Quote of the Day

If those who we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them.....they could perceive what they have made of us.

Albert Camus

Gracen Goes to School

Last week Gracen started attending pre-school at the Cherokee Nation Child Development Center. She took to it like a duck to water.

Come on, Dad.  Let's get in there.

Let's put my things away.

Ok, let's get this show on the road.

Artificial Adventures

We like to travel with the grand kids. I'm always searching the internet for new and unusual places to visit. When Rachel and Kelly were young we went to big name theme parks every few years and we've also taken most of the grand kids to those places.  The younger ones occasionally ask me when we will go to another one, but to tell you the truth I dread it.  One reason I dread it is the expense and another is that the adventure is artificial. I guess I'm looking at it from an older person's perspective but I need a little more substance to my adventures. The trips I've enjoyed the most over the years have been seeing the Arizona meteor crater, touring a farm, a jelly bean factory, and an ice cream factory, a bone museum, a dinosaur museum, the Wright Brothers museum, and an ugly car museum in Tennessee. We explored an abandoned mill town that was the set of "Hunger Games",  we've had a muscadine cider slushie at a peanut stand in North Carolina, toured the waterways around New Bern, NC in a small tugboat. We've eaten fresh sea food at an ocean front restaurant at Nags Head, pulled pork sandwiches in Memphis, and the famous biscuits at the Loveless Cafe just outside of Nashville. We've walked around the Petrified Forest and climbed to the top of Chimney Rock. There are so many things to see in this beautiful country of ours.

Monday Morning with G and the Dogs

G is upset because Riley bit her magic wand (stick) in half.

The Time is Flying

 

 

Samantha and Tara selling tomatoes in our front yard. This photo

was taken about 15 years ago. They made some cash that summer.

Essence of Summer Eating

Summertime always brings heat, humidity, and insects, which make gardening so difficult, but when you sit down at the table and eat food that you planted, cultivated, and harvested the negatives give way to real pleasure. What do the French say,   joi de vivre?

A lot of the vegetables have been spent and we've mowed them down

and are now trying to take care of what is left.

Gracen helps me shell beans.

Locally caught Sand Bass fillets, baked potato. fried okra and green

tomatoes, pinto beans, and hush puppies.

Reception

Tara and Jarrett were married in May and yesterday we had a reception for them.

Tara and Jarrett with his parents Danny and  Sandie

Dorothy and I with Tara and Jarrett

With Jarrett's grandmother Louvena

with Emily and Corbin

with Kelly

Dorothy made the cake.

Gracen helps unwrap presents

My sister Rita and me.

Jenna and Gracen

Rita, Dorothy, and Karon Dunaway

Robin, Amy, and Madison





Sam and me

                                       Cousins: Morgan, Gracie, Alex, and Jenna

Cousins

Our nephew Jack Dunaway's daughter Sarah is visiting from California. We had a big country dinner today to give her a taste of southern cooking.  It was the first time she had ever tasted okra. We topped off the meal with blackberry cobbler and cinnamon rolls.

Sarah, Marley, Hunter, Jenna, Gracen, and of course Riley.

That Time of Year

As the years go by the seasons seem to come around quicker. For me, winter is barely gone when the summer heats up and brings all the things we expect from the season, such as:

One of my favorite summer bloomers, the purple cone flower.

Hibiscus

We are picking black berries every day.

Ripe tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, squash, and okra make summer meals a delight and bring to mind family meals of years gone by. Accent those meals with the heat and humidity, the sound of cicadas in the trees, and fire flies at dusk and a person gets a feel of one's place in the universe and a feeling of belonging to that place.

Perfect Summer Meal

ri

Steak hot off the grill, baked potato, sauteed summer squash, a salad

of kale, chard, spinach, and arugula, and fresh corn. And don't forget

the iced tea.

4th of July

The family came down for the holiday. We had lots to eat including apple pie and home made ice cream.

Waiting for the sun to go down.

Tara and Marley

Leaving Jinja

Two more days and Kelly will be heading home.  Here are more photos of her trip:

Typical meal during their stay.

A painting Kelly purchased from a local artist.

African supermarket

chicken guacamole wrap

At the market

Girls going shopping

Plenty of money to spend

Fossil and Farm

Thursday morning we took the kids to Norman, OK to tour the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. It's a museum that traces the fossil record of life over millions of years in the region of what is now Oklahoma. The next day we visited the Braum's farm, a ten thousand acre enterprise that grows and processes the ingredients that go into their food products.  Braum's is a chain of ice cream/fast food/grocery stores that span the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri.

Ready to start the trip

This was the kids' favorite. The Triceratops.

The Brontosaurus. This picture was taken from the second floor.

He is standing on the first floor. His head is 19ft above the floor and

he is 90 ft from nose to tip of tail.

Lots of fossils.

One floor was dedicated to the Mississippian Indian culture of North America.  A civilization that flourished from about 800 to 1500 CE. 

This family was attempting to take a picture of their dad and daughters in this ancient

dugout canoe when Jenna and Gracen jumped right in and made their selves at home.

My sciatica requires that I find a 

place to sit down from time to time.

Up to our hotel room

Waiting for the Braum's tour to begin. Gracen is looking back where

the ice cream is kept. Hunter is looking at?

Posing by the tour bus. No photography was allowed inside the bakery

or ice cream plant.

The farm spans the Canadian River

Free ice cream and cookies after the tour.

Heading home.