Oklahoma and Back

I just got back from visiting my family in Oklahoma. We had a great time, and Dane didn’t get sick this time. Hooray! He was a cute, happy boy who everyone loved, except maybe the dogs when he’d grab their fur.

Let’s see…we did a lot of eating out, which makes me very happy. Seriously, I would have to say eating out is one of my hobbies. It makes me happy to choose from yummy foods that I didn’t have to make or clean up. Highlights of our culinary adventures: the Churrasco steak from Pearl’s, the City Platter from Charleston’s, and the Prime Steak Diablo and Crème Brulee from Boulevard Steakhouse, probably the nicest restaurant I’ve even been to.

We also played a fair amount of Wii. The only Wii sport that I am good at is bowling, and I tried to make Pro status to get the sparkly bowling ball, but I didn’t make it. Maybe next time. I have been told that studying Kenta’s bowling form and execution will help.

I got there Wednesday but Joel didn’t get there until Friday evening. It was good for Dane to see his daddy again. We missed him! Then on Saturday, we went to Pops, a cool little soda shop on Route 66 near Edmond. It has hundreds of different kinds of soda from all over the world. I had heard about it on the Today show and was excited that it was so close to Edmond! We all got a unique soda, and then we got a little family picture in front of the tallest soda bottle in the world!

And here we are a little closer up

It was maybe slightly less cool than I was expecting, but still definitely worth going.

Then that night was…

My dad’s surprise 50^th birthday party! Planning this was a feat because I am out of town and because my dad catches on to stuff like this really quickly. But after lots of phone calls, planning, food ordering, and a few white lies, we arrived at the McKinley’s house to “swim.” Surprise!

See how skinny he is? He has lost 45 lbs. since February. That’s two-an-a-half Danes. I’d say that’s pretty impressive, wouldn’t you?

After the festivities died down, we did indeed go swimming. Dane really loves the water. He loves to splash and to try to lunge out of your arms into the water. He is fearless, which makes his mommy fearful. But I am happy that he enjoys it so much.

Besides Jiichan and Baachan, Kenta is the person Dane seemed to connect with most once he got used to everyone. It was cute seeing him light up and crawl toward Kenta.

Dane also really enjoyed crawling into the dogs’ cage. I didn’t let him for obvious reasons, except for once to get a picture (don’t tell Joel).

He is wearing a little outfit that Kenta and Kenji used to wear. I like seeing his little belly poking out.

My dad had spent the weeks leading up to our visit preparing what he called the DaneMobile. It is a little trailer attached to his bike, and he was really excited to take Dane out for his morning rides.

I went with them one day, but the other days were Jiichan-Dane bonding times (also Ami needs to catch up on sleep times).

Here they are, lightning fast:

I’m not sure what happened with that picture, but it is kind of cool.

Also, my mom has always thought Dane looked so cute while crying. He apparently looks like her dad when he scrunches up his face, so we tried to capture it a few times. (It was easy to find opportunities because he was super clingy and would start crying if I just started walking away.)

Poor, sad boy. You can see him sporting his Pops souvenir onesie.

And then, on the day we had to go, we took a little 10-month birthday photo shoot.

Then, we had some airport drama. We had left in plenty of time but needed to grab some food, which took forever (thanks to Rib Crib). We went to the drop off and quickly checked in, and the lady was like, “Your plane is fixin’ to leave without you,” and “Don’t waste a single minute getting over there!” We couldn’t leave the car there, so my dad went to hurry and park and I went to get in line for security. There really wasn’t a line, so I was already about to go through by the time my dad got back, and we were too far away to go back, so we just had to wave goodbye. Then I ran all the way to my gate, and then they weren’t even boarding yet! I was mad, and my dad was sad he didn’t get to hold Dane to say goodbye. So that was lame. But otherwise, it was a really good trip, and we are excited to see them again as soon as we can. We are happy to be back home with Joel…for about 36 hours until we leave for Show Low for Joel’s 10 year high school reunion tomorrow. Yeehaw! I’m looking forward to going, but no rest for the weary.