Sophie's race and People's Choice festival

Well, this has to be the first in quite a while - blogging three times in four days!  

On Friday morning I went to the bank and the grocery store, making sure I would be back home before a very important appointment at 11:00 am.  My appointment was with Sophie!

She was participating in the AAU Championships at Disney, and it was being live streamed.  As it approached the time for her age group, I sat down here at my computer, camera on and ready to go.  Suddenly, there she was, right in front of me, filling the whole screen!!  I could not help starting to cry!  I snapped the picture and cried and prayed all at the same time.  She was the only one in her heat that they zoomed in on like that.   She was third from left, blue shirt, black shorts. 

It was just amazing to be able to watch her from here - a better view than I had last summer when I was at an actual event!  But really, I would still have loved to be there with her in person.  

She did not do her best time, but she was ok with that.  All season long she has been coming back from an injury.  We hope and pray that next season she'll avoid injury and be able to get faster and faster.  Her attitude is absolutely stellar, and we are more proud of that than anything else.  

I want to back up now and show some things that are being done over at Stauffer Acres.  They cleared the hill behind the barn of all its brush, etc, and are making rustic amphitheater-type seating.  This is just one set of benches so far.   There are so many possibilities for this space!

Later Friday afternoon I kept Hunter here for a few hours.  Like I've said before, he seems to be so aware of his surroundings, and he definitely noticed that my house was not familiar to him.  When he woke up from his nap it seemed like he was looking around and thinking, "Grandma, where am I?"  

He really cried, no matter what I did for him.  Finally, we went out on the porch, and that was the magic!

We took him with us (yes, we have a proper car seat!  We are ready for anybody now - we have three car seats, one for Hunter, one for Bianca, and one for Sammy) to People's Choice Festival in Boalsburg.  A favorite group of ours, Urban Fusion,  was performing.  Anthony, Lori, and Austin met us there.

And of course, there's every kind of food imaginable.  On a hot evening, ice cream cones hit the spot!

On Saturday I had a wonderfully laid back day of catching up at home, then in the evening Dick and I went to People's Choice again.

There were hundreds of vendors.  I thought this display of pottery was spectacular. 

This is the vendor we came to see - my co-worker Kris and her husband Mel.  They own Karl Family Baskets, and yes, they make all these baskets in the basement of their home.  

This was a new design this year and they sold all three of them on the first day of the festival!  She said that it's the word "tailgate" that sells them.  We were imagining how we could add the word "tailgate" to other baskets.  A tailgate hamper, anyone?

At another vendor Dick was intrigued by this barrel coffee table.  

I thought our daughter Miki would have loved that Harley sign.

It was really hot walking around, so we got some food and made ourselves comfortable (I even propped up my feet on another chair) at the back of the music tent.  There was a slight breeze, and we enjoyed ourselves for a couple of hours, just relaxing, watching people, and listening to the groups that were performing. 

There was a lovely sunset as we walked to our car.

I got these delivered to my door on Friday!  

I have been depending on these lozenges for almost twenty years to keep impending sore throats at bay.  And they WORK for me almost all the time.  A few years ago CVS stopped carrying them, so I always go to Rite Aid and buy up all the ones they have.  Last week when we were leaving for Refreshing Mountain I felt the slightest scratchy throat and did not want to be caught without these.  I had some, but maybe not enough for an entire weekend.  So we stopped at Rite Aid, and they had NONE.  They checked and said that the warehouse lists them as unavailable.  WHAT????

So early this week I found that drugstore.com had them, and I figured up how many I would need to buy to get free shipping.  Yes, I did buy 18 bags, hahaha!!  And they were cheaper per bag than when I bought them in a store.  Win/win I say!

Have a good week!  I think we're going to head over to the arboretum now that it's cooled off a bit.