It's an absolutely beautiful Saturday here in Central PA! Clear blue skies, almost 70 degrees. The sun was shining right on me as I sat on the porch drinking my coffee earlier this morning. How I wished my sisters were with me. Long ago Doris, Mary Ellen, and I picked this weekend for our annual time together here at my house. But we postponed it in due to the virus. While our county here is really opening up, Lancaster County where they live is still on tight restrictions for another week. They have had so many more cases and deaths than we've had here. I truly hope we can find another time to do it. We all feel really sad about it.
This was a beautiful week weather wise. Lots of sun, lots of warm weather, even a thunderstorm that ended with a rainbow. Here are some sky pics I took.
After the storm!
Last weekend Dick and I worked outside. I weeded, he dug out a lot of lilies and grasses, replanted some hosta where they were getting crowded out by lilies. Whew! These perennials are crazy the way they reproduce. He put stuff out along the road for free, which was mostly taken, and now he's out there again digging up more lilies for another friend who wants some. We need to get some mulch to beautify everything more.
On Sunday evening we went over to Anthony and Lori's to spend some time with them outside. The flowers were just beginning to have some color! We had a fun time with them. Austin didn't catch any frogs that evening, but in the collage below I added a picture of one he caught last week. This week they picked up a brown toad. Definitely not as beautiful as a frog!
On Monday we went down to Sam's and had a cookout with him and the kids. I brought steaks and baked potatoes, he had hamburgers. We used his new charcoal grill. I won't bother with steaks again. The hamburgers were a much bigger hit!
After we ate they wanted to take us to their special spot along the river. Wow!! It was just a ten-minute walk from his apartment. What a great place and such amazing views! At the place where they were wading in the water it is so shallow they actually watched a guy drive his truck right across to the little island!
Here are some pictures I took on my walk one day this week, including the last lilac. They did not bloom very well this year.
I also enjoyed seeing flags along my way.
Here are some pics I took when I got back home.
On Thursday evening Dick went over to Anthony and Lori's to check his trail cams. I told him to take pictures of the rhododendrons. WOW!!! They really popped since Sunday! I'm definitely going over there today to take more. I know there are some red ones too.
This is a truly sad week. I generally do not talk about current events on public platforms, but on Thursday night I saw this on Instagram, actually posted by my friend Cheryl's daughter-in-law Ainsley. And I felt convicted.
For the first half of this week I thought I could not watch the video of George Floyd's death. At some point I decided I needed to. While I can just try to tune it out and act like everything is okay, his family cannot. If such a horrendous death came to my son or my grandson, I would want people to care enough to learn about it and speak out against it. I care deeply about the unequal treatment of Black Americans. I always have, but even more so since Anthony married Lori, and we now have two precious grandsons who are half black. George Floyd was someone's beloved son and brother. I cannot imagine the pain of listening to him beg for breath, even calling for his mama before he died. Anthony has been studying the treatment of black people for at least twenty years. He reads a lot. Before he even met Lori became part of Unity Church of Jesus Christ here in State College, right out of college. He knows and has listened to people and their stories all these years. It may seem that racism had been better and now is worse. I think it has always been bad, but now there are more ways for us to know about it, and black people have more courage to speak out. The injustice they experience all the time, just because of the color of their skin, which they cannot hide, has brought them to a boiling point.
I also read something yesterday that made me even sadder. An educator asked her audience if any of the white people present would please stand if they would be happy to receive the same treatment that the black citizens in our society do. No one stood. She rephrased the question, and still no one stood. She said, "Then you already know what is happening and you don't want it for you. I want to know why you're so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others."
I remember a few years ago when Anthony was having a discussion with Austin about racism and Austin said if he ever faced it he would feel safer with Anthony than with Lori. THAT says is all. And it absolutely BREAKS MY HEART!!!
Time to catch up here before I forget what all happened this past week. First I want to share this view I had last evening. I had just come over Seven Mountains and was greeted by this view of the sunset as I headed toward State College.
I'll go back now to this past Saturday. We packed up food and lawn chairs and a hot dog wire and headed down to Sam's place. It was a gorgeous, warm day, just perfect for roasting hot dogs over a fire and eating watermelon and playing in the stream. Sammy and Bianca were excited to see a frog. Can you see it? It was so well camouflaged. We had a wonderful evening. These kids were born for the outdoors!
On Sunday morning we had our regular online church services. We had such issues with the GBRV service on Google Hangouts. For some reason I was unable to connect from my phone, so I was using Dick's phone instead. Meanwhile he decided to connect from his iPad, but as soon as he connected I got kicked off since it was the same account! And it was time for me to play the first song in the service. He was scrambling to connect on one of the devices and I may have been freaking out a bit. I decided to just call into the service from my phone and by the time I got back into the meeting they had just skipped over my first two songs because I was "absent." UGH!! But the pastor had me play them later in the service instead.
