Our Life in the Yellow Brick House

Summer has officially ended here in Stillwater as students prepare for their first day of classes tomorrow. The town has been busting at the seams this last week, and while I really enjoy this time of year, it's more of a love/hate relationship. It always comes too fast. Work has pretty much consumed by life as of late. I am managing five high-level event timelines while diving into chair and professorship impact reports and helping my coworkers with their projects (retreats, stewardship assessment meetings, etc.). I know this means very little to most of you, but it's a big deal in my world, and at times, I struggle to manage it all while still being excited to go to work every day.  I know this is temporary, and I am so thankful to be busy because it means my work is needed. I just hope I'm able to remind myself of that when times get hard. This weekend was full of work, but lucky for me, it was the fun stuff (mostly). I got to help out with the Student Foundation exe

I'm not a huge country fan, but back in the day I did have a few country CDs. Some day my kids won't even know what those are. Oh man, I'm getting old. Anyway, one of them was by Chely Wright and there was a song called "Wouldn't it be cool." As you can imagine, there were several hypotheticals posed in that song, but one was, wouldn't it be cool if I didn't have to edit what I said.   Here. I am an editor by nature, and most of the time, I kind of love it. There's just something about it. Whether it's metal editing or putting red pen to paper (I blame Ray Murray for that one!) it's fun. However, after you've been doing it for so long, it can lose its luster. I know a few people who definitely are not editors, so I'm sure they can't relate. They say what they think 100% of the time. Every now and then I'm so jealous of that quality. More often, I'm thankful for restraint, but even if just for one day, wouldn&#

I can't believe how quickly it came, but this past Sunday, we all gathered together to celebrate 1 year since Conner joined us! One of his gifts from us was an ABC book, which included pictures from his first year. I had SO much fun putting it together. It was a cool way to see all the changes he's gone through over the past year, and to realize what a huge impact he has had on our family. It's hard to think of a time when we didn't have him around.     Conner was a pretty happy birthday boy. He fell earlier in the day and cut his lip, but by the time Kyle and I got to Ponca for the party, you couldn't even tell that had happened. Overall, we all had a great day and it was nice to see all of the extended family who came to celebrate. Here are some pictures from the day.  Conner looks so good in orange!   You can't see his outfit very well, but it said My 1st Birthday and had monsters on it. So cute for his monster-themed party!   Stacie

For those of you not in Oklahoma, we are in the middle of an extreme heat wave . We've had several weeks with 100 plus temps, and surprisingly, it hadn't phased me. I thought I was FINALLY getting used to Oklahoma weather, but I spoke too soon. This week has been a killer. Today it was 114 in Stillwater, and to top it off, we are having air conditioning issues at the Murphy House. Oh the joys of inhabiting older homes... My office was the worst, and I think it was over 80 most of the day. :( How do people who work outdoors do it in this heat? The good news is help should be on the way tomorrow. If not, my coworkers might either be seeing less of me (working from home) or far too much of me (taking off layers). I think everyone would be more happy with the first option! Wherever you are, I hope you are staying safe and cool.   This week, we've had two big fires near Stillwater. This is a photo of the first fire, which I found here.