The doll house was brought out this weekend. Austin is quite fascinated with it, but not quite the same way Destiny used to be. He keeps trying to walk up these steps...
and sit on these chairs.
He keeps the dad on the toilet,
and he can't decide if he likes it better with the baby on the potty or in the tub!!!
Our Thanksgiving celebration continued all day Saturday. We started out (after a very late sleep-in for some) with a pancake and sausage brunch. Anthony, Lori, and Austin joined us as well.
While every sensible person stayed indoors on such a cold, windy day, Sam and Ray went outside to throw football. Even after dark they went out there again. I have never seen two grown men (???) have as much fun playing together as these two.
Sometime in the afternoon Frank and J'von arrived along with Frank's friend Darla and her two kids. There were no dull moments after that!
Eventually the children were getting antsy, and just in time Lori called and told us they were taking Austin to a new kids' place called Fun Unleashed (I think). So Darla and I packed up the kids and went to join them. What an awesome place! The most amazing jungle gym I have ever seen, and many other things to do as well. Of course it cost a pretty penny, but it was worth it. They had so much fun.
Then we all came back home and ate Thanksgiving leftovers and the apple crisp I had made earlier. The noise level escalated as the evening progressed! I did manage to get them to pose for pictures. Unfortunately, Anthony and Lori had already gone home, so I didn't get one of them.
Ray and Thyda with Jade, their baby cat.
Sam and Jennifer.
Frank, J'von, and Destiny, Darla and her children, Mariah and Christian.
The girls wanted Dick and I to pose with "the boys". I was on my last ounce of energy by that time and I looked like it too.
Ray and Thyda, as well as Frank and Darla and the three kids left around 11 PM for the long drive back to Lancaster County. I was too tired to even worry about them when I went to bed!
This morning Sam, Jenn, and Destiny slept in, Dick went to work, and I went to two church services. First to Fillmore UM to sing in the choir and participate in their Hanging of the Greens service, then to Houserville UM to play piano with their worship team.
After Sam, Jenn, and Destiny left around 1:15 I made food for Dick to take along to the hunting cabin, then I babysat Austin here at our house for a few hours. (I could go on and on about the cute things he did today, but I'm too sleepy.) Lori came for him about the same time Dick got home from work. I sent him on his way and I was ALONE! And when I'm done with this post I am hitting the sack.
I have so many wonderful memories of this Thanksgiving holiday. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord!!!
What a perfectly wonderful day we had yesterday. Not the normal Black Friday for us! No shopping for deals. Dick had to start work at 5:30 because Pep Boys was running some special Black Friday deals. When I got up, the house was quiet for hours as Destiny, Sam, and Jenn slept in. I was making the traditional stuffing, green bean casserole, baked corn, yams, pumpkin pies. I had roasted the turkey the previous day and had it already deboned and ready to heat up in a crock pot with broth.
Eventually they woke up, and around noon Ray and Thyda arrived. We had not seen them since a very brief visit at our Lititz house the July 4th weekend. They brought along their "baby" Jade, the calmest, most well-behaved cat I've ever met.
Dick got home from work, probably around 3:30, and Anthony, Lori, and Austin arrived around 4:30. We ate, we played games on our phones, we were amused by Austin's antics, we played our absolutely favorite game, "Dictionary", which is our homemade version of Balderdash, we watched an Everybody Loves Raymond Thanksgiving marathon on TV.
My soul was even fuller than my body when I went to bed.
Enjoy my pictures from our day.
Here's my solution for requiring everyone to take off their shoes when they come in the front door!
Electronics, electronics!
When Dick got home from work he showed Sam how to change the oil in Jenn's car so he can do it himself from now on.
The table's ready! Bring on the people!
And here are the people.
Austin says, "Come on, Destiny! Play with me!"
He enjoyed discovering more of her toys.
But, like a true Stauffer, what he enjoyed most was a game he invented himself. He spent a LOT of time tossing a blue ring toward a silk flower arrangement, trying to get it "hooked". He often succeeded. We were greatly entertained watching him.
Here's a little clip of him at work. Unfortunately, just as I started taking the video, Sam and Ray walked in the front door, which somewhat distracted him and got him slightly off his game. Besides, he had already been working at it for fifteen minutes! But you get the idea!
And here we are later, hard at work at our own game of Dictionary. Somehow, this game elicits more belly laughs than anything we do together. You'll just have to take my word for it, since these pictures were taken during our serious moments.
If you look past Ray you can see Dick's arm. He took advantage of some much-needed down time on his favorite chair watching a soccer game on TV. I think he snoozed a good bit too. No wonder. He had gotten up at 3:50 AM.
I'm a happy mamma tonight. Today Dick and I were home together on this rainy Thanksgiving Day cleaning, cooking, and preparing for our Thanksgiving weekend. Some of our kids are now here, more will be coming tomorrow, and maybe more on Saturday.
Sam and Jenn, who live in Downingtown, picked up Destiny in Reading this morning and took her along to Jenn's mother's Thanksgiving meal near Harrisburg. They arrived here around 4:30 this afternoon. Anthony came later. Lori and Austin will return from her parents' home in NYC tomorrow. Ray and Thyda will arrive tomorrow as well. And Frank will possibly come on Saturday. We'll have our traditional Thanksgiving meal tomorrow evening.
It feels SO good to have at least some of our family here at our own comfortable home for the first time. Sam and Jenn just love our house.
Of course, laptops, computers, and smart phones take a lot of attention these days when we're together. On the picture below it looks like Destiny was pouting, but she was actually playing a game on Jenn's phone.
