75 and still counting

grandma and grandpa mahan

the mahan crew

aunt brenda and kat hiking at the lake

daddio and me

oh yes, we trespassed.

the younger mahans

kat, pat and......mat. yes, that was my pitiful attempt to belong as a child. worst. nickname. ever.

ambience

open sky, one of the things i miss most about home.

this weekend i returned to my roots and traveled to oklahoma for my grandpa's 75th birthday. the fun began on the trip up there. somewhere between fort worth and wichita falls, i ran into two cars of obnoxious girls from baylor (my dad told me that's being redundant) who must have been heading to the tech game. they decided to be really cute, and let me just say that i personally found it adorable. they were doing the whole speed up/slow down/annoy the crap out of martha thing until they found some guys they felt the need to hit on. so they blocked both lanes of the highway while holding up a sign with their phone number to the window. real safe.

thankfully, the weekend in altus turned out much better than the trip up there. even though it is oklahoma, they've really been making some improvements lately. as you can see from my previous post, they now have computers AND the internet there. so the state whose brilliant marketing scheme used to be to embrace mediocrity isn't all that bad. that reminds me of a joke. why doesn't texas fall into the gulf? anyone? anyone? because oklahoma sucks. (my apologies to any of my okie relatives who read this.)

so we had all kinds of familial bonding and it was aboslutely wonderful to see all the cousins. i learned about one cousin's mechanical abilities, another's affinity for blow pops and was enlightened by a 10 year olds view of politics. oh yeah, and we watched the A&M game. my dad told my little cousin he'd pay her $50 if she could find me in the stands. she thought she'd be clever and told him she'd give him all the money she has if he could find president bush. she regretted that statement right about half time.

the other big development, i've been officially moved into the adult category for christmas. this is both good and bad. i get better presents, but i now have a personal responsibility to contribute. this year we're each bringing 7 bottles of wine, 6 to exchange and 1 to drink there. hopefully i'll be in possession of some walmart wine or two buck chuck. God bless white trash from oklahoma. :)

as always, we reaped the benefits of having a priest in the family and had church at my grandparents' house. it's so nice to sit around on couches with the people you love most and celebrate the sabbath. grandpa's sermon reminded us to avoid the path of the wicked, but more importantly the seat of the scornful.

i'm such a sap, but everytime i leave my family i get teary-eyed. it's getting even more emotional with granparents because of their age. as i was driving out of town this morning, my heart was happy knowing that i have all i need in the people who love me.