Category Archives: Family

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I have a great deal for you. It won’t cost you anything, nothing at all. Just by leaving a comment for this post, you can help a great organization with a fund raiser. Just read a little bit further and leave a comment and then you are done.


Here is the deal. The Autism Center of Tulsa is having their annual 5K and Fun Run Saturday morning at Hunter Park here in Tulsa. You can click on the link above to find out more but they provide a ton of resources to help Autistic children and their families cope with the disease. This includes sponsoring seminars and other training, family fun nights. They have a resource center with all sorts of information. They don’t do therapy, they provide information, support, and services.

OK, I’m done, here is my deal. SuperPizzaBoy as well as Sweetie and I are running the Fun Run, and I’m also running the 5K:

Please leave a comment for SuperPizzaBoy encouraging him to complete the Fun Run. No strings attached. Just leave a comment and you are done!

I’m not quite done. We have had some very generous donors who contributed to Logan’s team. If you would like to join them go ahead and click on the widget on the right. If not, just leave a comment. I would appreciate it very much.

One last thing, if you or somebody you know live in Northeast Oklahoma and have a child with autism and need help or information please tell them about the Autism Center of Tulsa. The contact information is on the web site. They can help.

She’s moved out

My MIL, Nana, who is staying with us while she recuperates from a broken hip had a friend, Patty from southeast Oklahoma, visit her this weekend. Nana has a recently purchased house near to that she has moved her furniture into but has not moved herself in yet. She and Patty were going to stay the night in Nana’s new house during Patty’s visit.

Well that darn Nana, she got to thinking about it and announced she was going to go live in her new house. I mean why not, she’s almost all unpacked. So we loaded the stuff up she had at our house and moved it to her house. Took about 15 minutes. And then we decided to have a party. I grilled some buffalo steaks and Sweetie prepared the beverages.

Patty, Sweetie, and Nana out by the pool.

Martini anyone, anyone!

Chips and guacamole


SuperPizzaBoy and I watching “Run Silent, Run Deep” with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster on Nana’s TV. Those old school navy movies with their bathtub special effects are great.


Nana still can’t drive for a while, but she is on the road to mending. She is very happy to get back into her own house.

I finally got around to it.

We have a bicycle problem at the house. Sweetie’s is propped up against the wall. Makes it kind of hard to get in and out of her car.

Mine is balanced all wobbly on my work bench. So if I need to do anything I have to move the bicycle. Pain in the butt.

So after school today SuperPizzaBoy and I went to Home Depot and found two fold down bike racks for $5.95 each, plus tax. They come with screws but I spent a few more pennies on some heavier duty manly lag screws.

Come home, did my manly home project. Sweetie will be so proud of me when she gets home Thursday night! I’ve been telling her that I would take care of it since about 1992, and I did. Isn’t it nice to have a guy around the house who follows through?

Easter Weekend Happenings

Whirlwind Easter Weekend. Saturday SuperPizzaBoy and I were by ourselves most of the day. I had taxes to do but the weather was too nice, plus I had a brand spanking new Garmin Nuvi 500 crossover GPSr that needed a workout, so we went Geocaching! Found two, one in east Tulsa took an hour to hike to and then find. SPB got a little tired of that one.

First two ticks of the season. One for him, and one for me. So we are tied!!!!

Then Sweetie and Nana made it up from Antlers with Nana’s two kittys. Meet Gypsy (calico) and Piwacket (“Wackycat”). They are spending their time getting acclimated to Nana’s new house in Broken Arrow. Gypsy was nervous and moved into Piwacket’s crate, Wacky wasn’t too happy about that. Move in is later this week! Got to meet one of Nana’s new neighbors also.

Sunday night dinner, Yogi cooked his specialty fried chicken. Hadn’t cooked it in about 15 years. It took me a little to get the hang of it again but everybody said it was pretty good. Sweetie says that I can cook it for Mother’s day. I think I will!!

The drumstick on the left tasted better than it looks.

Then a cut throat game of Farkle. A very fun game with 6 dice that I got as a birthday present. Its fun. But I never win!!! What’s up!!

Oh yeah, and I finished the taxes.

Pizza and Mary Poppins

SuperPizzaBoy and I are batching it Friday night. Sweetie is out of town helping her Mother, Nana get ready to move to Tulsa.

We went to the video store to find something. We settled on Mary Poppins. I have not seen it since it came out. The first time, a long time ago.

We started the movie and and put the pizza in the oven to heat. SPB picked the pizza out at the grocery store. He says that Digiorno makes the best frozen pizzas. It is pretty good, for a frozen pizza.


Lets see, of those present, who is interested in the movie, and who is interested in the pizza cooking? Need a hint, I was standing in front of the oven while taking this picture. Excuse me a second (for crying out loud pizza boy move away from the tv a little. You sit that close, all your kids are going to be born naked!) Ok, I’m back. Lets move on.

