Check out our evening at Kiddie Park with my little niece, nephew, Audrey and Chad! Oh, and watch Grady, who is 5. He was really scrutinizing all the equipment, watching how the rides were fitted together and all the moving parts. I really think he’s going to be an engineer when he grows up! Riley is a doll, and as smart as can be. She knew exactly what ride she wanted to go on and where it was. Things got a little scary at times, but she put on a brave smile!! And she really got into the steering! They both had loads of fun–and so did we!
Blog Archives
Finally! Tomorrow is the special day where Graebel Movers come to the Ponca house and pack all our stuff. The good thing about moving is that it forces you to get rid of junk. Which is so hard for me to do. And I have to be organized, which I admit, I’m horrible at doing! That is the part I dread–not being able to find things. And I pity the movers. How do they know how to label stuff? I mean, I have random things and lots of little figurines, vases, pictures and decorations.
We are partially moved into our new home already. We’ve been getting new furniture–searching for antiques to fit our 1925 house. So I am hoping that everything will fit. If not, I’ll sell stuff on Craigslist!
Then on Thursday the movers will pack everything on the moving truck. Then on Friday is when they will unload everything. We will unpack the boxes. I kind of wanted them to, but then everything will just be on the floor, which will be a mess. We figure we’ll just go through the boxes on our own time. Problem is what to do with the boxes once they’re empty. Ugh, moving is a drag, but I’m psyching myself up for it!
Audrey is going to Stillwater with Chad tomorrow. He’s got to take a test for summer school. And she is going to go through some of her stuff at the apartment while he’s in his exam–start taking things home because Chad is moving in with friends at the end of July. So a lot is going on!
I think my dh and I will just slip away after a cameo appearance and hang out at our favorite Mexican restaurant–drink a margarita and chill. And I’m really hoping that I’ll get a chance to write some. REALLY HOPING. Gotta get finished with this novel!
Audrey wants a puppy. I’m so surprised because like her dad, she has not been a huge dog lover, but I am. I have been around dogs all of my childhood, and most of my adult life. Anyway, Audrey always claimed she didn’t much care for dogs, but the last few months she has been showing an avid interest–playing with Candy Belle, etc. And Candy was so much more sociable than our Silky Terrier was. He never let Audrey get close to him, cuddle him, etc. And she really tried to win him over! Looking back, I realize this is probably why she didn’t much care for dogs back then because she thought all dogs were like our Silky Terrier. But now she knows differently from being around Candy Belle.
So we have been looking feverishly for the right one! She has been researching all the miniature breeds. I keep telling her to post, but she is too busy looking for a puppy. I tell her to talk about her puppy finds here on this site, but … well, you get the picture. But it has been a LONG time since I’ve seen her this excited and focused. I know she has lots more pictures/research to show than me. I have just been searching for the right pup and shooting ads over to her. She has been researching how to take care of tiny pooches. Like making her own dog food, the right carriers, puppy clothes, how to get them used to grooming, etc.
We’ve been looking at the Tulsa World classifieds online, and saw this ad about a Yorkie that some missionary woman took with her to Cameroon, Africa. The scenario was that she realized she couldn’t spend enough time with the pup and that the climate was too harsh for the baby. She wanted to give the puppy to a good home in Oklahoma since she used to go to school in Stillwater. Well. My heart went out to that little puppy. Found out that she wanted me to send $275 to ship the puppy to my doorstep! I was leery when I heard that. Then I saw three more ads similar to this. All of them claimed they were from Cameroon, and the puppy looked like the exact same one, with the same markings. I reported them all as spam. Ugh! I hope nobody falls for that!! I highly recommend that you stick to local breeders, where you can go visit the little pup before you spend money!
Audrey and Chad got their wisdom teeth removed today–all 8 of them! Aaahhh, I feel so sorry for them. Audrey’s were impacted, and she is having a slightly harder time this evening. It took forever to get the bleeding to stop. We tried tea bags to promote clotting. It worked with Audrey; but Chad went back to gauze. I don’t think he was biting down enough. But he put pressure on the bleeding for 1/2 hour and it finally stopped.
