Work & Play

 

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

 

 

 

 

First Impressions Have Been Sticky....it's hot here y'all!

We have had a great first week here in our new city for the summer. Both of us have felt like we were on vacation with all of the running  around and eating out we have done.  Wednesday we took things slow sleeping in and heading to the bike store to pick up my new bike that CJ had called to order the week before. I love it, it is the perfect city bike for doing errands and running around.  As soon as we got home CJ put the panniers(bags you put on your bike to carry stuff)on my bike that I had purchased a year ago. I am so excited to finally have a bike they will fit on, they are perfect for errands. With the bikes all set to go we headed off to go grocery shopping! We rode our bikes to the store and filled up our bags and backpacks with groceries for the week and rode home. It was pretty cool. It is one of my goals while we are here to ride our bikes as much as possible for errands close to home. I felt very self-sufficient toting my groceries home with my own woman power(also some of CJ’s man power since he carried a backpack).

 

Later in the afternoon we decided to go for another ride and try to find our way to the city’s network for bike trails along the Akansas river. We finally found them and enjoyed riding unhindered by traffic for an hour or so before deciding to head back home. CJ was excited to see some guys bow fishing for gat from a pedestrian bridge along the trail and intends to try it himself soon. On the way back we got caught in a rainstorm and rode about 1.5 miles soaking wet, but it was a good adventure.

Thursday Annie invited us out to the ranch where she boards her horse to meet her farrier since her horse, Ibby a white Arabian, was getting reshod that day. CJ spent a good hour talking with the farrier asking questions and watching him shoe the horse while Annie and I sat back and watched and chatted and got to know each other a little bit. CJ plans to attend a two week course at a school while we are here to learn to shoe horses. After Ibby had on his new shoes Annie showed us some of his tricks. He is such a well behave horse, very calm and responsive to what Annie asks him to do. Ibby  will follow commands to back up and come forward without a halter or a lead, just with Annie on the ground in front of him giving commands. He also gives a high-five , can do the grapevine and even jumps when asked to. It was a lot of fun playing with him and getting him to perform for treats. He loves peppermints!

 After we left we went over to CJ’s new workplace to meet him boss and see the land he will be working on.  The ranch he is working on is called Bonnesboro after the family The Boones who live there and now employ CJ, yes they are related to Daniel Boone. Compared to the busyness of Tulsa the morning and afternoon out in the country was a little slice of home we were missing. CJ says he gets to “work out in the Boonies” haha, since he works for the Boones. Anyway when we arrived CJ’s new boss, Bill, welcomed us right into his home and offered us something to drink and asked us about ourselves and we all got to know each other a little bit. Their house is beautiful and they are very eclectic collectors, it kind of reminded me of that movie Jumanji.  Bill showed us around each room in the house and was especially excited to share his “man room” with CJ. It was full of guns and mounts and other man periphinalia. They had a great time talking about all of the things Bill has collected. After the house tour we loaded up the Mule and the 4 wheeler to tour the ranch. CJ rode the 4 wheeler and I rode with Bill in the Mule. I was the designated gate opener and managed to step in a huge pile of what I thought was cow poop at my  first gate, it turned out to be just mud.  Bill has about 10 cows that he has always kept just as a hobby.  He says they never eat them, but he did say one was named Chill because she was born on a chilly morning and she would be Chili one day. The cows are of varying breeds, some are long horns and some are a shaggier looking medium horned breed that Bill said they fell in love with when they visited Scotland. Bill showed us around and shared with CJ some of the jobs he had for him to do. The whole time we were riding around I was asking Bill about the wildlife, the flowers , the trees, the little cacti that were growing in the tall grass but he said I would have to ask his wife since she is the Okie and he grew up north of Chicago. I will have CJ take some pictures out at the ranch of the land and the cattle and we will post them later on.

Friday morning CJ went out to ride his mountain bike at a group of trails called Turkey Mountain and in the afternoon we headed downtown Tulsa to an art fair they were having and had dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse. These are some Art Cars that were driving around town this weekend.

 In the evening we took a walk through our neighborhood and found a nice route to the grocery store. The state fairgrounds are about a block over and they are sparsely populated for most of the year but have nice sidewalks and paved parking lots that we will be able to ride our bikes on. In the evening we wandered over to Bass Pro to get CJ a fishing license and ran across The Robertsons.

