More football game fun, Sunday morning changes

Much shorter post this time!  Saturday was another football game day.  In the morning I made sloppy joe meat in my electric kettle and also cut up some celery and carrot sticks and stirred up some Ranch dip.   Around 12:30 I loaded my stuff and went over to Anthony and Lori's.  The game wouldn't be until 3:30, but I was first of all babysitting Hunter while Lori went out with some friends for a spa afternoon.

It was a fun time watching the game in the barn.  Our friends Peg and Bill came again, also Anthony and Lori's friends Emil and Tiffany and their children.  Peg brought Taco Dip and chips, also cut fruit and dip, and brownies and ice cream!

This was our loud crew!  You can't see Austin here - he was hiding behind his iPad over there beside Lori. I set the timer on my camera and then quickly ran into place!  Not sure how I had time to grab Hunter!

There he is!  He and Lily are looking cozy here, but there were some scraps later.  He likes his space and he likes his things, and he's not always very nice when those things are invaded.

Hunter wasn't too sure about sharing Grandpa with another baby!

Like I said, our crew was loud and proud of our team playing against Ohio State.

Unfortunately, the last quarter did not give us much cause for rejoicing, and in the end, when Ohio finished the game one point ahead of Penn State, our crew was pretty quiet, with just a few statements like, "Wow," "Can't believe it," etc, as we gathered up the leftover food and went our ways.  

Sunday morning was our last service at Fillmore.  Three churches have been on a journey to becoming one.  At this point there is land purchased to build on, and in the meantime we will all worship together at our Buffalo Run location, which is also just a few miles from our place in the opposite direction.  It is a bigger building and has more place for parking.  Our praise band will continue to lead the music, and I will continue to be choir director, now with a bigger choir.  The accompanists from the other two locations will be available to sub for me.  I'm excited about that!  The name of the new church is Greater Buffalo Run Valley UMC.   So from now on instead of referring to the Fillmore Choir or the Fillmore Praise Band, I will probably be calling us the GBRV Choir and GBRV Praise Band.   Our service will now start at 9:00 instead of 8:15 since the pastor will no longer need to go to three different locations each Sunday morning.   And I'll get to sleep 45 minutes longer on Sunday mornings!!

Ross wanted a picture of our praise band yesterday and had Peg take a picture of us with his phone.  They decided I looked too little back there behind the piano.

Brenna is an excellent flutist.  She used to play in Penn State's Blue Band.  She's in her 7th year as middle school band teacher at Bellefonte.   I play piano of course, Dick plays bass.  Ross is our guitarist, and is also excellent.  He is our age and is still taking guitar lessons!  He is a distinguished biochemistry professor at Penn State.   We really, really enjoy playing together, and I feel so blessed to have people like these to work with.

We had a lot of rain yesterday, and now the weather is notably cooler.  We've had weeks of above average warm temps this fall.  On Saturday morning I took a picture of my knock-out rose bush, wondering if it's going to make it into November.  I think Dick trimmed it back twice this summer!  It just grows like crazy!

Fun, fun weekend!

After we got back from our Florida vacation last Wednesday evening, I had to hit the ground running! The State College School District had a few days off, so Austin would be staying at my house on Thursday.  And Thursday evening would be choir practice, for which I had a lot of prep and practicing to do.  I had not even touched a piano in over a week!

Austin was content to do quiet things while I practiced, although he did ask one time, "How long are you going to be doing that, Grandma?"  I didn't know I sounded that bad, LOL!

I had recently bought a bean bag game that I was eager to show him.  I knew he would love the challenge.

I also made some sausage, potato, and spinach soup to send home with them when Lori came to pick him up.

On Friday Lori took Austin to a museum in Harrisburg, so after daycare I got to play with Hunter for a while until Anthony was finished working.  It was a nice day for being on the porch, and he turned it into his little race track!

What fun he is!!  He also enjoyed trying to stack the hassocks on top of the love seat!

I was delighted to see some color on the leaves at their place.

When I left their place I had grocery shopping to do.  I also knew that Sam and Jenn and the kids were on their way to our place for the weekend and I was trying to get home before they got there.  Believe it or not, I followed them right to our house.  It was so funny!

