Witmer Weekend at Gretna, 2013

It's a cloudy, coolish kind of day here, good for napping.  But I want to get this post done while Destiny and the neighbor girls are watching Free Willy.   As I said in Friday's post, this was our annual Witmer weekend, albeit a much smaller version of it.

On Friday Dick and I left his work place around 3:30 and arrived at my sister Mary Ellen's in East Petersburg (Lancaster County) shortly after 6:00.  This was "sibling night" and we were the first to arrive.  Soon my sister Betty and family from New Hampshire got there after having spent the afternoon at Grandma Mary's.  And then the Lancaster Countians, my sister Doris, hubby Dale, and daughter Ellen, and finally my brother Dick and his wife Nancy came.  We filled up her dining room table, but we would gladly have made room for Rose (Georgia) and Barb (Idaho) and any of their family members if they could have come.

After dinner we went outside for group pictures.  This is our sibling shot, but it took a while to get to this point.  

We had to go through some jolly disagreements about how to stand and who gets to stand behind whom, etc. first.  Here's a little sample of our silliness.


The adults:  Betty and Scott, Doris and Dale, Mary Ellen, Dick and I, Nancy and Dick.

The kids: Doris's Ellen, Betty's Isaiah and Merida.

The New Hampshirites:  Merida, Scott, Betty, and Isaiah.

Dick and I spent the night at Grandma Mary's.  In the morning Dick went to visit his parents and I went to pick up Destiny.  Our Witmer family activity that afternoon was swimming/relaxing at Mt. Gretna Lake and Beach.  What a GREAT place.  Perfect for everyone, those who wanted to have fun in the water or in the sand as well as those who just wanted to relax under a shade tree.

The big swing was so much fun for those who were brave enough.  Destiny was a pro.  She would have the guy push the swing higher and higher and then....

....there she goes!  It was a lot of fun to watch.

Anthony, Lori, and Austin came too.  They had been in Florida with Lisa and George, flew from Tampa to the Baltimore airport that morning, and drove from the airport to the lake.  I was having too much fun with him in the water to even take pictures.  Here he was examining a wounded butterfly.

Destiny had so much fun with Isaiah all weekend.  They have been buddies ever since they were toddlers and hadn't seen each other for two years.

Our evening activity was supposed to take place in the cozy picnic grove behind Doris's church.  However, just as some had started chowing down on the pizza, along came a big, old downpour.  We scrammed with all the food, drinks, and supplies and headed up the hill to the church.   We still had a really fun evening together.

We sat across from this little cutie pie granddaughter of Doris and Dale.

Some of us had a great intergenerational game of Dominoes going - Destiny and Doris's grandson Andrew were my teammates.  Grandma Mary's teammates were Isaiah and Merida.  We beat the pants off them, even though Isaiah kept boasting of his "perfect plan" game after game.  

Dominoes tiles are good for more than a game!

The evening ended with a concert - Uncle Scott and the little ones!

Again we all went our separate ways for the night.  Our Sunday activity took place at the hall in Grandma Mary's community, pictured here behind Uncle Scott and Destiny in Grandma's golf cart - a very favorite thing for the grandchildren.

We had a light brunch, followed by a worship service.  We sang together with the piano and guitar, I had a story for the children, and then we shared and prayed for each other.

Dick and I served our lunch of sausage sandwiches, potato salad, veggies and dip, fruit tray, and rice krispie treats.  Grandma Mary also added some of her yummy cakes, one of which was a very delicious and moist fruit salad cake.  Gotta get that recipe!

Some of the gang had fun playing miniature golf on the course behind the community hall.

Some just enjoyed relaxing on the front porch overlooking a lovely lake. (Sorry, I didn't even get a picture of the lake.)

Some of us sisters and Merida had fun looking at a photo album from the nineties when Merida was a baby.  Shuffleboard (behind us) entertained the youngest as well as the oldest!

And finally it was time to say goodbye.  Another wonderful family weekend, although different from our usual get-togethers,  was history.

We went to pack up our stuff at Grandma Mary's house, Dick took a 30-minute nap, and then we hit the road.  We first of all met Frank, because we were taking Destiny home with us for a week, and she wanted to bring her new kitten along.  So he met us with the kitten.

What an adorable little thing!

Little Penelope.  She is just so cute and so funny.  But definitely nocturnal.  During the night I woke up to find her on our bed, batting my face, jumping off the bed, back onto the bed, purring in my ear......  When we got up this morning she was under my night stand and jumped out at Dick's feet as he walked by.   This will be an interesting week to say the least!

A 20th birthday, a 15th anniversary, and great weather

I'm ready to walk out the door to spend the weekend in Lancaster County with some Witmers.  This is the weekend we would normally be going to Ebenezer Mennonite Bible School's wonderful facility in York County.  However, our number was smaller this year, so instead we're doing Lancaster County things.  

This week we observed our granddaughter Katrina's 20th birthday.  Here are pictures of Dick and I getting to experience "grandparenthood" for the first time during their visit from Sweden for Christmas 1993.

We also observed Lisa and George's 15th wedding anniversary.  I know you've seen this picture before, but here's our family on that very special day, July 25, 1998.

