We've had some fun on the weekends!

We've had a hodge-podge of blog entries lately, covering Denisa's Mother's house fire, and then catching up with our travels before the fire. We are now wrapping up the loose ends of fire insurance and getting Betty settled in her new place. We've learned some things about making an insurance claim that we wish we didn't have to know. We made a spread-sheet of 432 items in the house that had to be individually listed with purchase dates and name brands. Her policy was a cash-basis plan, not a replacement-value, which made it more complicated. We met with a fire inspector, a claims adjuster, and made countless calls to the insurance office in charge of the claim. We sent copies of clothing and food receipts, records of mileage driven, and rent receipts as we got Betty settled into a new place to live. That also included two weeks of cleaning and fixing up that new place. 

It has been over seven weeks since the fire, and we still haven't gotten the final settlement from the insurance company. That might not seem like such a long time, unless you consider how many expenses one has when they have to replace everything. It takes a lot of money to continue life after a fire!

While we were working most of those first five weeks, we were also playing on the weekends. For example, the second weekend we made the trip to Kansas City to spend time with our oldest son and his family over the Easter weekend.

We colored eggs,

and painted rocks,

played, and read lots of books. That's a look of love shared by both the guys in the picture below.

Besides coloring and hunting Easter eggs, we also made a trip to the Kansas City Zoo with our daughter-in-law and grandchildren on a cool weather day.

We found that the animal statues are easier to photograph than the real animals . . .

and the merry-go-round animals are especially fun.

The third weekend we drove to Oklahoma City, and took Eli to spend a little time with his great Grandmother. Betty is still smiling after the fire, and glad to see her youngest great-grandchild.

We had more family time that weekend, as we got to attend a great niece's 11th birthday party.

Then we got to be there when our youngest son ran his second half-marathon race. We watched the start of the race on television, where we could see the thousands of runners lined up for as far as the television cameras could see. Runners Magazine calls this one of the 12 best marathons in the country. The runners today came from 47 different states and 12 different countries.

Then we walked quickly to a point where we could see Blake at the six-mile point of the course.

This area is called "mimosa beach" where less serious runners can stop for a drink.

While the runners looped around three more miles, we walked straight to the intersecting point to see that Blake was still running smoothly at around mile 9.

Then we drove quickly to the finish line to watch Blake still running well after 13.1 miles! This is "The Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon" and it memorializes the 168 people that died in the Murrah Building bombing on April 19, 1995. The last part of the race is lined with pictures of the 168 victims, which included children that were in the day care on the first floor of the building.

Before the race, Blake texted us that he would be pleased with a finish time of 1:40, happy with a time of 1:39, and very happy with a finish of 1:38. So we knew he was ecstatic when his finish time was less than 1:35. That's an hour and 35 minutes of running, and averaging 7.25 minutes per mile. His cheering party met him at the finish line festival for pictures, and we all had smiles on our faces because we were so proud of him! His adoring crowd also includes his wife, and her parents.

The finish line is in Scissortail Park, where views of downtown Oklahoma City make a good back drop.

We kept suggesting that Blake sit down and rest his legs, but he wasn't even tired. So what did we do after we ate tacos? We went for a three-mile walk around their neighborhood.

Our walk included some of the marathon path, including a notorious hill. From watching Blake's progress on the race app, we noticed that this big incline was labeled "gorilla hill" for the racers.

The fourth weekend we drove to Wichita Falls, Texas, for a great nephew's wedding. That nephew is 6'6" and his bride is right at six feel tall. So Mark's Mother looked short between the bride and groom.

The wedding was a great time to see many of Mark's family members, including his Mother and his siblings.

That trip was close to our friends, Connie and Steven's house, and they let us stay with them. We got to do some hiking at Quartz Mountains State Park while we were there.

After taking some pictures of the hikers from the front with those beautiful granite mountains behind them . . .

Denisa had to take this picture from the back. What are they doing?

They are sneaking up on this eastern collared lizard. We don't have the good camera with us, so they are trying to get the closest picture possible with their cell phones.

While we are talking about scaly reptiles, we have to include a picture of the snake that Mark and Joe found while cleaning up the yard at Denisa's Mother's new house. We had never seen anything like the underside of this snake with bright yellow and orange colors. When he googled it, Mark determined it was a nonvenomous ring-necked snake. When disturbed, they will coil up their tails and raise it up to expose the bright orange underside.

While we are creeping you out with snake pictures, we should also mention that we went to the Rattlesnake Derby in the nearby town of Mangum on that fourth weekend. This festival is complete with a carnival, blocks of vendors, and the chance to buy fried rattlesnake. But the highlight is the rattlesnake pit with hundreds of live snakes. Denisa was a little disappointed that attending on a Friday evening means that the snake pit was closed. But we also didn't have to deal with the 30,000 people that would be attending on Saturday. 

The fifth weekend we were at Mark's brother's house in eastern Oklahoma, for a Cinco de Maya fiesta party. 

It was a fund-raiser for their church youth, which included some of our great nieces. We shared a great evening with twenty others, enjoying the Mexican food and live music, and beautiful weather on the patio.

We had a special treat because our best friends from thirty years ago were there, and we got to spend time catching up with them.

Our weeks were filled with the work of fire insurance, shopping for replacement items, cleaning out a house, and then moving Denisa's Mother into a new place. But we had weekends of fun as well. It has been more than seven weeks since we got the phone call that Denisa's Mother's house had burned to the ground. We are glad that we could help get her life back on track, but we are also glad that we got to have some fun on the weekends!