new and clean and the tickets are cheap, its a great way to spend an evening!
Hornsby the mascot and the view of home plate from our awesome seats at the game on Memorial Day. Our landlord let us have his season tickets for the day. We also took my Aunt Pat and Uncle Kerm to an evening game with fireworks when they came to visit us 2 weekends ago. While they were here we also went to Oklahoma City to see the memorial of the bombing and to Hulbert Oklahoma! It was a lot of driving but we were happy to see them and thankful that they drove all the way out to visit.
The survivor tree and part of the memorial grounds where the destroyed building used to stand.
Our quick stop to Hulbert was fun. We even bought a T-shirt and mailed a postcard.
We have also been riding our bikes a lot on all of the great paved trails around Tulsa. We have explored pretty much all of them but our favorite is a 12 mile loop that runs next to the river.
Here we are on a trail that starts in downtown Tulsa and runs about 14 miles up to Skiatook. It was suck a beautiful night.
We take the Beetle pretty much everywhere we go now. The bikes fit nicely on the back, thanks Dad and Kathy for the Reese hitch for Christmas!
Here I am waiting for CJ to catch up at the River Parks. This night CJ was bow fishing and broke his arrow so he decided to walk down and grab a free rental bike and finish out the loop with me. CJ got a sweet new bow fishing set up from the local Bass Pro, but since all of the big storms the river has been very high and very fast so he will have to wait a bit for it to slow down and clear up so he can see the fish.
CJ's bow.
We have had a couple of other cool adventures as well. Here is CJ grocery shopping(who knew it was this much work to gather food and such for our family, definitely not this guy).
The local ice cream store is called Braum's and they are everywhere! Hey Braum hope you are enjoying your new job, we think about you a lot while we eat frozen treats!
We also went to the Tulsa aquarium and saw some great fish, a big group of bull sharks, and we pet and fed sting rays.
For lunch we had Chik-fil-a!
My mom came to visit last week while I had some time off because my overseeing doctor went on vacation. During the day we did girl stuff, ate Chinese food and Panera, and went shopping. Here she is modeling a shirt that I was consulting with CJ on buying for him to wear to work. =0) It was great to have her visit and comfortable to have here stay in our spare bedroom/dining room. On Saturday we all went to Pawhuska (that's right friends, home of the one and only Ree Drummond Pioneer Woman) to go to the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve and see some native lands of Oklahoma and some Buffalo. I will share pictures in my next post.
Whew that was a lot to update you all on. I hope you are enjoying these little glimpses into our adventure we love you and miss you!
CJ and Adrian
