All's well that ends - with a good laugh

This was one of those days when I had to be on top of my game all the time. First thing this morning I had a rehearsal with Mass Chorus, which is the entire student body. A while later I had the entire Middle School Chorus, followed by a practice and info session with the 33 Middle Schoolers who will be going to the Jr. High Choral Festival on Friday, followed by a class in which a situation exploded between two students and needed to be dealt with. I was in tears over that situation for most of my lunch period, then had to "put my happy face on" and direct a rehearsal with grades 3 -5, the ones who will be doing the musical in our Spring Program on May 16th.

Someone is coming to shadow me tomorrow, of all times of the year, so I took longer than normal doing prep for tomorrow, and I ended up being the last one to leave the school. When I went to the staff rest room before I left I found the following humorous note. It was JUST what I needed. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Maybe you've seen it before, but please laugh with me again!

FOR SALE

Monday:
For sale: R. D Jones has one sewing machine for sale. Phone 948-0707 after 7:00 PM and ask for Mrs. Kelly who lives with him cheap.

Tuesday:
Notice: We regret having erred in R. D. Jones's ad yesterday. It should have read, "One sewing machine for sale cheap. Phone 948-0707 and ask for Mrs. Kelley, who lives with him after 7:00 PM."

Wednesday:
Notice: R. D. Jones has informed us that he has received several annoying telephone calls because of the error we made in the classified ad yesterday. The ad stands corrected as follows: "For sale: R. D. Jones has one sewing machine for sale. Cheap. Phone 948-0707 after 7:00 PM and ask for Mrs. Kelly who loves with him."

Thursday:
Notice: I, R. D. Jones have no sewing machine for sale. I smashed it. Don't call 948-0707 as I have had the phone disconnected. I have not been carrying on with Mrs. Kelly. Until yesterday she was my housekeeper, but she quit.

Just in the nick of time

I mentioned in my post this morning that I wasn't at all satisfied with the costumes I had for the kids getting their pictures taken by the newspaper reporter today. Things turned out better than I expected. The musical we are doing is about David and Goliath. I was sure that we had some "warrior/armor" costume stuff, but I could hardly find any of it after school yesterday. Thus my trek to Party City, Walmart and K Mart with no success, except for a sword. But I really wanted something for Goliath's head.

Would you believe when I walked into the costume room this morning, there lay a helmet and breastplate - the ones I was looking for yesterday! Apparently one of the classes at school had used some costumes and just returned them this morning. Whew!! The picture didn't look too bad after all! Thank You, Lord!

Not ready yet

Each time I am preparing a school program, one of the things on my list is to call the reporter for our local newspaper, The Merchandiser. The guy we've had for the past four years would usually come about a week before the program. But now there's a new person, a woman, and she insisted that she would have to come today in order to get it into the paper two weeks from now. UGHHH! I am not at all ready, costume-wise, for a picture. So last evening I was searching Party City, Walmart, K-Mart...... And I'm not at all satisfied with what I have. But at 9 Am the reporter will appear, and what we have so far is what she gets.

A picture-worthy day, but...

This was a very bad camera day. Not that there was anything wrong with my camera, but I just didn't use it. So while my day was full of picture-worthy activities, you'll just have to take my word for it.

This morning my school worship team went to DOVE Christian Fellowship, just three miles from our house. We had another great morning. Kieley, a member of the team, goes there to church and her dad is one of their drummers. Even though he never played with us, we decided to use him, and then on top of that, at the last minute I decided to have Dick play bass guitar with the team. It was fun.

We were invited to eat lunch at Kieley's grandparents, Betty and Richard Gerlach. I have known them almost my entire life. In fact, I babysat for Kieley's dad James when he was a baby! Kieley's grandmother was a tremendous spiritual influence on my life as a teenager, and it was a wonderful blessing to have time to sit a while with her this afternoon and share.

Destiny's mommy picked her up at around 5:00 this evening, so Dick and I decided to attend a choral concert at Cedar Crest High School. One of my former students, Katie, is a senior there. I had not seen her for over two years, and on Friday evening she came to our benefit auction. She had been another one of my amazing soloists when she was in middle school. She told me that she'd be having a solo in the concert this evening. It was a WONDERFUL concert! I think they have around 400 kids in their choir! Katie was also in the smaller concert choir as well as the show choir. There was great variety, which kept it so interesting and enjoyable. They also gave out awards and Katie won the female show choir award. I was so proud of her.

Afterward Dick took this picture of Katie and me with my cell phone, but it's pretty blurry. She's a really beautiful girl with a really beautiful voice. I'm so glad we went to the concert this evening.

Now that the auction is over my rehearsals on the stage begin this week. These next three weeks will be INTENSE, so I gotta hit the sack.

Full, full Saturday

I'm finally sitting down to post pictures from today. Besides being at the auction, I also had my regular Saturday work to accomplish today. I am TIRED!!

Dick left the house early this morning to go to my school. He has been the chief pancake maker for the country breakfast for many years. Destiny and I went later to get our breakfast. We spent most of the morning in the children's activity area.