That evening we went over to Anthony and Lori's and sat around a fire. It was a cooler evening than Saturday had been, so the fire felt wonderful. I went down to the pond with Austin while he tried to catch some frogs. He is so patient and observant of every little sound and motion. But there were no frogs that evening. Hunter showed me a new toy he calls Robie. It reminded me of Jeremy's Alpha from the 80's! Anyone remember it?
It was so good to sit together and talk and take in the beauty all around.
Here are some pictures I took while walking this week. I love Spring! (When it actually feels like Spring, that is.)
The bottom right picture below was another amazing sunset one evening this week. I caught it just before it slipped behind the mountain.
I'm in charge of posting things on GBRV's Facebook page, and I was being prompted by Facebook that there hadn't been any new "likes" this week, so it was time to post something. Bossy Facebook! So I sang "In the Garden" and posted it. It's amazing how many people say that it's a favorite. I have known this song all my life, but I have a clear memory of the time it became very personal to me. I was a teenager and experiencing real hunger for the Lord and a precious, intimate relationship with Jesus. Our church was doing a service at a very small "old people's home" and we sang this song. I felt like I really understood the message of the lyrics for the first time.
On Wednesday morning we had an online appointment with Dick's endocrinologist. He had gone for bloodwork on Saturday morning, and this was a 3-month followup. His numbers show dramatic improvement!! His A1C came down from 12 to 5.6!! She said, "That's the power of insulin." But we have also changed his diet a lot. He eats a lot of eggs and meat, and I was wondering if that would cause his cholesterol numbers to go up, but in fact all those numbers were better too. And of course he's lost weight. Good grief! Everybody will want diabetes! I'm KIDDING!!
On Thursday I went on a tour of loved ones! It was a beautiful day for a drive. First I went to Richland Christian Home and talked with Grandma Mary on the phone while she looked out her window. They no longer allow the residents to stand out on the balcony to visit with people like we did the last time, which is sad.
Then I went to Pleasant View Communities and sat on the porch with Grandma Arlene. We both wore our masks and sat at least six feet apart. We had such a sweet time reminiscing about Dad.
From there I went to Witmer Automotive Service where my sister Mary Ellen works and we chatted for a while. We text each other a lot, but it was fun to actually see each other for the first time in ages.
And then I went to see Destiny and to take her some maternity clothes from our local Mommy Shoppe (a ministry of Houserville House of Hope.) After I took her picture she said, "I was smiling!" I said, "I know! I could tell by your eyes!" She's getting quite a baby bump, and she says the little guy kicks a lot, haha!
Well, that's it for this time! Have a Happy Memorial Day weekend!
Not only is it hard to remember the date or the day of the week, it's also hard to tell what season we are in. This past Friday and Saturday it seemed like we had returned to winter. Thankfully we had some fun things going on to keep from being too discouraged by the weather. On Friday it was cold and rainy. Not a good day for standing in a line outside of Wegmans, but at least I had my umbrella.
There was a good thing going on that cold rainy day at GBRV. A food giveaway! They took every precaution necessary, and with many people helping, food bags were given to almost 50 families!
Here is the list of all the ways people helped, as written out by our administrative board chairman.
Thank you to:
· God for giving people the desire and the ability to donate food and/ or to donate money to buy food for the bags · The folks who packed the bags of food and helped distribute them · The 2 men who went home for a canopy when it started pouring rainand set them up to keep the tables with the food bags dry · Our guys standing in the cold rain directing traffic · The lady who did the grocery shopping for all that was needed to supplement the food donated for the bags · The lady who shared her experience with Food Pantry distribution to help things run smoothly · The grocery store who donated the brown-paper projects for this project · The grocery store manager who let us order 50 each of bread, milk, and eggs ahead to guarantee availability for distribution · The couple who picked up all the bread, milk, and eggs · The lady who sewed for hours making face masks to put in bags · The people who prayed for this project · The couple who donated a box of blue gloves to use during packing and distribution · Benner Township for providing the orange cones used for traffic control · State Police for being there in case we needed them · The strangers who drove up and gave a monetary donation · Those who shared about the project on Facebook · The secretary who created a flyer distributed to laundromats, grocery stores, etc. for advertising · The lady who contacted radio stations, etc. to advertise event · The folks who came for food that are doing such a great job of taking care of their families during these challenging times
Everyone involved was vital to this ministry. May God bless you all!!
I spent Friday evening cooking! I made hamburger and refried beans for burritos, I made chili, and also cream of tomato soup. I finished off with peanut butter rice krispie treats. I hadn't cooked that much at a time in weeks, and it felt exciting - until cleanup time!!
