A lot of time...

Has passed since my last entry. At least for me. What have I been doing?
Well, last week-end, Jen's family had their Family Reunion. It was small this year, as the younger generations tend to not go very often. It usually a pain in the ass is why. This year was no exception, but I had a lot of fun despite myself. The Reunion is usually held at beautiful Lake Murray, near Ardmore, OK. The reason is because half of us live in Oklahoma, and the rest in Texas, so we just meet in the middle. Lake Murray is very beautiful. There is camping, a Marina, and a Resort on site. It was one of Roosevelt's public works projects during the New Deal. It has not been updated since, and the maintenance has been lackluster. It is what I fondly refer to as "Jank City." We asked them on the phone if they had a couple of cribs they could throw in our room, which they did, and tried to charge us $10 a night for, which would have been $60. I let them know as nicely as possible that that was a crock of shit, and they waved the fee. This was a good thing, because both cribs were of the old fold-up variety from the '50s and didn't have any of their hardware attached any longer, and would completely collapse once more than a half a pound of pressure was applied. The first time it happened, all I did was put a pillow in it. Classy.
The wonderful thing is that children don't care about shit like that, and there were a lot of kids in attendance. Jackson's time was monopolized by his cousin Jaezie, who at almost 4 years old, is like a swarm of bees. It is as though she was raised by wolves. He sister Lenzie is awesome. At 9, she's smart and witty and wise beyond her years, which makes Jaezie that much harder to figure out. Jackson seemed to start to have a good time as soon as we implemented the "Hands to Yourself" rule, which made everybody happy.
Anyway, the weekend was filled with swimming and Grilled food and Smores and running around and tired kids and fits and evil breakfast buffets* and was actually quite relaxing even though Jen and I really didn't sleep much.


The best part was our trip to Arbuckle Farms. This is a place where old (and I do mean OLD) zoo and circus animals go to live out their days eating food out of wax cups held out of car windows by timid housewives and scared children. What a magical place! It was more fun than I thought it would be, and a lot less pathetic. The animals were friendly and only the ostriches were dicks, but in my experience, most birds are dicks. Since we rarely went over 10mph the whole time, we let Jackson sit in the front seat, so he could see everything. He had a BLAST.
Flickr set here.

The rest of the weekend was anti-climactic, to tell you the truth. We left Monday morning, but next time I'm leaving Sunday night, and sleep in my own bed.

Tuesday and Wednesday, we kept Gavin, the son of our dear friends Brandon and Gretchen, as his usual babysitter had a death in the family. They are about 6 months apart in age, and entertained each other better than any adult ever could. Wednesday night, Scarlett stayed the night so her mom could go clubbing, to mixed results. She's a sweet kid but has some problems. Mainly due to having little or no supervision most of the time. She kept us up all night screaming because apparently sleep is where the clowns eat you. That was fun. Jen had her up and dressed and out the door as soon as the call came, at 7:00am.

So that's about it. That's what I've been doing.

Go away now.

-JP





*
"Is the oatmeal instant, or do you make it?"
(blank expression)
"It's instant but we make it."