Oklahoma 2010

Are you ready for a long post?
We always have a grand time when we visit my family in Oklahoma. Kenta and Kendall moved to New Hampshire earlier this year, but luckily we were able to arrange our trips so we would all be there at the same time.
We celebrated my dad's birthday:



His birthday was a Sunday, and we hadn't ordered the cake he wanted from the French pastry shop (because we're bad children), so I came up with an alternative that, I must say, was exceedingly delicious. It was a doctored devil's food cake (with extra sour cream, pudding, and chocolate chips) in three layers with a chocolate ganache and strawberry puree in between and on top of the layers. Mmmmm...somebody needs to have a birthday quick so I can make it again.
Anyway, in conjunction with my dad's birthday, we went to Fuddrucker's. This is significant for three reasons:
1. Since my dad has been on a very strict diet (which has enabled him to lose over 80 pounds), he rarely strays from the strictness. When he does, he wants Fuddrucker's.
2. Fuddrucker's is going out of business.
3. The closest Fuddrucker's is an hour-and-a-half away in Tulsa.
(By the way, Fuddrucker's is really hard to type.)

Kenta ordered the ostrich burger in order to fulfill a promise he'd made for himself after visiting an ostrich farm. This turned out to be a bad move. In case you didn't know, ostrich burger is disgusting. Kenta powered through about half of it before we convinced him he should just tell them it was gross and get a regular burger. We all tried some ostrich, which was grainy and yucky. Blech.
Then we played in the arcade, and Rika, the doting aunt, paid for tokens so Dane and Thomas could "drive."



The soap in the bathtub at my parents' house gets super soggy. Probably a combination of the type of soap, the humidity, the lack of venting in the bathroom, etc. But it turns into a wet yellow mess. One morning, Dane decided to climb into the empty tub and wash his hair with said soap:

It looked pretty gross.
Oh, yes. After Fuddrucker's, we visited the mall, where they had a little massage area set up. My mom said she never does it because she doesn't want anyone she knows walking by. And since we were in Tulsa, we convinced her she would be appropriately anonymous.
So of course we took a picture.

Because Dane has pretty much outgrown the pack and play, and because Thomas needed one too, we decided to give Dane a special sleeping space. My parents were nice enough to buy him a Toy Story sleeping bag and a Thomas tent. He loved it. We didn't have any problems with escaping (even though he's still in a crib at home), although he did try to postpone bedtime by asking for story after story after story.

One night, I had told him every story I could think of, so I tag teamed it with Rika, who told him the story of Aladdin, starring Dane, and the story of Harry Potter, starring Dane. The vestiges of this experience have remained in that Dane continues to ask for stories featuring a bug/little boy/puppy/train named Eldermort. Maybe the evilness wasn't portrayed effectively.

One day I went out fabric shopping with my mom and Kendall, and Rika agreed to watch Dane and Thomas. She was working on her thesis at the time, so she decided to ask Mike and Sully to help her out:

The cute little cousins were generally well behaved on car trips


Rika taught Dane to say "Geez Louise!"

That Thomas sure is cute. He and Dane didn't play together a ton, but I feel like they got along pretty well.


My parents' neighbor across the street graciously gave us permission to use their pool, and Dane had a blast. Dane was pretty fearless during his first summer, and then last summer he was a chicken. But now he is enjoying himself in the water again. He was pretty good at doggy paddling with floaties on, did okay putting his head under, and asked to have his floaties off a couple of times.
All ready to go!


Look at how well he is swimming all by himself! I am proud of him.
Mika and her husband, Michael, came up to hang out with us one night. It was really good to see them.

They didn't bring their swimsuits, though, so they just had to sit in the heat.
All too soon, it was time for us to go. So that morning, we crammed in as much quality time as we could.
With Jiichan,

With Puppet:

And with Thomas. I wanted to get a cute picture of the two cousins together.
Um...nope

...almost...

...and that's as good as it'll get.

Observe the awesome Mr. T-shirt Kendall made. Also, Kenta and Kendall announced that Hood Cousin #2 will be arriving around Christmastime! Hooray!
So then we went to the airport, only to stand around for 45 minutes before finding out we'd missed our flight. So we hung out at my dad's office until time to go back.

Then we flew home, where Daddy was very happy to see us again.
And we promptly put Dane to work.

As always, we loved going to Oklahoma. Since then, Dane regularly asks if we can go play at Jiichan and Baachan's house. Sadly, the answer always has been no. Dane has also been telling people that we live in Oklahoma. He misses them a lot. We're glad we got to go visit and hope we can go back soon!