Here she was doing a video interview with Sam!
Anthony spent some time working out some bugs my computer has been having lately.
But we did spend time doing our favorite non-technological game - Scrabble. I just don't have the picture to prove it!
Lori and Austin are in New York with her parents the first half of this week, so I don't have him to care for. But I've still been keeping really busy. I've been organizing and planning and preparing for our first "having the kids home" at this house. Sam and Jenn, Ray and Thyda, Destiny, and hopefully Frank will be coming for varying lengths of time later in the week. I'm just so excited to have them here.
The choir at Fillmore UM is keeping me busy too. There will be a Thanksgiving Eve service tomorrow evening at which we will sing. Then on Sunday morning we sing again. I will also have a reading for their Hanging of the Greens tradition that morning. When that service is over I will leave immediately to go to Houserville UM, near Lori and Anthony's house (the one I visited a few times last summer). Their pianist will be out of town this weekend and I'll be playing with the worship team in her place. I'm loving the chance to make new friends and be involved.
I've been having some procedures done to check out my heart. I was having some rather disconcerting palpitations in the summer and early fall. But after an EKG, wearing a Holter monitor for a day, and now a stress echocardiogram this morning, I've been declared "good to go". That feels good. It's crazy what the imagination can do when you're worried that something is wrong. Now I must figure out the time and place for regular walking like I was doing last spring. Especially with all the good food that will be trying to cling to my middle over the next month.
We spent the weekend at Dick's parents in Lancaster County. Our big goal on Saturday was to empty out a storage unit we've been renting ever since we sold our farmhouse five years ago. Now that we have a house with a nice, dry storage area underneath plus our new shed, we can actually have all of our earthly goods in one location again!!
Dick's step mother took Destiny to That Pet Place on Saturday afternoon. Destiny also got to help her make some desserts.
We enjoyed the warmth from their wood stove which Dick's dad kept going despite the pain he's been having in his hip the past few weeks.
This afternoon we went for a walk to a nearby church cemetary. It's interesting to read the headstones. We also enjoyed the memorial garden.
And now we're back home, looking ahead to "company coming" for Thanksgiving break. I'm so excited!
A cool thing happened this evening. Ever since we moved here and have two places for a table and chairs (which we did not have at our Lititz house), and especially since I found the little table for the breakfast nook, I have been wishing I could find chairs to go with my dining room table so I could move the bench and chairs I've had there out to the breakfast nook. Did you follow that? Good!
The reason I no longer have the chairs that originally came with my dining room table is because they were very old and falling apart. They were my mom's dining room set, complete with lots of extra pieces. I got the whole set after she died in 1982, but in downsizing, have gotten rid of everything but the table. I do not want to part with the table. My mom had gotten an Amish man to make an extension underneath it, and there are six boards for it, so it can seat a lot of people when stretched out.
So I've been checking used furniture places and thrift stores every so often, but never found anything close enough to the color of the table. And there's always a table to go with chairs, and most times they must be sold as a set. But I've told the Lord a few times recently that I really wish I could find the right chairs before Thanksgiving weekend, when some of our boys will be coming.
Today at 5 PM I went downtown to take Austin to Lori, because they were going to be eating at Panera. After she got him out of my car, I pulled away and missed the street I should have turned onto. I kept going, not sure where to turn. I just kept going and was thinking, "This is ridiculous. I'm missing every street I could make a left turn onto. I might as well go all the way to the light." When I got to the light it occurred to me that I was almost at the strip mall where Pete's Used Furniture is. So why not go check it out before choir practice? Maybe I missed my turn for a reason.
When I got there I checked out a number of table and chair sets that had not been there the last time I checked. One of them caught my eye, because I thought the chairs would look okay with my table. But there were six chairs (two with arms) and an ugly table that didn't even look like it would have belonged to the chairs. I asked if there's a chance I could buy the chairs without the table. As usual the answer was no. They went through the familiar line about not being able to sell tables without chairs or chairs without a table. I said, "Well apparently you can. Because I do not want a table. I just want chairs." I pointed out that I didn't think the table even matched the chairs. They claimed that that's the way they got them. He then said he'd take $10 off of the $135 asking price. Then he went a little lower to $120. I said, "But I do not want the table. I have absolutely no place to go with it." He said, "Well, just leave it here. Maybe I'll get $15 for it." I told him I really don't even want the chairs with arms, just the four side chairs, so I'd have to talk to my husband about it. I left, called Dick, and found out he was actually going to be going right by there later on his way to some work-related testing he had to do this evening. He said he'd stop and look at them.
I waited a while and went back into Pete's to look at them again. I sat on them to make sure they were really sturdy (they were), noticed that the arms on one of the end chairs were wobbly, looked at them some more. Finally I said, "You sure you wouldn't sell me just the four side chairs for $100? I don't want those end chairs. The arms are wobbly." He hemmed and hawed around like he just couldn't do it. I said, "I'd definitely take the four chairs for $100. I'd pay you right now and my husband will soon be by to pick them up." He said, "Yeah, I can do that." And it was a done deal. He got really friendly after that, even telling me about his relatives that came from Lancaster County.
Dick told me that the first thing he noticed when he walked into the store later was a sign that said, "No negotiating." (I did NOT see that sign!!) Dick said to the owner, "I'm here to pick up the chairs that my wife negotiated for." Hahahahaha!!
And here they are. I'm pretty pleased with my negotiation! And God's answer to my prayer.
Dick had off work today and had such a fun time playing with Austin after he woke up from his nap this afternoon. Austin is just crazy over Pawpaw.