Somone painted a cat face on Destiny! She had fun this afternoon in the bathtub, with a 5x mirror and a tweezers, picking and peeling off the paint!

These girls were at the milkshake stand. I thought the fake barstools were funny!

Dick and Destiny left for home before I did. When I was ready to leave, I discovered that my keys were not in my purse. I had to call home and ask Dick, who was already taking a nap, to come and bring me the extra set of keys. I felt so bad for him. This evening I found out that a set of keys were turned in and I was able to go to school and get them, thank goodness!

While I waited for Dick to arrive I took a walk in the nearby cemetery to look for my mother's gravestone. I discovered that it is very convenient when the person's last name is on the back of the gravestone, so it's easier to find no matter which direction you're walking. Sure enough, Mother's does have Witmer engraved on the back, as you can see on the second picture. I hope it will be a long, long time before a date needs to be engraved under my dad's name.

As I was walking I also found the gravestone for my childhood friend, Eunice Metzler. We went to Sunday School and to school together. We sang together, "double dated", as we called it when two couples went out together. She was exceptionally gifted in many, many ways. When she was nineteen she needed a second heart surgery. Having survived her first heart surgery in high school, we were not as concerned about the second one. What a horrible, horrible shock when I heard my mother take a phone call, receiving the news that Eunice had died shortly after surgery. Looking back, I realize that that truly was the first traumatic experience of my life.

MCDS Benefit Auction

Above is a view of what our school looked like today - auction tents set up and smoke from the barbeque pits filling the air. Below are three of the four "head honchos" - John, Richard, and Jay. Brian wasn't around when I snapped this.

Our lobby has been filling up with many donated items over the past few weeks. Notice, in the picture below, the little boy that tagged along with his mommy this morning, still in his pajamas! I asked him if he was the guard!

This was the second grade class's special project for the auction - a quilt with each of their pictures and names on it.

Carefully and methodically, the things that have accumulated in the lobby over the past weeks were moved out to the tent for the auction.

In addition to many, many parents, we had the entire middle school working to prepare things for the auction today.

The flower stand.

This cow advertises the Turkey Hill ice cream that is used to make the milk shakes.

There was a barbecued chicken meal served this evening, as well as an auction for certain things. Tomorrow there will be a country breakfast, an auction all day long, children's activities, and food, food, food!!

I was at school all day. Dick met me there after he was finished at work and we ate our barbecued chicken meal and talked and talked and talked and talked with so many people!

We left around 7 PM to drive to Reading to pick up Destiny. She's excited about seeing her friends from kindergarten tomorrow.

The beauty of the earth

When I walked out the door this morning the freshness of the Spring air, the beauty of the greenness and the sun shining through the trees, the sound of the birds, and the smells of the earth were just absolutely amazing. How I wished for time to sit on the porch and take it all in. Instead I took this picture with my cell phone and now I'm trying to relive it.

Our Pre-K class is a constant source of laughs this year. Today the Pre-K teacher was explaining to her little ones that they will be having a substitute teacher next week because she will be going to Seattle (a business trip with her hubby.) A little boy screwed up his face and asked, "Who is Attle?"

Now we're making no end of jokes about Attle. I told her to make sure she takes a picture of him. She said she thought Attle is probably a "she". What do you think? Did you ever See Attle?

A great evening for swinging and mowing

Spring and all that goes with it

What amazing weather we are having this week! It's in the 70's, sunny, but not humid. Everything is coming alive and colorful and green. It makes you just want to breathe deeply.

This evening Destiny is here. Enid called me today and said that she has either pink eye or allergies, and the school wants her to see her doctor before she returns to school. So we have an 8:00 appointment this evening. I'm quite sure it's allergies, which she always has a problem with each spring. There are a bunch of kids at our school suffering likewise - itchy eyes, constant sneezing, and runny noses.

Enid brought her to Lancaster, where I picked her up after school, and she will come here to get her after the appointment.

This coming Friday and Saturday will be the annual benefit auction at my school. It's a very huge event, and the excitement is mounting as the children's focus on school work is declining!! We're on the downward slope from here on, I'm afraid. Once the auction is over it will be rehearsals for the Spring program, field trips, graduation, then VACATION!! Oops, no time to get excited about that yet, no indeed.

Differing perspectives

One of the pleasures of taking my school worship team to other churches is getting to meet old acquaintances that I might otherwise never get to see. This past Sunday I met John and Rosie Gingerich, friends from my high school days. They are still a very good-looking couple. It was fun to catch up on each others' lives.

Yesterday I noticed, in my worship team bag, a guitar pick-up (something used to turn an acoustic guitar into an electric one) that did not belong to us. I took it over to the middle school hall and showed it to a couple of my guitar players. They said, "That's the one Peter used on Sunday morning. He thought it was ours. That old guy from that church looked at it and said he has one just like it."

So I realized we had brought home with us that old guy's guitar pick-up. What old guy, I kept wondering? I could not remember any old guy talking to my guitar players on Sunday morning.

This morning I told Dick about the extra guitar pick-up. He said he thought it was ours too, but he did see that John Gingerich was talking to the boys about it. JOHN!!! My boys were talking about him and calling him 'that old guy.' I cracked up!! Here I was thinking how young and good-looking John and Rosie still are, and my kids are calling him 'that old guy.' What ever in the world must they think Dick and I are?

