A Mystery Revealed

This is LONG, so pull up a chair; it is worth it.

Justin's mom and dad (Doris and Dan) were here visiting in March. During that time we discussed some of our family history. Madison wanted to more about her "roots." Doris' dad, Dewey, was born in Sulpher, OK. Ironic that Justin and I now live in Oklahoma. We knew very, very little about Dewey, let alone his parents or where he came from.
We decided to find out.
I started searching using Ancestry.com with the information we knew, Dewey was born to Naomi Carson and Dewey M. Kirkpatrick in 1925. Naomi died in 1928 and 3 year old Dewey was raised by Naomi's mother somewhere in Arizona. He had NO CONTACT with his father or his father's family. This was my starting point. All through March, April, and May I plugged at find information. I was able to find out that Dewey's dad, Dewey M., was born to a Native American woman (Choctaw tribe) and a white man. Dewey M. had three brothers, Leroy, Alexander and John.
I found a few surprises along the way, Dewey has two half brothers, we knew about one of the them. The other thing I found was how much inaccurate information is out there.  Due to my scientific brain, I'm hardwired to only look at things that have PROOF. SO, I followed the paper trail of proof and was 90% sure the data I had collected was accurate.
Two weeks ago I received an email message from someone on Ancestry.com looking for information on the Kirkpatricks. After many back and forth emails, this woman, Donna, reveals to me that she has pictures of Dewey M. that were in her grandmother's desk. She didn't know who the pictures were except for the name Dewey Kirkpatrick written on the back.
She emailed the pictures to me and unfortunately they were not Dewey M., but they were Dewey A. (Doris' dad)! I about fell out of my chair.

Dewey Alexander, South Pacific Islands WWII

1942

1942

We unraveled one mystery, Donna's mother was actually Dewey's cousin! Dewey had sent these pictures to her when he was in the WWII. Donna had never known who these pictures were, she had assumed it was Dewey M. because they didn't know Dewey M. had a son. PURE CRAZINESS.

We emailed back and forth only to find out that Donna lives in Mesa, AZ and she was flying into OKC to visit her mother.
SO,
YEP,
IT'S GONNA HAPPEN...
Justin's brother and us were able to fly Justin's mom, Doris, into town to meet Donna and the rest of the Kirkpatrick family that we didn't know existed.

We will be meeting this Saturday and yes, lots of pictures to come!!

June Holidays

There are three holidays in June, so we typically celebrate them together: my birthday, Father's Day and our anniversary.
We honestly didn't do much and I don't even have pictures to post. I turned a year older. Justin got the Daddy of the Year award and we celebrated 18 years together. WOW, that sounds like such a long time.

Fall Awake

My cousin Lisa is a singer/songwriter. She is pretty amazing. She is getting ready to record her second album and I got a sneak peak with her new song because I backed her on her Kickstart Project. Check it out:
Lisa Ritchey Fall Awake

If you want a pretty cool song, you can donate, just $1 and get it.

You've Got Mail- You Won't Believe This

I check the mail after work almost every day. So, I had a weird piece of mail in the mailbox. It was a small envelope and really thick. There was no return address and the postmark said it was mailed June 4th from Ardmore, OK (about 90 miles south of here, close to the Texas border). The handwriting was in old style cursive and it was definitely an elderly person's handwriting.
What the heck?
Who do I know in Ardmore?
OMG, could it be?
NO WAY!

I ripped open the letter and YEP!

The entire contents of my STOLEN WALLET.
No kidding.
So here's the scenario that I see in my head regarding how I got this stuff back.

The punk that stole my wallet was probably with his grandma at the Children's Hospital. He swipes the wallet and takes it back home to Ardmore (where he undoubtedly lives with his grandma).

Dear old Grandma probably finds the wallet while cleaning up after Jr. You know she is furious and lays into him about stealing the wallet. Knowing that she has to do the right thing, she sends the contents back anonymously and then lays into Jr. again about stealing and being a good for nothing grandson. Then she proceeds to yell at him even more about how hard she had it picking cotton and walking to school on a gravel road with holes in her shoes. Oh, yeah, you know the Grandma types I'm talkin about.

So, I got my stuff back. It still sucked and it caused me a huge headache, but I bet Jr. (wherever he may be) got whalloped upside the head by his Grandma!

HA!

NBA Finals

So the NBA Finals are here in OKC. Who would have thought in such a short time that OKC would be playing in the finals. I have to be honest, I have not followed THAT closely. I did watch some of the conference finals. I do however like James Harden. Ya know, the mohawk guy with the long beard. Gotta love him.


In honor of him, this parody cracks me up!!!


Go THUNDER

ENT Update

Spencer had tubes put in his ears in 2009. We have seen the ENT about every 6 months since. Our last visit was in December in which the doctor said that he thought his tubes were getting ready to come out.

Today was his check up and the tube in his right ear appeared to be out, but he couldn't tell in his left ear. He asked if it was ok if he went in and cleaned out the ears to confirm that the tubes were out and the eardrums had healed. He said that it wouldn't hurt, it would just be scary for Spencer, but I could stay in the room with him, so I agreed.

We were taken into another room where a papoose board awaited Spencer. One look at that thing and DUH, yeah, it isn't kinda scary, it is flat out horrifying!
I understand the concept behind it, it immobilizes a terrified child.