Poor Audrey! Her face is really swollen, especially her right lower jaw. She’s been putting ice packs on it, and I have some anti-inflammatory medicine to give her. I’ve been fixing her smoothies and just made her a chocolate shake. Chad too, of course. She hasn’t been able to sleep. So I told her to write. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with in her pain induced state!
Rayma and John (my sister and brother-in-law) had a real tragedy happen. They were in Dallas, getting ready to watch their grandkids because their daughter and her husband are going to Hawaii for their 10th wedding anniversary. Night before last about 5:00 Candy Belle, John and Rayma’s little Yorkie, suddenly just died. One minute Candy was playing with her ball–she always had a tennis ball in her mouth–thirty seconds later Rayma found her dead, with her ball rolling down away from her inert body. She was only 4 years old.
They drove back to my parents’ farm by Lake of the Cherokees last night, about a 4 hour drive, and got here at 2 in the morning. (Audrey, Chad and I were here already, visiting). I’ve never seen John cry so hard. It was so horribly sad–I cried with him. He made a little wooden coffin for her and we all worked on making a headstone for her. We buried her in the garden next to Mom and Dad’s house.
I started looking in the classifieds for a female Yorkie puppy and found one in Chelsea. I drove Rayma out there and we bought it. Chad and Grady were with us. She is only 8 weeks old; born on April 1. She is sooo sweet. Rayma wants to name her Candy Belle, too–Like Candy Belle II. But John doesn’t want to.
They are thinking of naming her Bella Ray. They want to register her and hopefully breed her when she gets older. She is really small, though.
The mother weighs only 4 pounds and the father 2 1/2 pounds. So she might not ever go into heat. Anyway, I think it’s good therapy for them–especially John.
I’ve never seen him get so attached, but he said he was with Candy 24/7, and she was just like his second soul mate. I just heard him say that this was the hardest thing that he has ever had to go through, is to lose Candy.
I just heard John say that he would call the new puppy Belle. 
Oh, and they decided on Isabella Candace for her registered name, and call her Bella.
Here are some pictures of the new puppy. Audrey is holding her in this last picture!
We are in our new house–well, new to us…it was actually built in 1924–and the cable guy came this morning. Bad, bad but my husband cut the cable earlier because he didn’t like it hanging across the roof of the garage and the driveway, (tacky). So, shhh! Don’t tell!
DH cut the cable so when the cable guy came, the guy was talking about how the cable was broken. I immediately felt bad because dh doesn’t want me to say anything–and of course, he couldn’t be here for the installation. So I play dumb and say, “I wonder how that happened.”
He immediately guesses that a squirrel chewed through the wires, or maybe a tree limb fell on it. I’m feeling worse and worse, (and having to hold back an hysterical giggle because I almost always laugh when I’m trying to hide something–an unfortunate reaction in so many situations, as you can imagine), thinking “Yeah, my husband has sharp teeth!”
But I’m loving the internet!!!!
Category: Blog
Leave a Comment
We had a scream of a time playing train dominoes at my parents’ house on Grand Lake of the Cherokees. Chad was after me, (sitting across from me), and Audrey was before me, sitting next to me. I was losing horribly–which is about par for me–and Chad had been watching me so carefully, chiding me when I accidentally chose 13 dominoes instead of 12.
The next round started with 3 spots. I didn’t have any to even start the game. Audrey was lining up her dominoes and I glanced over at her–saw she had a couple of 3′s. I wanted one so bad! I was reminded of my grandpa and what a tease he was. He would always sneak a domino from the bone pile, or sneak a domino into the bone pile that he didn’t like–and laugh his head off when somebody caught him.
I was sure either Audrey or Chad would see me. Chad was looking right at me when I reached over and grabbed one of Audrey’s dominoes. But he didn’t say a thing. I waited for Audrey to protest that something was wrong because I was so sure she’d notice a 3 was missing…but amazingly she didn’t! I laughed so hard I peed in my pants!! They just kept laughing too, thinking that Chad was making faces at me to make me laugh, which made me laugh harder.
