Last Thursday Hunter came here to stay with me. It was Penn State's Spring Break, and his daycare was also closed. He is such a JOY to have around. I think as of last week he is officially finished with diapers and pull-ups!
I got this short video of him singing with one of my books. So CUTE!!!
Another cute thing he did was pretend the clothes tree from the doll house was a trumpet. I remembered Bianca doing that one time, and when I looked for the picture of her I discovered that it was the week she turned 3 back in August 2017. And this was the day before Hunter would turn 3!! How funny is that? I made this adorable collage of the two of them.
When Lori picked him up that afternoon we were looking at pictures of the day he was born, and we were smitten all over again.
So his third birthday was on Friday. That evening we went to see the Harlem Globetrotters at the Bryce Jordan Center on campus. What a fun night! So many hilarious antics.
During a break Anthony and Austin went down to buy a basketball. That's a special one!
Hunter talked and talked about this antic afterward! When they told him to get down he said he was too scared (kidding of course!) He actually went down through the hoop! But Hunter was sure he really was scared, and he felt sorry for him!
Besides the ball, Austin also left with some of the confetti strings they had thrown at the end of the game. He was a happy boy!
Afterward we went to Dairy Queen for a little birthday celebration.
The first time Lori lit the candle he blew it out instantly. So we explained to him that we're going to sing to him first and THEN he can blow it out. She lit it again. He was so excited, but he managed to wait till we were finished singing.
We had a nice relaxing time eating our ice cream, watching him open some gifts, and watching a video from the night he was born. Friday birthdays are the best!
On Saturday I was home the entire day! I hemmed a pair of dress pants that I first of all needed to cut some off the bottom (short people problems!) Then I decided I had hemmed them too short, so I redid the hem. I still didn't like the way they hung afterward, but I did wear them on Sunday. I also cleaned my house that day.
On Sunday after our service at GBRV we went to Lancaster County. Dick's aunt Helen Keiper had passed away a few weeks ago. She was Dad Stauffer's only sister. Her private burial, which we were invited to, was the day of Bjorn's wedding. We of course could not go. But on Sunday they had a memorial service at Elizabethtown Mennonite Church.
First of all we picked up Destiny and had a quick lunch with her at Joe's Steak and Grill in Columbia. We had a great time together catching up with all that's new in her life - new job, new school.
We took her home and then went to the memorial service. It was so good to hear what an impact Aunt Helen had had on her family and her church. Our paths didn't cross a lot, and we hadn't seen her children (Dick's cousins) often either. Helen had five children, and when the oldest ones were teenagers, Helen's husband was killed in a farm accident. I didn't know her at that time, so it was really touching to hear how she handled that, how important her children were to her then and have been all through her life. She loved music and had planned her funeral service, complete with many of her favorite hymns, all the verses of every one! I loved it! And Dick got to sing bass to his heart's content!
This is a picture of Aunt Helen the last time we saw her at a Stauffer reunion in August 2017. She had already been fighting cancer at that time, and was doing much better than she had. We were so happy for her. She always had a feisty sense of humor, a lot like her brother Howard, Dick's dad!
These are Helen's five children, across the top: Lois, Don, Phyllis, and across the bottom: Dave and Dale.
Helen and Howard also had a brother Clarence who passed away in 2015. Two of his children, Dave and Nancy and her husband Ivan, were there too. Of course, Dick's parents and some of his brothers were there too. Unfortunately I didn't think of taking any pictures until after some of them had left. I was so disappointed!! It would have been a great opportunity to get some cousin group pictures.
At least I got this one. Dick and his cousin Dave Stauffer. They were born only 11 days apart and grew up at the same church. Sometimes people thought they were twins. Because their names were so similar people sometimes got them confused. It was fun to see him again.
And here is someone I did not expect to see! I forgot that Aunt Helen had nieces and nephews on her husband's side, and this guy was one of those. Jerry Keener (here with his wife Donna) was a classmate of mine at Lancaster Mennonite High. He remembered helping me with chemistry. I think I blocked that memory because chemistry was so overwhelming to me. We also were in several choirs together - the school's select chorus, Campus Chorale, which did some traveling, and then Choraleers, which did a lot of traveling. We were on two teams together, one that went to Jamaica and the other to Tampa. We had so much fun reminiscing! A lot of good laughs. Jerry and Donna spent a number of years in New York City and then in Vietnam. Now they and their two daughters live in Lancaster County and he is the newly elected president of Eastern Mennonite Missions.
There was a meal provided after the service, which gave lots of time to talk with people. We could have stayed longer. There were so many people we knew and hadn't seen for years. But again, we had a long drive home.
When we stopped for gas we also went to the McDonald's drive-thru. I got my very first shamrock shake. It was good, but I was glad I got just a small one. It was a lot of mint!
This week in addition to my regular cooking and music jobs, I also have been working on getting our income tax information ready. Fun times!
The cats provide never ending entertainment and occasional aggravation! So I'll end this with a cat collage. The bottom right photo shows Cookie camped out at the stove as I was making sweet and sour chicken today. The aroma was almost more than he could stand. I was afraid he would jump up right into the hot frying pan!
Have a good rest of the week!
1 comment:
Love the cat collage!! Hunter is a 'big boy' now! That's great! No more diapers or pull-ups. Austin looks so proud to have that basketball and those streamers! Cute boys! Gosh, I love the Globetrotters back with I was in school! They were (and still are) amazing athletes and performers! Fun stuff.
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