Friday night was bitterly cold and windy, and it must have snowed a bit during the night. By the time I got up Saturday morning it was mostly blown away except some on the car. But throughout the day we had snow squalls. So sad after the warm weather we had had the weekend before.
High on my list of necessary things that morning was getting Dick to trim my hair again. Wouldn't you know, when I tried getting a picture he stuck out his tongue, haha! He will be very glad when my salon is open again, and so will I!!
We left home around 1:30 and headed toward Duncannon. We had decided that since our county is considered safe enough to be in the yellow phase of restrictions, and because Duncannon is in a county that has had very low COVID numbers, we were okay to have Sam and the kids here. I could hardly wait!
As we drove, we listened to the live stream of Penn State's virtual graduation. Grandson Bjorn was one of the Penn State Harrisburg graduates. He is AMAZING!! Four years of studying in addition to working a lot and even getting married!! And he graduated Cum Laude in mechanical engineering. Because he did an internship last summer which resulted in a job offer, he is all set to go!! We are so very proud of him!
We were so excited to load Sam and the kids up in the van and head back home! And they were just as excited to finally be coming here again. EIGHT WEEKS since the last time! Of course we did everything possible to be careful.
First thing they wanted was hot chocolate! We had burritos for dinner. I had fun painting sea shells with the kids. Sammy showed me his new electronic drum set. Dick and Sam had a great time watching the new Michael Jordan docu-series, The Last Dance. My heart was so happy having them here.
Sunday was Mother's Day. I posted this tribute to our birth mothers. "Remembering and honoring our mothers who birthed and loved and raised us. We were in our early 30's when cancer took them from us - Ruth Stauffer in 1981 and Mabel Witmer in 1982. Their smiling faces bring us so many fun memories."
I had a phone call from Grandma Arlene telling me she had seen on TV the tributes I had sent to Pleasant View Communities, and she was so surprised. (If you don't know what that means, check my previous post.) I also found out that at Richland Christian Home, they had invited families to do a drive-by. All but one of Grandma Mary's sons were in that parade! Wow, I wish I could have seen that. I know they had a lot of fun with it.
I gotta tell you about our Sunday morning coffee. Sammy brought this Corningware coffee percolator along to our house. He had found it in the depths of a cupboard at Jenn's house, obviously left there by the previous owners! I didn't think I had any coffee grounds since we always use the Keurig and K-cups. But I stood on the step stool and looked into the depths of my beverage supply cupboard, and was delighted to find a never-opened bag of Swedish coffee that Miki had given me one time!! So together Sammy and I measured water and coffee grounds, turned the stove burner on, and about 15 minutes later we had amazingly delicious coffee! I couldn't believe it - I had never used a percolator before! Sammy took my word for it, he didn't drink any, haha!
We had our two church services, first of all GBRV on Google Hangouts, for which I play piano, and then Calvary via Facebook. Pastor Dan preached from the empty sanctuary at Calvary Lewistown.
A highlight of the service was this video of musicians from our local area doing the song The Blessing. I'm sure you all have seen the many videos on Facebook of this amazing song. It seems that the Lord gave this song for this very season that we are in. I listen to it and sing/pray it over our entire family every day. Watching this particular video, with a number of musicians that we know personally, was really emotional for me.
Sammy really wanted to create our own "band." I was disappointed that Dick's bass guitar is at church, so he couldn't join in, but Sammy and I had fun with piano and drums. I tried to get Bainca to sing with me, because she had learned this song at pre-school last year, but she wasn't in the mood.
A really important event was Dick's haircut! He has naturally curly hair, but because parts of his head are bald, he ends up looking like Einstein if he lets it get too long. The only thing we have is a beard trimmer, but Sam got to work and did a fine job of giving Dick a clean shaved head, smooth as a baby's behind, haha!
Sammy had shown me a video the evening before of cheese recipes. There was one he really wanted to try, so he and I got busy. First we cut the crust off a bunch of pieces of bread, then we put cheese and ham between two pieces and pinched the edges together. Then we mixed eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and vanilla into which we dipped the sandwiches. They were supposed to be fried after that, but instead we broiled them in the oven. (No pictures of any of this because I didn't think of it, and certainly the men didn't either.)
Meanwhile I heated the cream of tomato soup I had made Friday evening. And that was our lunch. The sandwiches were good when dipped into the soup and also with syrup. But we all agreed that we like regular grilled cheese sandwiches better. We were having fun watching Parent Trap throughout all this.
Later Anthony and Lori texted that they were going to drive by! We sat on the porch waiting for them and we talked with them for a little while, but I didn't get any pictures of that either. So disappointed! Lori gave me a planter and a beautiful box of chocolate covered strawberries.