FUNNY!!!

If you have not read Tonja's comment on my previous post, please do so. But go to the bathroom first - I wouldn't want you to have an accident!

Customer service, please!!

Don't you just love it when you have something on your grocery list that you just cannot find anywhere in the whole, entire, humongous store? Every once in a while I buy coffee stirrers, a pack for here at home and a pack for the staff room at school. At neither place are they absolutely essential, but I just like the idea of using them instead of dirtying a spoon every time coffee needs to be stirred. However, finding them in a store can be like a scavenger hunt!

Last Sunday evening Dick and I stopped at a big supermarket after taking Destiny back home. Coffee stirrers were on my list. We looked for them in the coffee aisle. The guy stocking shelves told us to check the paper supply aisle. Once there the shelf stocker told us they are in the coffee aisle. In each aisle the shelf stocker declared he had never seen coffee stirrers in his aisle. So we left without them.

Last evening I went to our local, recently renovated supermarket. Once again I searched for the elusive coffee stirrers. This time I did actually find them, but not in the coffee or the paper supply aisle. (My feet were especially painful last evening after having worn dress shoes in the morning, so much so that I looked longingly at one of the motorized carts when I walked in!) After I finally found everything on my list I had one more thing on my mind - my favorite new snack - Quaker Quakes. I looked for them in the bread aisle where I remembered finding them once before. No luck. So I slowly, painfully made my way to the huge snack aisle. No luck. Then on to the cereal aisle (they are rice cakes). No luck. So I decided to forget it. A teenage girl was my check out person. I asked her if she knew where they might be. She had no idea what I was talking about, and she didn't try to figure it out either. I was starting to feel quite irritated, so just before paying I asked, "Do you think there's anyone here who would know which aisle they're in?" She said, "What are they again?" So I proceeded to try to describe them. Once again she said she had never heard of them and did not offer to ask anyone else. I was absolutely irritated by then, so I paid quickly and left. In my mind I was already writing a letter to management .

After I got home and we began having our very late birthday celebration for Dick we couldn't find the candles I had just bought. This morning I noticed a few more things I couldn't find, including my coffee stirrers!! I realized that in my angry exit from the grocery store, I had apparently left a bag behind.

So late this afternoon I went back to that grocery store, receipt in hand, expecting to find my bag of items at the service desk. They believed my story, but my things had already been put back on the shelves. So off I went to find them, once again trying to remember which aisle had the coffee stirrers, and once again having painful feet because of having worn dress shoes for hours today. After I rounded up my missing items and brought them to the service desk to be reconciled with my receipt, I decided to try my luck and ask this guy if he knew where the Quaker Quakes are. He said they're in the bread aisle. I told him I had looked there last evening, but had not seen them and that my feet are hurting so badly I'm not going to bother walking over there to look for them again. He kindly offered to go look. He came back empty handed and said, "I don't see any over there. I'm going to predict that we're out of them right now."

I left the store and could not help laughing in spite of my frustration. Predict???? Isn't that what you do when you project something that will take place in the future?? He's predicting that they are currently out of my Quaker Quakes? Where, oh where are the customer service people with brains and manners?

Man, I surely could eat a bag of those things right now.

MCDS Worship Team "on the road"

EARLY this morning (6:45) my worship team met at school and packed ourselves plus our instruments, a guitar amp, our flags, and several music stands into four vehicles. By 8:15 we had arrived at Delaware Mennonite Church in Juniata County. They treated us so well - coffee, juice, and cookies before the worship service and a HUGE lunch afterward. Once again the kids did such a wonderful job of leading the congregation into the presence of the Lord. Below are pictures Dick took this morning.

Belated Happy Birthday, Dick

Before we leave for the day, here are some pictures from yesterday.

Yesterday was Dick's 58th birthday. Because of our activities of the day we hardly had time to be together. After he came home from work last night we had cake and ice cream with Ray and Thyda. (They came home this weekend for her great grandmother's funeral.) I had bought candles (a five and an eight), but we could not find them anywhere. I finally realized this morning that I apparently left a bag at the check out counter, because I'm missing a few other items too. Ray was determined that we had to have candles on Dick's cake, so he rummaged through my stash and found a five from a previous year and added 8 single ones. Here he is lighting them.

Earlier in the day, when Ray and Thyda came home from the funeral, I wanted to get a picture of Ray in his suit. Here he is with his winning smile.

But, being Ray, he had to make sure I took a picture of his "GQ" look too!

Thyda had already changed out of her dress clothes, but I wanted a picture of them together anyway. Of course, Ray had to be a pain and stick his tongue out!

Thyda's brother and his girlfriend were with them and we had fun sitting around laughing and talking.

Unfortunately, while they were here Destiny was in the bathtub playing, so Thyda peeked in to say "hi" to her before they left. She was busy putting her highway and vehicles on the tub wall.

Dick took her to Frank and Jess's place when he went to work at Advance Auto Parts last evening. She spent the night there.