I felt bad afterward, (well, sort of), but what could I do? Nobody ever noticed a dang thing. After that, I kept getting doubles which were the only plays I had–and unfortunately for Chad, he had to break them and couldn’t go out on the hand starting with one spot. Anyway, it was great fun, and we laughed a lot. And I was really shocked because I actually ended up winning for the night, which never happens.
So, unless they read this post, they won’t ever know my ornery play!
My son, Chad, corrected me on the fish he said we saw while snorkeling in Cozumel.
He laughed when he saw the pictures on the previous post that I had found on the internet of the fish I 
thought we’d seen. (Light, but I wish I would have bought an underground camera! I’ve had one in the past, though, and I haven’t been too successful getting good pictures of the fish I pointed the camera at.)
But Audrey agreed with Chad–that I was off! So, I had Audrey help me find the fish that we had seen in Dzul Ha. There’s this wonderful site of Uncommon Cozumel Fish.
Here’s another site we thought was good of striped fish.
Rock Beauty
This is a Rock Beauty. Chad saw it, but I didn’t. The thing is, I didn’t have my contacts on and I couldn’t wear my glasses in the water.
I wore my snorkeling mask, though, and I was amazed at how much I could see. It wasn’t as blurry as when I am out of the water. I wonder if salt water magnifies my sight? Anyway, Chad was swimming in a different area than I was, and he dove down deep a few times, and this is when he saw it.
It was hiding among the jars–like this one is hiding among the coral.
Blue Strip Grunts were some others that we saw. Chad found another picture that is more like the fish I saw. They were in a big school, swimming all around us. Sometimes fish will swim to me, but they would look at me, although not get close enough to touch.
Blue Stripe Grunts
Spotlight Parrot Fish
We bought the movie Avatar and watched it with family. I had seen it in the theater, but it was fun to watch 
it at home, too. I had forgotten some stuff. And then we started discussing the plot. Like, my niece was confused about when Neytiri knew Jake had another body–a human one. Did she always know? She said in the movie when she first met him that he was a foreigner, she was about to kill him, then she got that sign from Eywa (Mother, like Mother Nature–a deity of all nature) that he was important. But she could smell his human side.
From the beginning, did the Omaticaya (or the People–a clan of the Na’vi) know Jake and the doctor were Avatars, i.e., Na’vi bodies whose bodies were controlled by a human mind? We weren’t sure.
What do you think? I might have to watch it again!
Later:
I’m watching it once more. They call him Dreamwalker, alien, Sky People. I don’t think they know what makes the Avatars tick, but the Na’vi know that Jake and the rest of them are different.
Here is a really good site about Avatar, telling about the violence and if it’s good for kids. They also talk about the animals. For instance, there’s the eclauns, which are the flying dragon like things, except they don’t belch fire. I think it give a great message, and has a romance in it, which I really like. It’s at wired.com.
Hi, we’re back from our cruise and let me tell you–we had a blast! We had wonderful dinner table partners. Rob and Mike. Lots of fun with great interaction. They went with us snorkeling in Cozumel to our favorite beach, Dzul Ha. The owners have totally renovated the place, though. Not the little grass hut hole-in-the-wall place anymore.
They are building a hotel across the street and have really nice outdoor restaurants, tables, umbrellas and suntanning lounge chairs. The snorkeling was great. I think all the storms last year washed a lot of the polution away because the fish were back. And coral is starting to grow again. They had huge pots with holes that simulated coral too, so the fish could hide and swim around them like they so enjoy doing.
Here are some of the fish we saw:
Queen Angel
A Golden Tiger Fish. We saw several schools of these fish. They swam close and were not shy. I tried to touch them, but they wouldn’t let me.
Here is a Queen Angel. We saw several of these.
I don’t know what this is called but I saw three or four of these.
One of these, a splendid toad fish, I saw peeking out of the urn. Then he darted to another one close by.
I saw several of these slender long fish. Not sure what they are called. They were very bright yellow, like neon, along the outer rim. They swam close together.
