The Ussery Update

Monday was day two of our adventuring through Oklahoma.  We got up and ready for the day at ate breakfast at the hotel.  We stopped by a local coffee shop for some yummy coffee before we hit the road for a little day trip.  Our destination was Pawhuska, Oklahoma and it was about 75-80 miles from our hotel.  Pawhuska is a very small town in the middle of nowhere basically, but it's home to The Mercantile, the Pioneer Woman's restaurant and store. My love for the Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) runs deep.  I have all of her fabulous cookbooks, have made several of her yummy recipes, have lots of her kitchenware items/utensils/dishes and love watching her show.  Much to my delight, Parker has grown to love watching her show as well.  We will record episodes and watch it while we eat lunch sometimes.  Sweet times!    Needless to say, I was a wee bit eager for this day.  John and Parker were so sweet and kind to make a day out of going here. I think Parker was

While we have a lot going on right now and there are many pictures to share, I wanted to go back post a few things that happened earlier in the year.  I am excited to document a fun, week long road trip we took back in the spring.  While everyone is out of school now and taking fun summer vacation trips, I wanted to re-visit our trip that we took in April.  When we decided to take a family trip, we debated about where to go.  We discussed a few places and did a little research.  We wanted to go somewhere we'd never been before, but also some place fairly close where we could pack more activities into our week and not just drive and spend a lot of time in the car.  We don't mind long road trips, but for this one we were looking for some place close. For various reasons, we finally decided on Oklahoma.  Oklahoma is a state we have only driven through once, but never stayed or done any exploring.  We decided to break up our trip into two specific cities - Stillwater and O

Father's Day was such a sweet family day.  We started our day by going to church and Sunday school. Happy Sunday! These two are the best of friends - I just love their relationship! Parker's so lucky to have the best Daddy in the world.  Parker took a picture of us as well.  I'm very grateful to be on this parenting journey together. After church, we went out for a yummy lunch then came home to open gifts. Parker had fun giving John his gifts and helping him open them. One night while John was gone, Parker and I had fun crafting and making John a new coffee mug. Daddy loves coffee so this was the perfect, personalized gift. To Parker's surprise, I had a gift for him as well. He was so excited.  Like all children, he loves getting presests! We aren't big on video games, but we do allow Parker to play our old Wii for a set time each day.  Right now all he plays is MarioKart.  As John can, he'll play with/race Parker an

This is just a hodge podge of pictures I've taken over the last couple of weeks. Once we got back from Fredericksburg, we had a good little crop of squash.  Our squash plants have done really well.  They've all produced what they were going to so we planted more.  We've also got okra coming up as well. About two weeks ago, I made up a "Hello Summer" basket for Parker and surprised him with it at dinner one night. It was so cute how giddy and excited he was. Some of the items included a DVD, new chapter book for us to read and a bookmark, water balloons, summertime bath soap and bath crackles, goldfish crackers and binoculars to name a few.  He's already enjoyed a lot of it!  I'm always working on homeschooling in some form or fashion.  I have homeschool to dos each and every week - it's ongoing, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  I'm always preparing things for what we are doing now and planning for what we need to be working on in