Farris family blog: OOOOOKlahoma

Oklahoma City. I really had no idea what to expect when we were moving to Oklahoma. I figured it was just north of Texas so sounded good to me. Only a few hours from our in laws and Bret has family there, plus I was able to transfer as a BSF Children's leader to the Edmond class. It seemed like everything was lining up so perfectly.

We left Houston tearfully on the last Thursday of the month, saying bye to our best friends and my mom in our driveway. After an exhausting few days of packing and tying up loose ends it was actually nice to hit the road. We had our UHaul trailer loaded up and bikes, and our crib tied to the top of our suburban. There was not an inch of space with all the crap, I mean stuff we had. The kids did great on the 6 hour drive there. We stopped in Denton to drop off all of our boys outside toys and got back on the road. Bret hit the ground running the next day up at the store and getting to work and meeting everyone. We unpacked into our first floor, three bedroom apartment that was actually very nice.

Things I remember most about Oklahoma were the insane wind. Seriously, 25-30 mph wind gusts everyday. Oh and the fact that one day it would be 80 and beautiful and the next day it would be 30 and freezing cold. So that made it always a lot of fun because the boys favorite thing to do was to go outside at 5:00 every evening where all the dogs were let out with their owners and run around with them. Carter, our sweet little extrovert pretty much knew every dog and its owner by name. I mean these people would say "Hey Carter" as soon as he walked up and give him their leashes or balls so he could play with their dogs. It totally made his day. He also would sit out on our patio always and say Hey to everyone and "hey, where are you going?" Most people ignored my poor son, but when people actually did stop to say hello it totally made his day.

We got to hop right into BSF that Monday right after we moved and what a blessing that was to have such a familiar part of our life come with us. My boys jumped right into their new classes and it was such a blessing for me to be apart of a BSF circle with another group of incredible women. That was most def. a highlight for me the time we were there getting to love on those sweet kiddos, share, and learn new ideas with their children's leaders.

I was not even in Oklahoma a week before I had to fly home for a wedding. One of my best friends from high school was getting married on April 6th and so that was so much fun to get to go home and celebrate her and be apart of her special day. My wonderful mother in law watched the boys for me, so I know they had a blast, but I was definitely bummed Bret couldn't come with me.

The next week after that our best friends from Houston, Amy and her three youngest came to see us:) It was such an incredibly fun week with them. We took the kids to the Children's museum, to the park, and just hung out together at our house. We tried to take the kids on a walk one day, but I am pretty sure we were all frozen just walking down the sidewalk for two minutes. Seriously, the weather in Oklahoma is insane.

While we are having fun and trying out all new things around town, Bret was very hard at work at the Quail Springs Mall. At this assignment he had a partner, Rob, who had been in the program almost a year. Rob, was a funny guy, but I actually really liked him. He is what you would call a diva. Him and Bret worked very well together and complimented each other well. He is actually still up there in Oklahoma all these months later. Bret worked the hardest in Oklahoma trying to hire a new staff. They lost a lot of their employees when he transitioned so I will always remember how hard he was working to hire new people to come to work in the store. We went and visited Bret up in the mall a few times and the kids liked playing in the play area and always getting pretzels, but the weather was always so all over the place we didn't make it up there as much as we would of liked.

One of my favorite memories from Oklahoma was our family day to the zoo there. It was a BEAUTIFUL day there and it was just such a fun day as a family. Carter loved the barn that had bats in it and we had to make multiple trips over there. The boys also loved the giraffes as well. OH, and of course the huge playground they had there as well. Huge zoo and lots of animals and the playground is always a hit. This was also the month Tucker started walking. Finally I should say. 14 months. Our kids just take their sweet time walking, but it was also so fun to see his cute little self toddling all over the house.

The next week I flew home again to surprise my best friend Amy for her 29th birthday. It actually ended up not being a surprise but it was still so great to be there for her birthday. It is a big joke that my mother in law spent more time in Oklahoma than I did, but it really is true. We were grateful for our time in Oklahoma, found some really fun parks, got to spend Easter with Bret's dad's side of the family and have dinner with them, and we even got to catch up with an old camp friend, Sarah Hanna, at a fun park in downtown. We got an email one day we were staying in Oklahoma longer than a month, but then the next day got a phone call that said we were headed to Dallas! We were super pumped to be heading back to Texas.