Family: June 2006 Archives

Here's a photo of our almost-six-year-old, taken back on Easter Sunday.

This is one of the best photos yet of our nine-year-old, taken as his official baseball photo. (I cropped it to just his head for the website.) Kevin Bender, a dad at our school, took the team and individual photos this year.

Good looking kid, isn't he?

My five-month-old boy is very talkative, but until recently all the noises have been vowel sounds -- coos, creaks, squeals, and squawks, but not a single plosive or stop.

But yesterday, on Father's Day no less, he looked at me and uttered "da!" followed by a lot of other noises. I tried to get him to say it again, but instead he regaled us with the first consonant he mastered, the old bilabial fricative. I'll try not to take that as personal commentary.

It was a productive day, 'though you'd never know it by visiting here.

• Ate a polish sausage with sauerkraut in the parking lot of Lowe's after picking up supplies for the day's chores.
• Bought gifts and a card for my dad for father's Day.
• Installed new valve and supply line in the master bathroom's toilet tank.
• Installed new doorknob on the kitchen half-bath door.
• Installed new digital thermostat.
• Listened to five-year-old read the last of the second Dick and Jane compendium.
• Read a chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to the nine-year-old.
• Listened to the five-month-old blow raspberries.
• Took a nap listening to the rain and the rumbling of the late afternoon thunderstorms.
• Blogging. Still TBD.

There are a few new items on the linkblog. Be sure to check that out.

It has been a busy few weeks around our house, as school-related activities lingered on into the first couple of weeks after the end of classes, even as summer activities have already begun.

My nine-year-old son and I spent last night camping at Paradise Cove in Sequoyah State Park on Fort Gibson Lake with five of his classmates and their dads. My son got to ride with a couple of the other dads on Sea-Doo, and he spent a lot of time waist-deep in the lake, fishing.

At about 9:30 last night, I thought we were done for the day, ready for bed. My son wanted me to read another chapter of the second Harry Potter book to him, and we were getting ready to do that when someone starts a campfire. So we roast marshmallows. One of the other dads read a story from a missionary book and a chapter from Jim Stovall's book The Ultimate Gift.

So now we're done for the night, yes? No. It was time to set out the jugs. My son and I could either go out right then -- it was nearly 11 -- or we could wake up in the middle of the night to check and rebait the lines.

With jug-fishing, you take a heavy plastic bleach or detergent jug (well-rinsed and with the lid in place) and tie a length of string to the handle and a weight at the other end. For each weight we used half a brick, with a wire twisted through the holes to provide a handle for tying the string. A couple of shorter lengths of string are tied in between the jug and the weight, and a hook is tied to each of the shorter lengths. The string was just ordinary nylon string, like kite string, rather than fishing line.

We went out on that first run with two other dads and two other kids. We took the boat to the other side of the lake, then one of the other dads unwound each jug line, baited the hooks with perch and minnows and set it out. There was a full moon and it was nearly calm, so it was a nice night to be out on the water.

We were back in the tent at about midnight. I must have slept well, because I'm told there were some loud late night partiers nearby, and I never heard them.

This morning, we had a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and fried potatoes, cooked over a Coleman stove. Before breakfast, while I slept, my son did some more fishing along the shore. We packed up around 10 to head across the lake to Taylor Ferry Marina. A couple of the dads had Sea-Doos, and kids took turns going for a ride and fishing from the dock.

We all had lunch in Wagoner at Runt's BBQ. I had the pork tenderloin sandwich, which was much like the porkchop sandwiches you can get at the Tulsa State Fair. Someone had the catfish sandwich -- two enormous cornbread-coated filets on a bun. My son pronounced the chopped beef delicious.

After lunch we parted ways. My son and I headed to the town of Ft. Gibson to see the old stockade, which is a 1930s recreation of the 1820s frontier fort. (It would be fun to visit during one of their encampments, when re-enactors spend the weekend dressed in period uniforms.) The later fort buildings, which date from the 1840s, are still standing. I believe the town is the oldest continuously-settled place in the state.

