SO MUCH to write about. SO MANY pictures to share!! I hate when I get so behind in blogging, but when you're having fun with a houseful of people, sitting at the computer just doesn't happen.
Our Thanksgiving week was decked with very beautiful snow. I know I'll probably have snow pictures for the next six months, but I just can't ignore how beautiful it was this week. Here are pics taken from my windows!
Ray and Thyda left Virginia Beach on Wednesday evening and arrived at our place around 2 AM. I never heard them come in! It was wonderful to have them here and finally have time to catch up with them. We hadn't seen Thyda since June or Ray since August. Of course Leo, their sweet, sweet dog was along too.
I took this picture of them in the afternoon as we waited for the others to arrive. Sam and Jenn had Destiny with them and stopped at Jenn's home near Harrisburg first for their Thanksgiving dinner. Fred and Deb put Bjorn on the train in Lancaster and Dick picked him up at the Lewistown station around 3:45. Anthony, Lori, and Austin headed to New York that day to spend the holiday weekend with her folks
By 5:30 everyone was here and we were enjoying our feast of turkey, stuffing, baked corn, sweet potato pudding, green bean casserole, cranberry applesauce, pie, and ice cream.
This precious little girl!! I fell so in love with her this weekend!! She is feisty, she is nosey, she is loud, she LOVES the mall, and she loves me. (-:
Bless Sammy's heart. He's been telling me for months that he wants to come to my house and read books. All through the meal he kept asking if we could read books now. As I was holding Bianca we noticed that Sammy had given up on me and went to Grandpa with his books!
Jammy time.
Sammy got lots of help building what was first of all a daycare, but in the end was a zoo.
We got out this new toy that Dick had brought home from Mommy Shoppe donations one time. Destiny, Ray and Thyda worked on building it, and we ended up with an amazing, functioning marble roller coaster.
Sammy wanted to take pictures with my camera. Most of them turned out with his finger over the lens, but here are some that didn't turn out too bad!
We also played a few rounds of "Dictionary", our homemade version of Balderdash. Destiny absolutely associates Thanksgiving with playing that game, and she begged and pleaded till she found at least four people to play. As usual, we had plenty of good laughs.
We found places for everyone to lay their heads for the next three nights. Sam, Jenn, and Bianca had the guest room, Sammy slept in our room, Thdya, Ray, and Leo had the sofa and loveseat, Destiny had a cot beside the dining room table, and Bjorn had an air mattress here in the den.
That will be all for this post. I'll finish up tomorrow evening, hopefully.
As you can tell by my lack of posting, this was not a very interesting week! The biggest thing was the BITTER cold for most of the week!! But it seems that was not news, since everyone else in the country was experiencing colder temps than normal. At least we were fortunate enough to avoid the snow that some parts of the country, especially around the Great Lakes, experienced. In comparison, today feels like HEAVEN. It is 56 degrees outside right now and supposedly going even higher tomorrow!
This is a super busy time for me at the church office. There is an annual meeting coming up by which time many forms must be submitted to our district superintendent. So on Tuesday I put in a really long day taking care of some those things. The meeting is on December 4th and when that's over I'm going to celebrate in some way. Gotta figure that out yet.
I do food prep at Anthony and Lori's on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, work at the church office on Tuesday and Thursday, do music prep for two churches on Monday and Tuesday evenings, have practice at Houserville Wednesday evening and at Fillmore Thursday evenings, and piano lessons for two students on Thursday between work and practice. In addition to those regular things this week I had a hair appointment Wednesday morning, went for blood work Thursday morning, and had my annual physical Friday morning. Now you know why I didn't blog all week.
This weekend I did something I have not done since the weekend of August 16 and 17. I stayed here in State College all weekend - no traveling anywhere!! No football games, no family reunions. Yesterday I did some deep cleaning out around here. Right now in my living room I have a bunch of stuff that has to be taken here, there, and everywhere to dispose of. It's just unbelievable how things accumulate with so little effort!
