Where Have We Been? Catching up with Some Miscellaneous Fun

It's embarrassing to see how long it has been since we posted on our blog. So Denisa has vowed to do better, and she's working on a string of travel posts to catch up on the miscellaneous fun we've been having with miscellaneous fun people in our lives. One of the fun things is an occasional trip to the lake for some tubing, thanks to our son's in-laws who have a boat on Grand Lake. These tubing rides are a little calmer when a three-year-old is on board with his Grandude and Daddy.

But when it's adults-only riding, the tube is often air-born. We took pictures to show our son and daughter-in-law just how far the tube bounced out of the water . . .

and how high they bounced off of the tube.

We made another trip to the Houston, Texas area to watch our nephew in The Woodlands high school band perform their magic in the marching band competition. Among those huge high schools around Houston, they are still the best! The skies were gray and storms were approaching while they wowed us with their show. Only a few minutes after they got off the field, the rain poured down, and the next bands had to perform in the rain.

While in Houston, we got to go to a Houston Rockets basketball game. While we had good seats for most of the game, we had wonderful seats during the third quarter. When a friend left their five-rows-from-the-court season ticket seats at half-time, they invited us to use them for the rest of the game.

We have never seen NBA action so close! We could see the players sweat and hear the talk on the court. That was some miscellaneous fun!

We stayed until the end to see the Houston Rockets win a close one! The crowd went wild!

While visiting our nephew and niece in The Woodlands, Texas, we were treated to lots of miscellaneous fun. Denisa got schooled in all things sour dough. We used Alexia's sour dough starter to make artisan loaves, pecan sticky buns, orange rolls, oat bread, and these cinnamon rolls that were almost ready to pop in the oven. It was a delicious week filled with miscellaneous sour dough fun!

We have some very talented nieces and nephews, and we love to watch them perform. We've made trips to Wichita, Kansas, to see Elliot in her lead roles in several musicals. Now that she has graduated from high school, we'll have to travel to Chicago to see her in college productions as she follows her musical theater dreams.

We also have miscellaneous fun following our youngest son's races. This trip took us to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for another half-marathon.

While Blake's running 13.1 miles, we calculate how many times we can see him on the course to cheer him on. This day we managed to catch up with him five different times, and we walked/ran twelve miles in the process.

Thousands of people run this hilly course through Tulsa, and we're proud to say that Blake had a new personal best time of one hour and 27 minutes. That's averaging six-and-a-half-minute miles. Wow!

We have watched him run the half-marathon in Oklahoma City several times, but he has started running in Tulsa events now. That has something to do with a young woman that he has been dating for the last year that lives in Tulsa. Don't they make a cute couple?

She lives very close to Tulsa's "Gathering Place." Filled with trails that wind around lakes and hills, we had heard about this special place, but had never visited until this year.

The trails continue down to the Arkansas River, and the weekend of the race we had some miscellaneous fun trying out many of the trails. We took a walk to the pedestrian bridge that straddles the river, so we could watch the sun set over the Arkansas.

That same weekend, our daughter-in-law, Jordan, was on the national show "CBS News Sunday Morning." How did that happen?!? Earlier in the week, we were keeping Eli while she went to the grocery store about a mile from our house. She likes to use the automated instacart that allows you to scan your purchases as you shop, bag them as you go, and pay for your purchases right on that cart without ever going to a check-out line. We've used this process as well, mainly because they were giving a free package or oreo cookies to entice customers to try it. But this day a national CBS filming crew was in Kansas City, and filmed Jordan doing her shopping with the automated cart. We watched the entire news piece when it aired, and swiped this picture from the broadcast. Parts of the news story was filmed in California, New York, and of course our local grocery store near Kansas City. That's some miscellaneous fun to see our daughter-in-law on the national news!

Even though we love to travel to see special friends and family in other places, we are still enjoying our time near Kansas City with these special people.

We get to enjoy some day-to-day miscellaneous fun, and we haven't missed a Halloween trick-or-treat night yet.

We're enjoying many days of laughing until our bellies hurt. So after this long absence from the blog, that's a little snap shot of some of the places we have been--having some miscellaneous fun!