Saturday CJ took a ride on his road bike to the river parks and I went to the local farmers market to look around. I came home with a whole bunch of good stuff. 

In the afternoon CJ and I rode to the fairgrounds again to the weekly flea market. We browsed around and then continued on down the road to Whataburger for lunch. It was delicious and new and we enjoyed it. After that we went the the grocery store and bought some food for us to pack in our lunches. I can fit all of this into the bags on my bike!

 

That evening we went and made use of CJ's fishing license at a city park. He only caught one small fish but got the low down from the locals about how to catch more. I enjoyed just sitting in the shade and reading my book.  

 Sunday we went to church at an EFCA church in north Tulsa. Everyone was very welcoming but we definitely missed the familiar faces at Trinity! On the way home from church we stopped at another local farmer’s market and looked around. When we got home the weather was supposed to be getting bad so we sat out on our porch and read books and CJ worked on his bike a little. Sunday evening we spent watching the news closely as the first set of bad storms came through Oklahoma. Annie popped in to say that she was also watching the weather and she would let us know if we all needed to head down the block to the neighbors basement. CJ and I sat glued to the television trying to learn a little Oklahoma geography so we would know what was going on. All of the storms passed around Tulsa and we didn’t even get a drop of rain! We now have a much better perspective on the weather and the layout of the state so when Monday's storms came through we were much more relaxed. I will try to post a bit on the severe weather later.  Thanks for all of the concern and checking in with us since Oklahoma weather has been big news across the country all week.

 

That was our first week here. We feel settled in and comfortable at our house and we are looking forward to a great summer here and looking back and missing all of our friends and family at home.

Love,

CJ and Adrian

 

Here is a teaser for my post about our first week of work, can anyone say tarantula?

Road Trip

Our trip down was uneventful, thank you to everyone praying for traveling mercies for us. We breezed through Chicago after deciding at the last minute to change our route and it ended up being the right decision. We even ended up picking some great restaurants for lunch and dinner. It truly was a blessed trip.

The first day in the truck was a long one, we stopped a lot to use the facilities and stretch our legs and even enjoyed an ice cream picnic at a particularly nice rest stop somewhere in Illinois.

 

At dinner CJ was getting restless so thankfully we happened upon a Cracker Barrel  and rented a book on tape from their library that we could return to another Cracker Barrel anywhere along the road. We had no idea they had a program like that and were delightfully entertained by Willie Robertson reading us The Duck Commander Family the rest of the trip. Add that one to your road trip file, they have all kinds of new and popular books to choose from for only $3.49 for a week. The time just flies when you are listening to a good story.

 

 We made it all the way to Springfield, MO and stayed at a cool bed and breakfast in their historic district. We always prefer to stay at Bed and Breakfast’s because the rooms are cool and homey and there is always something delicious for breakfast and luxuries that we don’t always get at home. This room had a huge bathroom, as big as our bedroom in the Hershey Hut and a claw foot tub which I enjoyed a relaxing soak in. Breakfast was Ozark Eggs Benedict which was awesome and CJ even photographed for Lawrence to enjoy. 

 Before we headed to Tulsa we had planned to stop at Lamberts Home of the Throwed  Roll to experience for ourselves what we have heard rave reviews about but we were both so full from breakfast that we decided to just get on the road and make it to Tulsa. Along the way we discovered that armadillos are popular road kill, it was definitely a sign we had made it to the south.
 

We rolled into our new neighborhood in the early afternoon and out landlords(and neighbors, do you see a pattern ? They have some pretty big shoes to fill) were there to meet us.  They are a nice retired couple named Jim and Annie and they have a cute dog Henry . They own three houses right in a row, they live in one of them and rent out the other two as furnished duplexes to short term renters. They call our half The Bluebird and it is decorated with an Oklahoma theme. I will post a virtual house tour here next week. We got right to unpacking and were settled in pretty quickly since we didn’t bring a whole lot  We ran out for a couple of things and found a Target just 3 blocks over. CJ bought his first tub of Blue Bell Ice Cream right from the store and he was delighted. I was delighted because we also have a Panda Express just 3 blocks away and I was in Orange Chicken heaven for dinner! We wrapped up our night by searching for a surprise the Molnars had left us when they had scoped out the place for us a few weeks before.

 

 

 Thank you very much, your prayers have made our new house feel comfortable and homey already. We love and miss you all, thanks for all the phone calls and encouragement.

Love,

CJ and Adrian