Last evening Anthony, Lori, and Austin stopped in with some yummy food from Dickey's BBQ, and Lori made some apple crisp while they were here. They had ice cream with theirs. I had almond milk with mine. Ahhhhh. It was so delicious.
I was actually torn about my plans to finally stay home all weekend when I saw that my beloved high school choral director had died this week. There was a memorial service for him in Lancaster yesterday, and I would have dearly loved to go to it. But I knew I had a big week coming up and I really needed the chance to stay home and get things done.
Arnold Moshier was the music teacher/choral director at Lancaster Mennonite High School for many years. In addition to that, he had his own choral group, the Choraleers, which I was a member of for three years - my senior year of high school and the following two years. We did a lot of traveling, both as a whole group and as smaller teams. My biggest opportunity was being part of a team that went to Jamaica for ten days. Of all things, I had all my pictures from that trip developed into slides! I have rarely ever looked at them. I really must find a way to get them made into digital pictures.
I looked on Ebay and Amazon and actually found old Choraleers records for sale! Here's the front cover of one of our first ones.
I remember Arnold's absolute horror when the records came and we discovered that on the inner label it said, "An Oasis in the Dessert." Too late to do anything about it!! We kids thought it was hilarious.
Here's info from the back cover that I found. I am the last girl on the left on the front row.
Here are some pics I scanned from other trips we took. The first one was the "Florida Team" in 1970. There was a Mennonite Voluntary Service unit in Lakeland (same one my sister Janet and her husband Elvin had served with a few years prior) that we were based out of. One of the churches we went to sing at was in Tampa. Cracks me up. I had no idea then how big a part Tampa would play in my life.
Arnold and his wife, who always traveled with us, are on the far right. Somehow they raised four children at the same time they did all this crazy fun stuff with us. They were absolutely amazing.
This picture was outside of a church in the Toronto, Canada area. We were like Mennonite hippies, hahaha!! Sitting in the grass singing with a guitar.
Whether traveling on a plane or a bus, we always had SO MUCH FUN!! We often traveled all night long to get back home after a bus tour. Some tried to sleep, others couldn't sleep and kept everyone awake. I will let you guess which category I most often fit into.
Well, that was my trip back memory lane. Oh, one more thing. In 2008 there was a Choraleers reunion. He was probably 82 at that time. I was honored that he asked me to sing the solo in Harry Belafonte's "Amen".
And now I have MUCH to look forward to! We will have a wonderful houseful from Thursday to Sunday. As usual, we will pack them in and feed them and have a whole lot of fun. I doubt that I will have time to post for a whole week!
Here, as promised, are my pictures from the Marlo Furniture Store in Laurel, MD, Jeremy's most recent store remodel. The minute you walk in that store your eyes feel like they are enjoying a FEAST!
I found this cool old guy asking if I needed any help. (-:
Rooms for the girls...
And rooms for the boys.
Here are the ones I posted before, in case you missed them.
I snapped this picture of the outside of the store as we left. I think the company Jeremy works for (Regency Furniture) bought out a chain of Marlo stores, but did not change the name.
And here's the genius behind it all. He totally amazes me.
Sometimes people say how fun his job must be. I'm sure there are fun aspects to it, but most of it is not. There is a whole lot of stress and a whole lot of hard work, even hard manual labor. The week that they were doing the final push to get this store ready for the big open house, he posted on FB:
"Crazy long day on my feet moving for twelve hours, barely ate today, and dealing with people. Glad to be on my way home. My
best comparison for what these days are like in my job is try to
imagine moving your house for 12 hours in a day and then repeating it
for the next 4 days."
And now I need to get started on my marathon week. Huge time-consuming deadlines at the church office this week, a hair appointment, a 6-month check-up at the doctor, and all my other jobs. Thankfully I got a really good night of sleep last night.
