Fall, birthday, and babies

Here we are at Thursday evening again!  In last week's post I had mentioned our hazy skies from the forest fires out west.  However, by Friday we again had clear blue skies and white puffy clouds.   Out in Portland they were once again able to hang out on their big back porch and play in the yard.  They had gotten some rain, thank God!

On Friday evening we experienced a benefit of the pandemic.  There aren't too many of them, are there?  Because schools have to limit the number of fans at football games, the games are being live streamed.  So we were able to sit here at the computer and watch grandson J'von play football without driving to Lancaster!  His team won.  Because Dick is a diehard fan of the Manheim Central Barons (where our kids went to school) he also had their game on his iPad and was kind of watching two games at once!

Saturday was a beautiful day with a forecast of much cooler weather coming overnight.  So I sat on the front porch hanging onto summer with all my might!  I felt like there was nothing in my view that said anything other than summer.  And I loved it.  

I also enjoyed the view of our newly sealed driveway.  Dick had seen that someone down the street was getting their driveway sealed, so he went down to talk to the guy who was doing it.  A while later he came and did ours.  Then he was off to do someone else's up the street!  He said he's been busy in our community the past few weeks just from people seeing what he's doing and then hiring him to do theirs!  Over winter he lives in Florida and does the same thing!  Smart way to earn a living!

In the mail I got this book I had ordered, so I took advantage of- my porch-sitting and started reading.  First I cried when Jenna talked about having lost three of her grandparents in a little over a year.  (If you read my previous post you know that we will be losing Grandma Mary any day now, and we just lost Dick's dad in April. )  But it wasn't long until I was cracking up at Jenna's funny stories.  (I was afraid the neighbors would wonder why I was sitting on the porch by myself laughing so loud!)  One example was her description of the differences since childhood between herself and her twin sister Barbara.  She said she herself loved playing with Barbie dolls since she was very young.  In fact, she would get up early before school in order to have time to play with them.  She would even take them along to the bathroom and play with them while she was on the toilet!  At some point her dad got a pink sign that said "Barbie" that he would hang on the outside of the bathroom door when she was in there.  She said she had time to go through whole episodes of a soap opera with those Barbies while she was in the bathroom, hahaha!  Great book!  I love the Bush family so much.

 

It got COLD Saturday night!  We brought our porch plants inside.  On Sunday morning we were setting up for our outdoor service in 42 degrees!  I had my winter booties on my feet, a winter coat, gloves, hand warmers in my coat pockets to keep my fingers warmed up between songs!  Thankfully, it was a sunny day, and the temp gradually rose throughout the worship service. 

Sunday was also Anthony's 44th birthday.  What wonderful memories we have of the day he was born!  I did not want to go to the hospital, and our family doctor had started delivering babies at his office, so we just drove a few miles to his office in Manheim that morning, I gave birth to an 8 lb 12 oz  baby boy, and an hour-and-a-half later we walked out and went home.  Hahahaha!!  I told you I believed in natural everything!  

On Sunday we went over to their place to say Happy Birthday in person and got this cute family picture of them.  Lori didn't want her slippers to be on the picture.  She hid them so successfully that when Anthony posted this picture on his business FB page, someone asked where his wife's legs were.   Tooo funny!!

I loved how the sun was shining on the trees when we were leaving. 

The next two nights were really cold again, and we got frost.  When I thought about my coleus in the back, I went out to see how they had fared, and this is what I found.  I was SO SAD!!! 

I was really missing that sweet baby boy down in Lancaster, so when I found out that Destiny had to take him to an appointment on Tuesday afternoon and hadn't yet figured out transportation, I decided to go down.  It was a beautiful day for driving, and we had fun being together as we always do.  Aren't they the cutest?   She said this picture was taken on her birthday.  

She sends me pictures almost every day.  Here's a collage of some of them.  His face and arms are filling out.  Isn't he darling???

Warmer weather has again returned.  So this morning I finally got to sit out on the side porch.  The view has changed!!  It's like the tree is saying, "I know you're sad about the frost killing your coleus, but look what it did to me!"

This evening I walked around the house to see who survived the frost.  The sunflowers did not.  They are wilted and discolored.  The rose bushes are still green, but there are no blooms on them.  But the good old marigolds are still blooming away!  

And the hosta were not affected by the frost.  But that's about it.  It feels really sad after a summer of enjoying my flowers more than I have ever had the time to do before.  

Have a good rest of the week!