Adventures of Southwest Oklahoma

A couple weekends ago the hubs and I made our first road trip....all the way to Southwest Oklahoma to visit my parents ha.  My parents moved to the big town of Hobart, OK a few years ago.  It's about a 3 1/2-4 hour drive from Tulsa.  If you know me and the relationship I have with my mother, you will know that this is WAY too far.  Thank goodness for cell phones and texting.  Ricky and I hadn't seen them since the wedding and things were finally settling down so we made a weekend trip of it.  

We met my parents in Clinton on Friday night for dinner and while waiting we visited the Cherokee Trading Post where Ricky posted for this picture.

The next day the guys went to play golf while mom and I entertained ourselves.  For dinner they took us to this place called Meers.  Here is more information about the restaurant.  It was really neat.

RC Diet Cola served in Mason Jars

Some decor

Never know about those loose women

Famous Meersburger.  No worries, Ricky ate the whole thing.

You have to have homemade cheery cobbler with homemade ice cream if it's offered

 Following dinner, we drove back to Hobart the other way....through the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Reserve.  Here is some info from the website:

Established in 1901,Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is one of more than 546 refuges throughout the United States managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The 59,020 acre Refuge hosts a rare piece of the past - a remnant mixed grass prairie, an island where the natural grasslands escaped destruction because the rocks underfoot defeated the plow.

The Refuge provides habitat for large native grazing animals such as American bison, Rocky Mountain elk, and white-tailed deer. Texas longhorn cattle also share the Refuge rangelands as a cultural and historical legacy species. More than 50 mammal, 240 bird, 64 reptile and amphibian, 36 fish, and 806 plant species thrive on this important refuge.

Pretty cool huh. So on our drive through, we encountered wildlife of all sorts.

Yes that is a buffalo crossing the road, quite slowly I might add

Deer and their baby

Prairie Dog (they have their own village basically)

More Prairie Dogs

We saw this scampering in the pasture, we think it was a coyote.

Another reason I love Oklahoma, beautiful summer sunset.

So if you ever want to take a weekend get-away.  You should really check out Southwest Oklahoma.  There is a really nice resort close to Altus.  It's called Quartz Mountain.  You can stay there and go check out all of these small town restaurants that make it so unique.  Don't forget about the wildlife reserve :)

Color Run

I'm behind, I realize.  Bare with me as I try to catch up on events.  Almost a month ago several of us ran in the Color Run.  We had signed up for this in like March thinking it would never get here! (For me mainly because I was just ready to get my man home and marry him and that was taking forever).  But the day finally arrived and we were ready to get some color!

Pre-race, all in our white shirts

Color Packets they give you to "save" until the end....we made it about 1/2 mile

The line of white shirts to the start line

Meredith and Ricky already getting some color

one of the color stations, the color was a powder, not so good to breathe in

After the race everyone could gather in a big blob and throw their packets in the air.  The color blast in motion! 

Still picture

Finishers

Here comes Kara!

No more white shirts

Found some other friends 

Did our own color burst

My purple "sunburn".  That stuff did not come off very easy.

Crunch time....40 days left

I apologize again for the lack of posting, but with Ricky coming home, moving, and all the wedding festivities, life has been a little crazy! 

The good news if I finished my Project 365! Which turned into a Project 397 haha, so go check that out on my facebook! 

Ricky has only been home for 3 weeks and it has been packed full of fun!!! Here is summary of all we have been up to:

OKC Thunder game!

My Birthday dinner at Shogun!

Colored Easter Eggs with this cute kid

Went Egg hunting with Ellie Kate

Opened our first wedding fist! 

Went to our first Drillers Game of the summer

I had my First Wedding Shower

Ellie found her Flower Girl dress! And of course she can twirl in it :)

We had our Couples Shower

On top of all these amazingly fun things, we've (well I) have been super busy with decorating details and finishing up DIY projects.  He's been really helpful in running errands for me during the day while I'm at work.  Tomorrow are my bridal portraits and I have my final dress fitting tonight.  So please say a little prayer that it fits!!!  

How's the transition of Ricky being home you may ask? Incredible.  Things are about as normal as they can be for moving and planning a wedding.  We are trying to get re-acquainted but for the most part, it's like the last year didn't happen.  It seems like he's been here the whole time and we didn't skip a beat. Deep down though I remember some of those awful, lonely nights.  But the good outweighs the bad and in 40 days I finally get to marry him :) 

Hopefully better updates to come! (And more detailed ones) But for now this will have to do on such short time :)  Thanks for reading!

Best of 2011!!

Sorry I'm a week late, but I had to re-cap the year.  When I starting looking back at my calender to find some great events, I really didn't think I would find too many, due to the deployment.  But I actually found MORE great and wonderful things than I did in 2010!!

1) Hawaii Vacation! I got to start the year off right on the beaches of Maui!


2) My very first Oklahoma City Thunder Game!

3) Oklahoma Snow Storm

4) Baby Presley came into the world :)

5) Ricky left on February 27th for Training

6) Ricky came home for a few days and asked me to marry him!!!!!! March 25th ;)

7) In June I got to go to Mississippi to spend 4 days with Ricky before he left for Afghanistan.

8) Great summer activities! Drillers game, 4th of July, Redneck Run, and Harry Potter finale

9) Ricky and I's first skype date!

10) Ellie Kate sang her bubbie Happy Birthday :)

11) I ran in the Warrior Dash!! It was brutal!!

12) Oklahoma State's Best Ever Football Season!!!

14) Ricky's R&R!!! We did so many things.  Check out Part 1 & Part 2

15) Bedlam!!! OSU beat OU (I know it doesn't happen often) But it was such an amazing game!

When I look back, 2011 was a fabulous year, even though I had to spend most of it apart from the person I love the most.  I am thankful for my amazing friends and family that I have to do all these really fun things with.