Now, don't let this picture fool you. I truly believe that this is a dummy doll and not a real child. NO CHILD would like being put in this thing.
Spencer clung to me and the two nurses peeled his arms away and strapped him in.
Spencer cried and cried, "mama, I want to hold you" he said over and over. Whenever he wants me to pick him up, that's what he says. He doesn't say, "mama, hold me" he says "I want to hold you."

The crying continued as the doctor began to pull some nasty stuff out of his ears (eeeewwwwww) and then there was a SCREAM. A holy terror scream and Spencer yelling that it hurt.
What happened to, "it won't hurt him" part? Bullllllllll
Spencer was in pain.
The poor baby suffered through this in both ears and it was finally over.
All the gunk and tubes were out.
Spencer held onto me like a baby chimp hanging onto its mama's back. He would not let go of me and could barely breathe. I could barely pay my co-pay or get the van door opened up.
I felt awful.
It was done and over with and his ears are fine. I just was not prepared for that.

My Regret

I did not take my good camera on the trip to Chicago. I knew that if I did, I would be worried about breaking it, loosing it or just taking pictures and not having a good time.

While walking up Michigan Avenue we came across the First Presbyterian Church and
I.
about.
died.
Magnificent, beautiful, historic.
Regret, regret, regret.
So, here is from my phone.

Last Day

We spent the morning at Adler Planetarium. This was definitely NOT Spencer's favorite thing. It was very quiet, dark and museum-like pictures and displays. There was a small 5 minute video with a robot on it that he enjoyed. We kept searching for the robot in the gift store, but couldn't find one.

Justin couldn't escape work!

After the planetarium, we headed to the Magnificent Mile; shopping on Michigan Ave.

 The Hershey store was by
far everyone's favorite. We definitely enjoyed the sweet treats. Justin and Spencer got to be a factory worker for a day and the day's pay was a bucket full of candy!

Madison on Madison Street

We also enjoyed the Disney store. Fun, fun, fun. We walked about 5 miles that day, so we were dead tired.

We finished at a pizza place around the corner, delish!

Wet Mess Part II

After being soaked and cold, we decided to head to the Navy Pier Children's Museum. It wasn't a fabulous, huge museum, but it was great for Spencer to burn off some energy.

Zerkus Circus

Construction and tools!!

Just what we needed, more water.

We walked around inside the pier, but didn't get to see any of the outside. We could see some of the boats through the windows and the large ferris wheel. We finished with dinner at Harey Carey's Tavern.

One of my favorite pictures.

Wet Mess

I bought tickets to tour Wrigley Field about three weeks ago. Of course, the day we went was less than perfect.
It was cold, downright cold.
It was windy.
It was raining. A steady rain.
The tour was held rain or shine, so with Spencer wrapped in a blanket. We proceeded to Wrigley.

On the subway, cold and wet.

 In the visitor's locker room. Everyone from Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Pete Rose has been in that room.

View from upper deck.

View from press box.

 The really, really, really wet field.

 Spencer wrapped in his blanket, trying to stay warm.  Don't let the smile fool you, he was fussin and whiny and shivering.

In the dugout.

This was the most disappointing part of the trip. Justin had brought his and Spencer's ball gloves to through the baseball around on the field. We still got to see a lot of things and learn some history, but we all wish it was warmer and sunny.

Brookfield Zoo and the Metra

We headed to Union Station to catch the Metra to Brookfield Zoo. Union Station itself was really neat. If you ever watched The Untouchables, there is a huge scene filmed in Union Station and it was like we could reply it in our minds.
Spencer thought the train was cool and it went WAY FAST!
Our excitement for the zoo quickly diminished when we arrived along with 50 school buses loaded with kids.  The first couple of hours were AWFUL! We couldn't see any exhibits and it we were indoors, it was SO LOUD due to the yelling kids.
We finally got away from so many of the groups and started to see some animals. The polar bear was pretty cool, it was awake and moving around. Most of the other animals were sleeping. Another favorite was the giraffes.

 We stopped on the carousel and Spencer didn't want to ride an animal, he wanted to ride in the couch. Ha, he was hilarious. It wasn't the typical carousel music either. We went from Lady Gaga to Michael Jackson, strange.

 We headed to the aquatic show with a HUGE line. We took seats that were available in the SPLASH zone. The 6 dolphins were awesome. They interacted with the crowd and, as we found out, splash the crowd without being instructed to do so. We all got wet and Spencer just laughed!

 It was time to head back, Justin and I enjoyed a cup of coffee and Madi and Spencer enjoyed some ice cream.

 The clickety-clack soon put Little Man sound asleep on the train. The only problem was our train was arriving at Union Station at 5:23pm. YEP, total RUSH HOUR. I placed Spencer into the stroller and we inched our way through the sea of thousands of people towards the exit.
We knew we were not going to make it getting on the subway with him being sound asleep and them being packed with commuters, so we walked the whole way back to the hotel. He slept the entire time.

We got back to the hotel and waited for him to wake up.
He didn't.
We were all hungry, so we decided we would go around the corner to dinner and he would wake up to eat.
He didn't.
He slept through rush hour, thousands of people, a busy restaurant and still didn't make a peep.
We got back to the hotel.
He woke up at 8:30pm, not ready for bed.