She's HERE!!

I can't keep up, I can't keep up!!  I want to blog about our fun weekend with Miki, and I now discover I have not updated here since last Saturday!  Oh dear.

So first of all, I need to share about last Sunday evening.  I went to the CentreSings Finals competition. The talent was AMAZING, again from a little third grade girl to a retired Penn State professor.  Even the judges performed this time, one of which just blew us away with his incredibly powerful voice.  I had a wonderful time!   This is a video I took of the winner, a 12-year-old girl who has already sung and acted in New York - Hannah Richardson.  This was her final song after she was announced as the winner, an Etta James song, At Last.  If you don't have time to listen to all two minutes of it, start at 1:00.   You will not believe she's 12!

This past week was all about working at all my jobs plus getting READY for the weekend.  My mind was in so much turmoil over the details of Miki and Ingo getting from the JFK airport to here on Friday evening.  I truly did not feel like we could go pick them up, since Dick had chemo this week, and he always feels the worst on Friday and Saturday afterward.  About midweek Lori informed me that she had been communicating with Miki and decided that she would take the Megabus from here to Manhattan, then a train from there to JFK to meet them, then do the reverse trip with them.  She's a seasoned New York traveller, so it did not feel overwhelming to her.  That brought incredible peace to my mind.  

So it came to pass that on Saturday morning a little before 4:30, she delivered them to our door.  Of course, even at that hour, we sat and talked until Dick had to leave for work at 7 am.

After that the rest of us slept for a while.  Thoughout the day Miki and I had lots of opportunity to talk and talk and talk, good heart to heart talks.  It was SO GOOD at last.  Ingo gave us lots of opportunity to laugh, right from the beginning.  They and Lori had come up with a prank to play on me upon arrival - they pretended that Ingo could not speak or understand English.  I was thinking, "Wow, I never thought to ask her about that.  This will be interesting."  Then at some point  (after about fifteen minutes!) they admitted it was a joke on me!

In the afternoon we went to Giant to get some things they needed.  They were overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of choices in our stores!

In the evening Anthony and Lori came over for our first cookout of the year.  It was a gorgeous evening.  Dick made the most delicious chicken breasts on the grill.  

Later we came inside and watched the disc of 175 FUN pictures Miki had brought along from their wedding party last Friday.  

This morning we had the pleasure of introducing them to all our friends at both Fillmore and Houserville.  Ingo is a very enthusiastic worshiper and it was great to have him in our midst.  Miki and I sang a song together at both churches.  It had a been a long, long time since we'd sung together and we both enjoyed it thoroughly.  This is the video Dick took with his phone. 

Today we took much needed naps.  Austin was here too for his nap.  Afterward he discovered that Miki is a really fun playmate (thus giving me time to catch up here.)  And now Anthony and Lori are here again and I'm enjoying listening to the fun and conversation.  I'm feeling so very blessed