Justin's Family Email- 9/19/07

Dear Family,

This weekend we drove up to Oklahoma City for the Flake cousins BYU-Tulsa party. Kelsey took the kids and met up with Dallan, Emily and a whole bunch of cousins on Friday afternoon, and I drove up after work. It took about 3 hours to get there. 28 cousins showed up including a bunch of Christensens (we stayed at their houses), a bunch of Lawrence Flakes, all of us from Dallas, and Joel, Heather and Austin. The reunion fund kicked in some money for food, and it was fun to sit and eat and talk.

The next morning we played glorious football for 2 or 3 hours and then met up with our wives at a bar in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in OK to eat famous fried chicken and fried okra. There is only one thing on the menu- delicious chicken, you can’t even get fries or cole slaw. It comes with white bread, onions and pickles. We ate ourselves sick.

After lunch we played volleyball at Aaron’s nice big house out in the country, and then the Joel Flakes and Forest Flakes drove to our hotel in Tulsa. That afternoon we swam, napped and watched football on TV. We grabbed some dinner, and then headed over to the game, which didn’t start until 8. The game was fun, even though we lost. It was an old WAC-style shootout. I can’t believe we played so poorly and still scored 47 points.

Kelsey brought the kids to the game until halftime. Eden had a blast, and picked up on all of the cheers quickly and even joined in. She screamed “B-Y-U” at the top of her lungs for 5 minutes straight. It was her first football game. After the game (at midnight) Joel, Dallan, Jordan, Audrey and I went to IHOP, which was packed full of the type of people you would expect at that hour. We laughed ourselves sick and drowned our sorrows in maple syrup. Then we went back to the hotel and went hottubbing. None of us got to bed before 3am, and we all felt it the next day.

Sunday morning we drove home with Joel, Heather, Austin, and Jordan. We had really good talks for 4 hours. Joel and Jordan flew out of Dallas that afternoon, but Heather and Austin stayed for a few days to take in the sights. They saw where JFK was shot, went to the aquarium, rode to the top of reunion tower and we went to lunch and I showed them my office. They were pretty impressed. It was a fun trip, and we are just now catching up on all the sleep we lost this weekend.

Justin