Family Vaca 2017: Part 2 Oklahoma

Day 5: Sunday came at the perfect time.  We had to drive 30 minutes to church.  I'm not sure I'd like it every week but the drive was cool.  We saw some oil pumps (or whatever they're called) all over.  It was pretty cool. Church was fun too. We were all exhausted and we just rested the rest of the day then took a walk and the boys caught a little snake.

I think Caleb was tired. (Yes, I know he should have been in a booster.)

I love this pic!

  

Day 5: Oklahoma City was about and hour and a half away and we spent the day there. We went to Brick Town and had lunch then headed to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.

We had to do a silly to get a serious pic.

They have a Museum from the Oklahoma City bombing there that we wanted to see. There wasn't an audio tour but they had many videos throughout.  All of the kids were really interested. Caleb of course got a bit bored before we were done.  Hailey LOVED this museum and could have spent the entire day there watching all the different videos.

The bombing happened back on April 19, 1995. This was the first story of terrorism I remember living through. 168 people were killed.   I remember hearing about it and not understanding why someone would do such a horrible thing.  It was weird to go through and see all of the pictures and sketches that I had seen on TV as a kid. I was surprised at what I remembered once I saw it all.  The part I didn't realize had happened was that there was a day care inside the Murrah building and 19 very small children died.

As I walked through I began to wonder if Timothy McVeigh ever felt sorry for what he did.  It he ever got back in his "right" mind and regretted what he did. But, then I watched the final video.  It had a recording on it where in so many words he bragged about one small person causing such a big explosion and horror.  He was not remorseful. That's when it really sank in and I realized that he wasn't in his "wrong" mind; he was a monster.

Here are the pics from the Memorial outside:

I loved this quote

These chairs represent one person who died.  They have small chairs for the kids.

A firefighter spray painted this on the wall the day of the bombing.

The Museum

 Some pics of the destruction

McVeighs car

14 buildings had to be torn down.  Crazy!

When we go places especially museums like these two we got to visit, I like to reflect on things and ask myself what I can take away from this. What good came out of this? As I thought, a part of Sundays lesson came to my mind. The lesson was on self reliance. They had the YM and YW in the group and at the end they spoke about spiritual self reliance.  They specifically spoke to the kids and told them a simple thing that really stuck out as profound to me. He said, always go to church.  No matter what you do or where you go be sure you stay close to the church.

After being in those two museums that taught history of two horrific events in American History it really stuck out.  I learned that Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union for a time and was a communist that hated Kennedy. Timothy McVeigh was a follower of white supremacists and drove around the country to different gun shows to meet up with them to discuss how restricting and over reaching our government was.

The natural man in all of us have a tendency to be followers. Whether it's a good or bad, we all seek to follow and believe in something (Even if it's believing to not believe in anything).  It made me reflect and realize that as a Mom I need to teach my kids this simple truth and always remember it myself...

Always go to church...

If I can get them to understand and always remember how important it is to follow the goodness of the gospel wherever they go and to believe in God, they will seek the good and the light this world has to offer. We are surrounded by light if we are looking in the right places. This is where true happiness comes from.  This is where we should want to be.

Day 7: We spent the Day at Sonny's house because the weather was rainy.  But the kids had a blast together.  Here are our last pics of the kids together.

We left Sonny's and spent the night in Dallas and headed home.

I don't know if you noticed a theme for Hailey.  She read a lot while we were gone.  I had to get a pic here because the book binding was on upside down and it looked like she was pretending to read.

It was so fun! Sonny and Emily, thanks so much for showing us around and letting our crazy crew stay with you for a few days.  We made some great memories.