The movie was better than I remembered it. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke do a great job. The singing, the dancing, the romance, the magic. I could see this again. I rate it four stars out of four.
Below is SPB’s favorite dance number “A Step in Time” with the chimney sweeps. SPB loves chaos, and this long number has lots of it especially about 6 minutes into it.

Pete’s Place – Krebs, Oklahoma

I love little “creases” in time and space. Things that one would not expect. Did you know that Oklahoma at one time had a pretty sizeable mining industry? Yep, nothing left of it now except a few superfund sites in far northeast Oklahoma. In southeast Oklahoma there used to be a sizeable coal mining industry. Many of the miners came from Italy and lived in the town of Krebs just on the other side of McAlester. The coal played out a long time ago but the town lives on. Krebs is known for several things but what it is most famous for are its Italian restaurants and the most famous one is Pete’s Place.

I was introduced to Pete’s Place by Sweetie’s family. We have celebrated many birthdays there and Sweeties parents used to have their employee Christmas parties there. Sweetie’s Dad has passed away and her Mother, Nana sold the pharmacy so we haven’t been there in a couple years but we stopped there on our way back from Antlers this past weekend and celebrated my birthday! For Sweeties family celebrating birthdays is a process, not an event so there are several meals involved, sometimes several cakes, and it goes on for days. I really like the way they do it.

One thing about Pete’s if you have kids, they have a little kitchen set up. You can stir the dry spaghetti if you want and bang on the pots and pans and nobody cares. SPB started doing that when he was about 2 and he still likes it. Here is a shot of him in action.

Pete’s is a little different in that they don’t have a big common dining room. Your dining party gets their own small room with a door. The food is served family style and they bring lots of it. I intended to photograph the food but but the time I thought again, it was all gone.

The pasta is old school. I love the ravioli. This time they had something new, gnocchi. It is kind of a potato based pasta dumpling. I loved it.

The other thing about Pete’s is that they have a brewery on site. One warning though, they only serve their 3.2 beer on Sunday because of local regulations. I had their Peach Beer and it was great. (Jeez, how come Tulsa doesn’t have a brew pub any more?)

Pete’s is open for lunch only on Sundays, other days they open at 4 pm. I rate is four stars out of four.

Krebs has other restaurants also. I’ve been to all of them and they are all good, Roseanna’s, Giacommo’s, and Isle of Capri. Most of them are open during the day. Also try the Italian Grocery, Lovera’s.

Alamo City Trip

Last week the family packed up and flew down to San Antonio for a little weekend trip in conjunction with a business trip.

We had a great time!

Of course, if you go there, you have to stay on the riverwalk and take a boat tour. We had a great tour guide. I’m sure that some of the stuff that he told us might even be true. It all made a great story.

There was a reenactment of the Battle of the Alamo going on. Sweetie got a photograph of Davy Crockett complete with coonskin cap. She was really looking for Phil Collins. You see the boat guide above told us that Phil Collins was in town and attending the reenactment. So we stalked Phil Collins all over town. Never saw him. Person at Hard Rock Cafe said “He was here last week.” Hah!


We stayed at the Marriott Rivercenter. Great place to stay, right on the river. SuperPizzaBoy thought they had a great pool.


Sweetie is still looking for Phil. Sorry Sweetie, you are stuck with me. Yea, lucky you!


Action shot of me and SPB checking out the action on the river.

Boys Night Out

Once a month when Sweetie goes to book group, SuperPizzaBoy and I have “Boys Night Out.”

First we go get something to eat. We go to Johnnies a lot for hamburgers. Our other favorite spot is Mexacali’s for Mexican food. That is where we went Tuesday night. SPB is relaxing with a pre-dinner drink.

I was going to get a picture of the chicken fajitas I ordered but didn’t remember until I was well into them. You will thank me for not taking a picture of a half eaten plate of food. I considered it though.

After we eat we do various things. We have a whole series of geocaches we have placed in Tulsa named “Boys Night Out” with some tag on the end. They have proved pretty popular. That is mainly in the summer though. It takes time to properly place and hide a geocache and determine the coordinates.

Sometimes we play miniature golf, Lazer Quest is fun, Tulsa Driller Baseball Games, we have done a lot of stuff.

Tonight we did something different!

We went home so I could repair the oven. Actually I had to cut the power to it. The bake coil needs replacing and I won’t have one until Friday or Monday. The oven is on the same circuit as the range and microwave. Leaving the oven off wasn’t working. The old coil was heating up with the oven off so I shut off the breaker. So tonight’s task was to safely cut off the power to the oven.

Looks like fun huh! I have to do it right. If I screw up and the house burns down, I would never hear the end of it. Plus Sweetie may not go geocaching with me on my birthday. I love her very much but she can be mean sometimes.

So far so good.