Julie A. Duncan

My car officially has over 250,000 miles on it now. On the way to Wilburton I looked through the Consumer Reports car issue. I think we may be looking at a Honda CR-V around 2021 or 2022 model. Of course, just because they say that is good doesn't mean I will like it. We need to find one to test drive. Maybe this summer.... Saturday I went to a wedding shower for Shaylan and Dallas who used to go to our church and were friends with the girls growing up in the youth group. I have been to several baby showers in the past few years, but I'm not sure I remember ever going to a wedding shower! It was absolutely beautiful. They had some games set up like they do in baby showers. We had to guess the "kisses for the misses" which was a lot of Hershey kisses in a jar. We had to draw what we thought the wedding gown would look like. They also had us address the thank you card envelopes, which I thought was a smart idea. Shaylan and Dallas played a game where they sat back to ba...

  For Allegra's Christmas present, I gave her a bucket list calendar. I also got myself one so that we could do it together. We exchanged books on Monday, which was from March, but our visit a new store (aka bookstores) was actually from January. That's okay. We've been doing new stuff anyway and it's been fun. This month:  She managed to do the thrift something for your garden which had actually been on her to do list for awhile. When her grandmother passed away, her house was left to rot for over twenty years. In 2024, the house caught fire and the city demolished it. Before the city demolished it, she and her mom had dug up loads of irises, lilies, and rose bushes and all of the rocks and cement borders they could along with some of the rich dirt from her yard. Allegra had a chance to put in the borders around everything this week.  Greg and I picked up litter at Wilburton. Interestingly, I had forgotten about doing it and it was his suggestion.  I managed to go f...

 Everyone went somewhere or did something fun during Spring Break, so I wanted to have a family phone call so everyone could talk about it. With all of our schedules, though, that didn't happen until almost a week after! 8:30 pm on Friday after Spring Break, we finally got together. Ashley had spent several days with Danni in Portland, Maine. She saw the lighthouse there and wandered around. She said it was very similar in size as Lawton so it's not difficult to drive in. She said they have a thriving mall though, so that's nice. Danni had an interview, but did not get the job. Ash is looking forward to moving up there still. I am looking forward to visiting her! Jordan went to TokenCon Thursday through Sunday. She got to play several games, buy several games at the flea market portion of it, and even paint a miniature one day. She seemed to really enjoy it. Hailey had gone to the Glen in Colorado Springs for a BCM retreat. We had already talked to her about all of that, so...

We left for Wilburton Thursday morning at 8:00 and meandered our way there. First stop was the antique store in Maysville. Apparently, it's not just closed when Greg drives through on Sundays all the time. It is apparently permanently closed. We tried stopping at another store in Paul's Valley, but were unimpressed. I tried the new Ranch chicken club at Chick-fil-A which was pretty good, but just can't trump the traditional. I read a copy cat recipe for the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, and it has you marinate the chicken in pickle juice! I will have to try it some time. We got to Wilburton and spent about an hour talking to Fern during which time I fought sleep. She mainly griped about Bill, who is redoing the roof section on her house where the heavy snow brought the back porch awning crashing down a couple of months ago. We heard the same stories many times over during the three days we spent there. She's 95, so not a lot of visitors come and she doesn't get out....

It's been a busy spring break already. On Monday, I went to Lawton and ate breakfast with Gaye Lynn Reinke and Mandy Bonadonna, retired and current coworkers. We ate at the Hatch, a new brunch restaurant in Lawton. I had the Protein Power Wrap, basically a breakfast burrito but with spinach and I added mushrooms too. It was delicious! I enjoyed spending time with the girls as well. Afterwards, I went shopping at the shoe store and Kohl's next to the restaurant to kill time as I waited to meet Allegra at 2:15. I tried on a few dresses, but didn't find anything that really suited me. Allegra and I were meeting to go to the two new book stores in Lawton that opened last fall: Chapter and Home and Amethyst and Ink. We were so excited. We parked and walked up to Chapter and Home, only to see "CLOSED." What? We drove over to Amethyst and Ink. CLOSED. Argh! Allegra laughed and wondered if "go window shopping with a friend" was on any of our calendar challenges?...