What a crazy time!  I didn't even find my camera till things settled down a bit later.  After the groceries were put away and the air mattress for Bianca and the cot for Sammy were ready, Sam and Jenn went out on a date.  Bianca was ready for bed right away.  I wish I had a picture of Sammy coming into the room to kiss her goodnight.  The most precious thing ever!!

Sammy showed me endless YouTube videos of things that have been made with LEGOS.  A washing machine and a recliner are two of the ones I remember.  He had obviously watched them before and was absolutely ecstatic about every video.  He kept exclaiming, "Can you believe that??  LEGOS are so RICH and popular!!"  I just love his enthusiasm!  

On Saturday morning I made blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes and sausage for breakfast.   Meanwhile Sammy worked on a few puzzles.

Around 10:00 we piled into the van (all except Grandpa who was at work) and went to Way Fruit Farm for their Harvest Days.  We knew it would be a warm day, but we weren't expecting it to be HOT!!  We were sweating the whole time!

Look who we found!

We all piled into the wagon for a ride to pumpkin field.

One last thing - trying to hit that old truck with apples, hahaha!  It was harder than you'd think.  Anthony thinks that is a feature he needs to add at Stauffer Acres!

We were glad to go home to an air conditioned house for naps!  How crazy is that in the last half of October?

I made chili for an early dinner and Buffalo Chicken Dip for later.  Sammy was having fun with the United States floor puzzle.  I just love it!  Showing him where all our family lives, where the capital is, etc.

When he was finished he was telling Sam where things were!

Then we all piled into the van again (Grandpa too this time!) and went to Anthony and Lori's to watch the Penn State vs Michigan game on the big screen in Anthony's barn.  It was a fun evening.  Our friends Peg and Bill came too and some of Anthony and Lori's friends.

Like Peg said, the screen is so big we could see the players' facial expressions.

The kids were having fun running around outside and playing their own version of dodge ball!

That ended up being a very late night.  After we got home and the kids were in bed we talked for a long time.  Sunday morning came WAY too soon!!

Sammy woke up in time to go to church at Fillmore with Dick and me.   At church he asked me,  "How does everybody know my name??"  Haha!!  Everybody knows Sammy !

I was hoping to go to Waffle Shop in Bellefonte for brunch afterward, thinking that it would not be as crowded as the Waffle Shop in State College (the football crowd), but the line was out the door, and we decided to go to Burger King.  I know.  Burger King.  But guess what, we had a LOT of fun!  As these pictures can tell.

After we left Burger King Dick took us on the Bellefonte thriller tour.  The town is built on a series of hills and valleys.  There is a street that we like to take people on that goes up and down three steep hills across town.  I mean STEEP!  The kind of steep that makes you feel like the front of the van might tip over backward when you're going up the hill!

Then he took us on some back country roads toward home.  Here's a lovely view that he turned around for so I could get a picture of it.

When we got home we took naps.  After an hour or so Dick came back to wake me up and said Sam and Jenn and the kids are packing up and soon leaving.  Sad, sad, sad!  Once again, fun weekends are always too short.  After they were gone I kept noticing things we never did and food we never ate.  But then I realized that we really weren't home that much, and when we were home we were mostly sleeping, hahaha!!

Around 5:00 Anthony and Lori brought Hunter over.  Austin was at his cousin Will's house.  It was so nice outside, so after a bit of dinner we took Hunter outside for a walk around the neighborhood. 

I couldn't believe these trees on the street below our house.  I seldom ever drive through here.

As we walked on that street below our house we got to see the back of our house.  This is a cropped photo and looks a lot closer than it really was.  

This hill is steeper than it appears and Hunter was running!  

And here it's Friday evening already!  Have a good weekend, everybody!

Florida Trip, days six and seven

A week ago we were packing up to come home.  And I still have not finished blogging about our vacation!  So here goes!

But before I get started I want to share a picture I took out my kitchen window yesterday.  Our leaves are generally not as colorful this year due to the very warm weather we have had this fall.  I am so pleasantly surprised by this tree!