Our weather has been amazing the last couple of days.  Beautiful sun without humidity.  That is indeed rare this summer.  We've had lots of rain and lots of extreme humidity.

Have a great weekend.  I'm sure we will!

Mommy Shoppe, Grandchildren, and funerals

Looks like another week has gone by since I posted on here.  It's been a really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g time for our little church at Houserville.  The majority of our people are "sandwich generationers."  Taking care of their own children of various ages, their jobs, and their parents.  In a little over a month three of our women have lost their dads to battles with cancer.  One of them has moved her mother in with her family in the couple of weeks since her dad's death.  Another one has a mother who needed surgery just days before her dad's death.  And they do not live close by.  Then we discovered last Sunday morning that a toilet at the church had overflowed sometime Saturday and had kept running all night, flooding the room below where things for the Mommy Shoppe are stored (mostly in plastic tubs, thankfully).  But there was water damage of course, necessitating insurance company involvement and water mitigation.  It feels very much like the Enemy does not like the outreach this little church is having through the Mommy Shoppe and is determined to interfere in any way possible.

But guess what??  We serve a God who is stronger.  Today was the regularly scheduled Mommy Shoppe Saturday, and even though our primary women were unable to help and there was very little FB advertising  done this time, we still had at least 10 workers and we were BUSY!  I had a great time talking to moms and pregnant girls and holding babies and even singing with some little ones while their moms were in line to check out.

This adorable 3-week-old slept under an old piano in the corner almost the entire time his mommy shopped.

Baskets of goodies waiting to be checked out.  Each mom can get a free bag of clothes for each of her children each month.  Other things are at low yard sale prices.  Everything is washed, tagged, and mostly hanging on racks for easy access.

Heather, the only one there today who has been trained in the new computer system, was there checking things out for almost four hours straight!  No food, no potty breaks, just water.  Her dear old dad came to help bag things and he said he was going to make sure she got a good meal afterward!   I wish I'd gotten a picture of him.

Now I'm going to jump back to last Saturday evening.  Anthony was in Nashville.  Dick and I took Lori, Austin, and her nephew Will to the Boalsburg Festival.  We had such fond memories from last year of eating good food, listening to music, looking at fun displays.  But oh my!  It was so much hotter this year, and we could hardly stand it.  The group that was singing was just really bad, it had rained so much that it was really muddy a lot of places, the barbecued chicken wasn't even as good as I'd hoped.  So we pretty much just ate, gave the boys time to jump in the bouncy house, and left.

Early Sunday morning Lori dropped Austin off here because she had signed up to to the State College Arts Fest Run.  I took this picture because she was wearing our nephew Joe Stauffer's invention, Bud Buttons.    (Check them out!)

Austin brought some of his trains along and it was so fun to listen to his imagination as he lay on the floor playing with them.  We took him along to Houserville, and Lori picked him up there before church started.

We had planned to drive to Sam's right after church to spend some more time with him and Sammy just a few days before Jenn's arrival back home.  But Sam said he hated to have us make the trip again.  And I hadn't slept well Saturday night, so we decided not to go.  All afternoon (after my nap) I wished we had.  I felt bored - can you imagine?   So we decided to go for a drive and see what we could see that we never saw before.  We eventually found an unbelievable mountain road (Route 445) that had at least three hairpin curves and probably five S curves.  It really was a beautiful Sunday evening drive.  

Guess who FINALLY got back home on Tuesday?  All day long I kept thinking, "Is she home yet?  I wish she'd post something."  And eventually she posted this adorable picture of her happy Sammy.  After five weeks apart!  I just cannot imagine.

Last evening I was talking to Destiny on the phone.  She told me she got a kitten and that she had knitted her kitten a hat and a scarf!!  Then she sent me a picture of the kitten, Penelope, with its hat on!

I told her I also wanted a picture of her, so she sent me this one with her brother.  I miss her.

And while I'm talking about grandchildren, here's an adorable recent picture of Sophie blowing bubbles for Nilla.  How cute is that?  I miss her too.   Boy, it would have felt good to jump into that pool these past few hot weeks.   

It sounds like the humidity and high nineties temps will be leaving us tomorrow.  But I haven't complained too much.  I hate winter so bad, and this past spring was cold for so long that I just want to hang onto every possible bit of summer I can.  Of course, it helps that I live in a house with central air, same thing with the church office where I work.  

I know this is terribly long again.  But I just remembered that I wanted to write about the funeral I was at on Friday morning.  No, this was not a funeral for one of the dads I was talking about at the top of this post, but for a 97-year-old woman from Fillmore, Helen Hull.   Her daughter Peg is a friend of mine.  Here's a picture of Peg and Helen at her 95th birthday party. 

I think it was one of the most fun funerals I was ever at.  And I believe every woman there left thinking, "I want to be like Helen Hull."  The stories Peg and her adult kids told about life with Helen (Nan Nan) often had us laughing out loud.  She wasn't afraid to try anything, and traveled all over the place with them even just in the past year.  The love and joy and fun of this family just spilled all over the place.  It was so refreshing.