Composer Camp Kirkland invited musicians from Oklahoma to join him for a weekend workshop at Southern Hills Baptist Church. There were about a hundred of us on various instruments. Saturday and Sunday I spent a LOT of time with my violin and trying desperately to play some really hard music. LOL. I had downloaded the music last weekend and practiced everything on Tuesday night. I didn't think most of it was too hard, just a couple of the songs. In fact, I really liked most of the songs. Saturday was hard though. I think a lot of it was just how fast Camp goes through everything. He is pretty demanding, but still nice about it. I felt out of my league several times though. They changed one of the songs at the last minute, pulling one I really liked and replacing it with one that was REALLY hard. So...that made three really hard songs. Some of the others had certain parts that were difficult, but overall quite playable. I got home Saturday night and practiced everything again to come...

 Greg picked me up from work and we headed straight to Norman where we first met Mike, Nada, Jordan, Hailey, and Tyler for supper at Fuzzy's Tacos at Campus Corner. When we first got to Campus Corner it was absolutely packed. We had to pay for parking. I erroneously assumed people would have left to go home for Spring Break. Apparently, they were eating out with friends before heading home or something! Anyway, spent about an hour and a half (only paid for an hour so thankfully none of our cars got towed....) visiting with everyone. Jordan is working on her research and capstone projects and is really excited about going to TokenCon next week. She is going all four days but has set a budget for herself so as not to overspend. ;-) Tyler and Hailey are heading to Colorado Springs for a retreat with the Baptist Collegiate Ministries. Mike and Nada are doing well and were so excited that they are getting to see family they haven't seen in awhile. The next stop was to the opening ni...

 All three kids came to Sunday School and then Jamie and Hailey spoke during the worship service asking for money towards their mission trips. Hailey will be going to south Asia and Jamie will be going to Asia. They're not able to share exact locations for security reasons, but they will both be gone for six to eight weeks. It's a long commitment. Hailey will only be able to contact us once a week for a max of thirty minutes. She won't be allowed to contact Tyler at all, so we will have to pass on information to him. I thought the girls' speech was well done. They had obviously practiced and it sounded polished and sincere. They had several people talking to them after the service. Tyler and Hailey joined us at Los Tres for lunch after church. We had some interesting discussions. Tyler had his ACL operated on a few weeks ago and is still on crutches. I asked him about his thoughts on ADA. He said it has given him a new appreciation, but also recognizing all of the areas...

 The Women's Ministry at church had a Minute-To-Win-It Fellowship today. There were ten stations set up with various activities that you had to complete or compete against someone in a minute. In one, you had to keep three balloons in the air for the minute. I didn't last but maybe five seconds. I was playing against Vicki on most games and she made it at least three seconds more! Ha. That was a hard one. Even worse was trying to float a feather by blowing it up in the air. A few were more doable: blow thirty pompoms across a line by using a straw (I did really well on that one except ONE pompom went out of bounds and on the floor so I didn't get a completion on that one. Grr.), use a spoon or chopsticks to get as many pompoms in a bowl while blindfolded, use a spoon in your mouth to dip ping pong balls from one bowl to another, switch twenty cups so that the blue cup was back on top, make and throw paper airplanes across a line (only won that one because mine went farthest...

 Oklahoma Baptist Symphony hasn't played since November!! We always take December and January off, but our February concert was cancelled after tragically the church's youth pastor passed away the morning of the concert. Tonight we were at The Baptist Village in Enid. They had just finished constructing the atrium where we played and it was absolutely beautiful. It was also loud! I couldn't hear myself play. I hope I was close to being in tune. It felt good to play again.