Later in the afternoon they packed up and loaded their things and we went over to Stauffer Acres to do a little hiking. These kids were born for the outdoors. I was walking around in my winter coat, they were without jackets.
We got gas and some food at Sheetz and then headed down the highway to take them back home. They have a great back yard with a stream that they love to explore and they wanted to show us everything. Sometime we want to do a campfire there.
Monday felt like a major letdown, especially because of more cool, cloudy weather. I finally was able to go for a walk yesterday. I guess I'm a fair weather walker. The forecast says much warmer weather is coming, so that gives me a boost. I've been working on my filing cabinet, doing lots of shredding, and getting rid of more "stuff" in overfilled dresser drawers. It does feel good to have time to do these things.
Well, that's it for this time! Have a great weekend!
This was a good week! I'll start with some sky pictures. Actually, I think both of these were taken the same day. One in the morning and one in the evening. I don't get to see sunrises very often anymore because the sun rises before 6:15 AM when I get up.
Here are some of the things I did this week. I did my annual Clorox scrubbing of our white porch chairs. They are now 15 years old and I still love them! We did have to get a new table this year, which I ordered from Amazon. It's heavier and sturdier than our previous one. The wind does such a number on our porch furniture.
The zipper on my beloved red robe has been getting iffy for a while, and one day last week it completely broke. So I ordered a zipper from Joanne Fabric, pulled out my sewing machine, and sewed in a new zipper, probably the first time I've done that in over 30 years! It's not a great job, but at least it opens and closes! While I had the sewing machine out, I mended several other things, including the frayed edges of some towels and wash cloths!
Of course I cooked meals, but just for us. I'm not back to cooking for Anthony and Lori yet, at least not until there are less restrictions. One meal we LOVE is roasted sausage, sweet potatoes, and veggies. I also had a lot of cabbage on hand, so I shredded some and made cole slaw. A meal that I really like to eat cole slaw with is ham, green beans, and potatoes, so that was another meal one evening. My presentation plate was not very attractive, I must admit!
I found a paper shredder for $10 on Facebook Marketplace, so one evening Dick and I made the 20 minute drive over the mountain and through the woods to pick it up. It works GREAT!! We filled two bags already.
I found these pictures of Lisa and Anthony in my Facebook memories one day. I had posted them in color, but like all my pictures from that era, they had a reddish tint. So I just made them black and white instead. Weren't they just the cutest little kids?? I miss those days.
We were told that Pleasant View Communities will be putting Mother's Day tributes on their closed circuit TV channel on Sunday and we could submit messages, pictures, and tributes. I sent in several pictures. I hope Arlene gets to see them.
Here's one more I sent in.
Sunday was the BEST day!! The weather was AWESOME!!! First off, when I came out of the bedroom the sun was shining so brightly on the arrangement on the cedar chest behind the sofa. So cheerful! When I got ready for church I put capris on for the first time this season and it felt GREAT!! We had our service with GBRV on Google Hangouts, which is going better each week. And then we joined Calvary's live service, and I even did my toenails during church, lol!!
After lunch we decided to go to the arboretum. It had been a month since our last visit, and what a difference! SO MUCH BEAUTY!!!
At one point Dick said, "I just took a picture of an old lady taking a picture of the tulips." I soon realized he meant me, haha! Then when we decided to take a selfie and I looked at it I was horrified! Good grief! I decided I had better start wearing a hat and sunglasses so I don't look like I'm his mother. So when we got to the car I put my sunglasses on, which helped a little bit. Still getting used to this hair, especially now that I can't keep up with the good trims my girl was giving me. It's been ten weeks.
In the early evening we went over to Anthony and Lori's. They said we could be together outside, and I was so excited! The place was just bursting with Springtime beauty!
Anthony took me into the woods to show me their quarantine project of clearing out low branches and cleaning out the stream for better water flow. Hunter showed me the shack they have made out of the low branches they had cut down.
I just can't say enough how filled up my heart was after being over there and with them in the lovely outdoors. Before long we'll get to see those rhododendrons blooming. There are lots of buds.
I took some good walks this week, especially looking for lilacs. I don't know if they're going to be blooming very much this year. I wonder if they got too cold at a certain point. I did see a lovely azalea at my friend Millie's house. And something that one of my FB friends identified as fern peonies.
The sky was so glorious and I was delighted to see leaves instead of buds on the trees.
I found this welcome mat at Walmart. I LOVE it!!
And one more thing I did this week. I realize that after I get back to more regular work I probably won't have time to do fun things as much, so I decided to do one more song with the Acapella app. Word of God, Speak.
And now I'm going to give my house a good cleaning. As of tomorrow our county (along with 23 other PA counties) is going from the red to the yellow phase of quarantine restrictions. And I'm gonna get my house ready for company! Woohoo!!