And now, back to Florida!  On Tuesday morning we rented a car because we had plans of our own.  I have a blog friend who lives in Lakeland, FL and we had decided that it was time to finally meet face to face!  She and her husband were willing to drive to Tampa, but I asked her if we could instead meet in Brandon and she agreed.  Brandon is where Jeremy and Mike lived when they were in Florida and I wanted to reminisce.  So Dick and I went to Brandon early for that purpose.  First of all we swung by the house.  Anybody remember this?

It was such an artsy townhome inside with the cutest patio in the back.  Look at Destiny ten years ago!  

We also drove around the neighborhood a bit.  I'm pretty sure this is the church where Jeremy's drama group put on the show Oklahoma, which I so thoroughly enjoyed.

Then we went to the Barnes & Noble where Jeremy worked in the cafe when he was a student at the Tampa Art Institute.  We even found an employee who remembered him from eight years ago!  We bought a Scrabble game for Sophie.

Then we headed to Portillo's for lunch with Terri and Joe.  When we pulled in I noticed them walking to the door.  Never met them in person before, but totally recognized them from her blog!  As they waited inside they saw us walking toward the door and totally recognized us from my blog, hahahaha!!  When we met it was like getting together with old friends!

We had the sweetest time together!!  Over two hours of stories and laughter and sharing and even a few tears.  It was a precious time!  Just amazing the bonds that can be created through blogging!  Thank you, Terri and Joe, for taking the time to drive to Brandon just for us!

 When we got back to Lisa's house this was the view of the lake, hahaha!!  The painters had put plastic up.

Sophie was hard at work on her homework, trying to get it finished so we could watch The Voice together later.  Seventh grade homework is no joke!  She has a LOT of it!  

I got busy making the dinner Lisa had requested.  It just cracks me up that a favorite recipe from her childhood is this simple one from the Mennonite Community Cookbook - Scalloped Tuna.  Not one of my other children ever asks for this one, but I do enjoy making it in Florida once a year, haha!!  I doubled the recipe to make sure we had enough.  I also sautéed some broccoli and onions.  

Some cute shots of Lisa and her "babies" - Stella....

....and Nilla Bean.  Her leg was healing nicely while we were there and she was able to be out and about more often.

After dinner we gathered in the living room to watch The Voice, but before it came on we started a game of Scrabble with the set we had bought for Sophie.  Even though it's a four-person game, we turned it into a five-person game.  There was no letter tray for George, so he used a glasses case, LOL!

The game lasted a long time and we ended up watching The Voice at the same time, which probably made the game last even longer!  But we had so much fun.  

Sophie had the dictionary open on her iPad so we could quickly check if words were valid or not. 

I was the score keeper.

Sophie was trying to figure out what was so funny about the word that was cracking Lisa up!

Can you find Stella?

We said our last goodnights and headed to bed.  Vacations with family never last long enough.  )-:

On Wednesday morning we packed up to leave and took some last pictures.  It was Spirit Week at Sophie's school and on this day they were to dress like food!!  Look at this adorable watermelon dress that Sophie wore!

I had not seen her in her glasses before and thought she looked so good in them.  In fact, she looked even more like her dad!  Are they not the cutest father-daughter pair??

Since I could not see the lake from inside the house, I of course had to go outside for my parting picture.  It was a rather overcast morning, but still so beautiful.  As you can see here, their house is at the opening of a canal.  The lake has a number of canals along which houses are built.  They're kind of like culdesacs!

The painters were busy starting to paint.  

Then we said our goodbyes and drove ourselves to the airport in our rental car.  We had plenty of time to relax and eat lunch before our flight took off.  

Later at the Philly airport we were starting our long trek down terminal F, heading to the very last gate 39, when a young man driving one of the little airport "golf carts" wondered if we would like a ride to our gate.  We didn't know we looked that old and decrepit, but we thought it would be fun.  It was!  Whizzing right past all those poor people walking the whole way, hahaha!!

When we arrived at the University Park Airport I took a picture of Dick with his two carry-ons.  That brightly colored bag contained a very nice printer that George gave us.  It made the trip to our house just fine!

Before we even went the few miles home that evening we first of all went to the grocery store.  And then we finally got home.  I think it was around 8:30 pm.  And of course, as nice as the deluxe air mattress at Lisa's house was, our bed felt even better!