Our New Years Day; almost back to the routine

Gotta keep up my diary!

On Tuesday, New Years Day, we packed up Destiny's stuff and left here around 11 am to take her home to Reading.  We had such a great time the entire week-a-half she was here, and it felt sad that she was leaving.  She had fun with my new phone on the trip home.  It has a reverse camera, which makes it easier to do self portraits.  Here are a few of them.

We stopped at a Wawa near her home before we dropped her off,  to get her and her family some of the Chicken Caesar wraps that she loves so much.  

I love them too, but I had pork and sauerkraut on the brain.  We by no means have had pork and sauerkraut every New Years day, nor do I believe it brings any kind of good luck.  But I LOVE it, and I had such a craving for it!  I googled "pork and sauerkraut", but discovered that many of the churches and fire companies that were serving it that day were finishing up around 2 or 3:00, and we were on the tail end of that time frame.  So I started googling family restaurants in towns between Reading and Harrisburg.  Some were closed for the day.  But I found an Esther's Restaurant near Fredericksburg that was open and was serving pork and sauerkraut.  The person who answered the phone even had a Lebanon County accent, so I knew that they probably knew how to make good pork and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes!!   Does this look good??     

They even brought me extra broth because I don't like mine dry.  It really satisfied my craving, but I have to admit - when I make it, it tastes even better than that.  Sorry if I sound like I'm bragging.  

Dick and I got home early evening, although it felt much later.  We admitted that we were ready for some routine again.  So I was back to the normal this week - working at the church office, praise team prep and practice at Houserville, piano lessons.  

There was one exception.  This month the Fillmore choir is practicing Wednesday nights for some reason, which means we can't go - that's our Houserville practice night.  So my Thursday evening was freed up to help the ladies at Houserville with a huge project.  They had received a huge donation of clothes for the Mommy Shoppe.  Normally they wash the donations at home, but when they receive huge donations it's much more time-efficient to take the stuff to a laundromat.  There were four of us and a LOT of laundry.  I kid you not, we filled every washer and still had to wait to fill some the second time!  Later we had all the dryers filled, with second loads for many of them.  There were just two men in the place, each with a load or two, so we were nice and shared a few washers and dryers!

And of course, the BIG job was all the folding and folding and folding and folding.  I think we were there till 10:00 pm!

Heather is pictured above, Heather and Sharon below.  Somehow I missed getting a picture of Amy.  We had a lot of fun.

Now I have to get myself moving.  Dick is working this morning till noon, at which time I will meet him and we will leave right from there for our trip to Lancaster County for the weekend.  Dick's family is getting together at his parents' place this evening.  We'll go to Grace, our home church in the morning.  Then we're eating lunch and spending the afternoon with my PA siblings and Grandma Mary.  She will be leaving on Tuesday for a month in Florida. Sigh.  Sounds so wonderful.    We're hoping to catch a little bit of time with Sam and Jenn and Sammy late Sunday afternoon before we head back home.   And of course,  Destiny will be with us for the weekend.  She doesn't want to miss that good food at Grandpa Stauffers this evening!