Last post of 2012

I want to get one last post written before 2012 is history.  Last time I wrote I mentioned being left with lots of good memories and dirty laundry.  Boy, did I have laundry!!  And it hasn't gotten any better, because we've had snow, plus a girl in the house who likes to play in that snow, which means wet coats, wet socks, wet gloves, wet snow pants, wet boots, a mess at the door.....  But it's okay.  

Dick still had off work on Wednesday, using up a vacation day he would have lost otherwise, so we took down the Christmas tree already.  We cut it on December 4th, and it was shedding needles so bad, I was just sick of it.  Dick also hung the pictures Jeremy gave me for Christmas - on either side of the drapes.  I didn't realize when I took this picture that I was "hiding" a basket of clean laundry behind the sofa, hahaha!

Here are two of the jigsaw puzzles that Dick and Destiny did last week.

Our first snow came on Wednesday.  I absolutely HAD to work at the church office on Thursday, so Dick took Destiny to Anthony and Lori's on his way to work that morning.  Lori took her to Walmart for more snow clothes and then they went sledding.  They had a lot of fun, but it sounds like Austin bumped a front tooth, so he's not so sure he likes sledding anymore. 

On Friday afternoon Destiny and I did a bunch of errands and then went to the Discovery Space kids' museum in State College.  She just loves that place, and they had a lot of new stuff since last summer.  

That evening Lori had a ladies event to attend, so Anthony and Austin came here.  We had fun playing with Austin (no pictures, though) while Anthony set up my new iPhone, which they gave me for Christmas,  and transferred everything over from my old one.  I am THRILLED with the pictures this phone takes!!  My other one had a terrible camera, and my real camera, which I LOVED, has become increasingly difficult to use.  When I was in Florida in October, it decided it would no longer respond to the on/off switch, so I had to take the battery out to turn it off!  Then it decided to be in "motion picture" mode every time I inserted the battery to use it, thus adding one more thing I had to remember to do before snapping a picture.  So having a good camera right in my phone is indeed a blessing!

I got a chance to put it to use Saturday morning as more snow came down.  Our neighborhood was just gorgeous.  I took this one right out our front door.

And this one out my kitchen window.

Destiny and I were also reading a lot last week.  We both were so disappointed to finish our books on Saturday - mine was Neta Jackson's Come to the Table on my Nook, and Destiny's was a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book that Ray and Thyda gave her for Christmas. I have since started Andy Stanley's Deep and Wide, which Anthony has been talking about a lot.  It is GOOD, and I highly recommend it.

Destiny also played outside in the snow with the neighbor girls for a long time on Saturday and was a tremendous help to Dick with shoveling the driveway.  In the evening we used a coupon we had for the Bellefonte Wok.  We'd never been there before, and the food was SCRUMPTIOUS!!  We will definitely go back sometime.  

Sunday was church(es)  in the morning.  Afterward Ashley from Hourserville came along home with us for the afternoon, and we also stopped at Anthony and Lori's to pick up Austin.  After lunch the girls went outside to play, Dick snoozed on the recliner, and Austin and I took our naps.  Boy, did I ever nap.  I felt like a total zombie when Austin woke me up!  I was such a zombie I didn't take one picture of Austin with my new easy-to-use phone camera!!  What is up with that??

In the evening Destiny wanted to watch a "family movie" together.  I browsed through the free movies in our Comcast On-Demand and found The Adventures of the Wilderness Family.  Destiny had never seen it.  We ended up watching it and its sequel.  What MEMORIES these movies brought back, along with doubts about my motherly wisdom.   

When our children were very young, and when the well-known Sight and Sound theater in Lancaster was also very young, they used to show family films on Saturday evenings and gospel films on Sunday evenings.  There would always be a period of singing praise and worship songs before the Sunday evening films, and Dick and our bass player Don would play with the little "band".  Because of that, we had the unique privilege of attending anything that was showing for free.  The Joni movie came out over that time, and Dick helped to usher or park cars, so we were there to see that several times.  Anyway, we watched the  Wilderness Family movies a few times, and like I said, our children were very young, the screen was very large, the sound was loud, and those movies are horribly scary!!  Even last evening I sat there wondering whatever were we thinking by letting our children endure them at such young age????  Close up shots of wild wolves, angry bears, a cabin fire, children lost in a blizzard....  But they were free.  We had our priorities, you know, hahaha!

I've got more dirty laundry to do today, then this evening we'll go to the New Years Eve festivities in State College (I WILL take pictures), come home and watch the ball drop on TV, and then tomorrow make a trip to Reading to take Destiny back home.

Happy New Year!!