Rose Rocks in their Natural Habitat

Saturday was such a beautiful day we just had to get outside. So B and I loaded up the boys and drove up to Lake Stanley Draper in south OKC to go rose rock hunting. B collected a bunch of them up there a couple of weeks ago, and I admitted that I'd never seen rose rocks "in the wild," even though I'm an Okie native. So, we went up.

The weather was perfect. Warm sun, cool breeze, bright and crisp and sunny. The roads into the lake bottom were closed because of the recent rains, so we had to park and walk in: about a mile and a half or two miles, according to B. I have no sense of distance whatsoever. It was a good long walk. But pleasant. The boys were scampering back and forth with their eyes open: finding bugs, a tiny red toad, clams and clam shells. The wind was coming in off the lake and really bringing the waves in. The water level is really low, so there were wide stretches of red Oklahoma dirt down by the water, and wide swaths of exposed rose rocks. Hundreds of them. Thousands! I picked up a bag full, but soon stopped because there were just so many. I was astonished! I've never seen them au naturel before, and I always thought of them as being quite rare, but there were places where the waterline was completely covered in them! It was very cool.

We knocked around out there for a couple of hours, turning over rocks to look for crawdads, skipping rocks. There were patches of dried up dead reeds that made a wonderful musical tink tonk noise in breaking as you walked through them. So we spent some time wading through patches of reeds, swinging our legs and making music.

The way back was long, however. We were all tired. My back was hurting, the boys were whining about how far it was. But fortunately we were able to turn the whining into a sort of game about how we were all going to die. I'd hold Grayson up and say "Don't give up! You've got to keep moving! I'm not going to leave you out here! You can do it!" And he would laugh ... and whine some more.

It was a beautiful, perfect Fall Saturday. We haven't had as many of those as we usually do this year. There has been so much rain! But this one was perfect.

Sunday, unfortunately, Grayson came down with a stuffy nose and lay around all day feeling crappy. I let him veg out in front of the TV while I embarked upon the task of reorganizing cabinets. When I moved in I put things away, but of course didn't really know how I was going to need to use the space, and not everything was even unpacked. So now that we've been here a few months, I realize what our storage needs are and needed to move some things around so I didn't end up with a bunch of junk cabinets.

Well, what started out as a project to clear out one cabinet to make room for craft supplies became a day-long odyssey where each new cabinet led to another, until I ended up reorganizing the hall closet, the armoire, the side board and the drawers in all the living room tables before I was done. At least now I know where to put stuff, though.

Grayson's home sick again today. Not really sick, though. Just snuffy. I'm guessing it's allergies. But that means I'm home, too. I am NOT starting another organization project, however. Just don't think I'm up to that again. Think I'll sit on my butt and read a book, instead.