In downtown Fort Gibson they were having their annual classic car show. My son said his feet were tired, and he didn't want to stop, but once we started looking around he was glad we did. We saw everything from a Model T to a Mazda Miata: a Dodge Dart Swinger, lots of Chevy Bel Airs, a 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood, a Willys Jeepster, Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs. We both goggled at a T-Bird with an amazing sparkling golden-green paint finish. (I think I had a Hot Wheels car that was just that color.)

So that was our weekend, or the first part of it, at any rate.

It was the close to a busy week, which is partly why I haven't written much here.

I fielded a lot of phone calls during and right after the filing period from candidates and prospective candidates. I was happy to see Bob Dick stand down and to see State Rep. Fred Perry enter the District 3 County Commission race. Cliff Magee, who ran a strong race for City Council earlier this year, and would have been another excellent candidate for the seat, filed on Wednesday, but has withdrawn his name from the ballot and has endorsed Fred Perry.

I was also happy to see former Tulsa City Councilor Anna Falling enter the District 1 County Commission Race. I got to know Anna when she beat me in the 1998 District 4 Republican primary, and we worked together during her term of office. I'm told that Tracey Wilson, another competitor for that seat, is the leader of the homeowners' association in unincorporated north Tulsa County. I don't know Tracey, but I have a great deal of respect for the other folks I've met from that group, who worked to stop annexation of their rural area.

On Tuesday, our part of midtown, near the Fairgrounds, was hit by the early morning microburst. We were without power for about seven hours, and we lost a few tree limbs, but we were relatively unscathed. Two of our neighbors had oak trees just fall over. One of the trees fell onto grass, but the other fell into the house and the next door neighbor's house, and when the roots popped up, they pulled the water line up, too.

I'm a member of the Downtown Kiwanis Club, and this is our big week -- the Miss Oklahoma Pageant, which the club has sponsored since the 1960s, providing the manpower for the event and raising the scholarship money that will be awarded to the winners. On Monday, at our regular weekly luncheon, we hosted all 44 contestants, along with the contestants in the teen pageant. I sat at a table with Miss NSU, Miss Skiatook Area, and Miss Claremore -- it was the first time competing for Miss Oklahoma for all three, and for Miss NSU it was the first year she had competed in any pageant. (The other two had competed in Miss Oklahoma-affiliated local pageants before.)

Also at our table was Miss South Oklahoma City Outstanding Teen -- one of the teen pageant contestants. Every contestant has to adopt a "platform" -- a cause to promote, and hers was one of the more interesting. Miss South OKC's adopted cause was the Ophelia Project, an effort to deal with relational aggression, a kind of bullying that can be even harder to take than physical aggression.

Early Thursday morning I did my little bit for the pageant, delivering several dozen donuts and sausage rolls from the good folks at the 44th and Memorial Daylight Donuts store to the ORU dorm where the contestants were staying, delivering them before the ladies were up for breakfast. I guess when you're in the midst of the competition a few donuts aren't going to spontaneously add dimples to your thighs.

My kids had Vacation Bible School this week, and my wife helped watch the workers' babies in the nursery. The two big kids had swim lessons in the afternoons, too. My son had an end-of-school class swim party. My daughter spent Friday with Grandma, playing and baking. Both kids went with Grandma and the cousins on Tuesday to see "Over the Hedge", but the theatre's copy of the movie had broken!

The baby is smiling more and more, laughing and squealing, and even coughing for attention, a trick he picked up during a recent cold. If he's sitting on someone's knee, he will rock back and forth when he hears music he likes. At last Friday's Tulsa Boy Singer concert, he started rocking during several songs and every time people applauded. When he started getting a bit vocal himself, I took him outside and for a walk with his stroller. We walked up to 2nd and Cincinnati and watched the bicycle race. He finally dozed off as we arrived back at Trinity, and I watched the end of the concert from the narthex as he snoozed in the stroller.

By the way, even though I haven't been blogging much, I have been adding a link or two every day to the linkblog -- that's an easy way for me to call attention to something I found interesting, without making me feel like I need to write a novel about it.