Cold, rainy days with so many bright spots!

We have just had the coolest, dreariest three days!!!  Like, I'm talking not even hitting the 60's, maybe not even the 50's!  I hadn't checked, I just know I HATED it!!  Supposedly today will be sunny and hit 70 degrees.  That's better.  We really did need rain, but good grief, it can rain and be warm at the same time!  Okay, I'm finished complaining!

Like I said in my last post, I was going to go see that sweet great grandson, and I did!  I got down to their place shortly after noon on Friday.  Look who greeted me at the door!

That little stinker is trying to grow up way too fast!  He crawls so fast, walks along furniture, can stand alone for a brief time, and even took a few steps alone between Destiny and me!  

Friday afternoon we went to the bank and to get some things at the Dollar Store, and then we were getting hungry for lunch.  We passed a little restaurant called Ella's Place.  It looked so cute, but there were no cars in the parking lot.  Destiny went in first to check, and they were open.  There weren't other people there because it was between lunch and dinner.  When I walked in I noticed the music right away - contemporary praise and worship!  The lady (I think she is the owner) was enamored by Elizer, of course!  She said she has a two-month-old grandchild, so is always interested in other babies.  Who wouldn't be interested in this little guy?

 

We had a really delicious lunch.  We noticed that they were hiring, so Destiny asked about that.  They brought her an application to fill out, and before we left they had offered her a job, starting this morning!  Please pray that this works out!  Alex works evenings, so they can hopefully work out the schedules for taking care of Elizer.  Transportation is a big concern as well.  One thing sure, she is not afraid of hard work, and she has a great personality, so I think she will do great as a server. 

Back at their house, Destiny wanted to cook dinner for me.  She is an authentic Puerto Rican cook!  She made rice, beans, fried plaintans, and pork chops.  And she didn't measure a thing!  I was just cracking up and amazed!

First the taste test of the water she had added to the rice - to see when enough salt had been added!

(Please pardon that hose on the counter!  I had bought it for her to use with a sprinkling toy she has for Elizer, and that's where it was sitting for the moment!) 

Adding the homemade sofrito to the beans.  

Adobo seasoning of course!

Frying the plaintans.

THEN smashing those plaintans with the bean can.  WHAT???

Then frying those smashed plaintans!  

After they fried again she seasoned them on the cutting board before they cooled off.  She seasoned the pork chops and did them in her air fryer. 

While she was cooking and I was watching and taking pictures, Elizer was playing with anything he could put his hands on!

Or hanging out with Daddy!  Alex had off work that evening. 

My yummy dinner!  On that other plate is a dipping sauce she had made for the pork chops and plaintans - a mixture of mayo and ketchup.  Everything was so scrumptious!

After dinner was cleaned up Destiny and I went for some groceries while Alex kept Elizer.  It was rainy and dark, not my favorite kind of driving!  We used my umbrellas to run from the van into the store, but there were puddles.  And it was so cold!!  We were so glad to get back to the house!

Then we folded a lot of laundry, trying to keep Elizer from unfolding everything we had just folded!

Goodnight, Elizer!

In the morning I made bacon and eggs for breakfast.   Elizer really loves to eat everything!!

Later we went to Goodwill to find the black pants and white shirt Destiny needed for work.  Did we have the cutest baby in the whole place or what???

We had success finding what she needed.  We then went to Burger King for lunch and ate in the van.  Then we dropped Alex off at work.  I wish I had gotten a picture or video of him and Elizer.  They are so cute together!

We made a few more stops at a Dollar General Store and the hardware store where Alex's dad works.  And then back to their house.  Destiny loaded some baby things into my van that I will sell at our community yard sale this coming weekend, and then we said our goodbyes.  What a wonderful, fun two days we had together in spite of the horrible weather!! 

Sunday was another cold, rainy day.  One bright spot was having flute player Brenna at church.  She comes once a month, and we just LOVE hearing her play!  Here's our prelude, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." 

For the first time in ages I took a long Sunday afternoon nap on the sofa.  I got a few pictures as I lay there too!

Another bright spot of the day was having a phone call in the evening from our daughter Miki in Sweden!!  We talked for a long time, catching up, reminiscing, laughing.  It was wonderful!  She's hardly ever on Facebook, so I told her I wanted her to send me a selfie.  She and her sweet dog, Hope, were sitting on the balcony,  and she sent me this.  It made me so happy!!

And now it's Memorial Day and the sun is shining.  What a wonderful sight after three cold, dreary days!  Thank you, Lord!!

Loving my flowers; fun day with Hunter!

There are so many beautiful things blooming!!  And a lot of them are purple!  I think we have a late variety of lilacs and they are extremely fragrant.  I remember one year Dick brought some into the house and I couldn't stand it.  But they smell amazing outside!  And when I sit here at the desk with the window open, the fragrance wafts in with the breezes. 

And how about those irises???  My friend Cheryl has been showing pictures of the inside of the flower, and I had no idea the intricate design they had!  So of course I had to take a picture too!

This is one of the hanging plants we got on Saturday.  I just love it!

Tuesday was an exciting day!!!  Hunter's first time staying with me INSIDE my house since the beginning of March 2020!!  Lori has been busy writing a grant for her department, and it was due by midnight on Tuesday, so that seemed like a good day for him to come here.  We adults are all fully vaccinated now, and we're so HAPPY to be able to be together freely again!  

They did not tell Hunter where he was going with Daddy!  They've been here over the last year, but always outside.  So he was surprised when Anthony told him it was okay for him to come into my house!

How fun as he looked for all the toys he remembered, first of all the toy instruments!  When he asked where Grandpa was and I told him he's at work, I wondered if he wants to tell Grandpa that he's at our house.  Here's the cutest 3-second video I sent to Dick!

I knew that Anthony and Lori have been saying that he loves math facts, but I found out how much he loves them!  Almost constantly while he played with toys he was talking about numbers, adding marbles together, talking about addition and multiplication facts.  I've never heard anything like it.  And he hasn't even been to kindergarten yet - just turned five in March!  I have no idea what they will do with him in kindergarten! Lots of time on an iPad during a pandemic hasn't been all bad!!

Here are some pictures I took of him throughout the day.  We went down to the little playground behind our house for a while, but mostly he played with almost every toy we have.  He was still here for dinner after Grandpa came home from work.  He was getting really silly by that time!  That bottom right picture was taken when he and Grandpa were doing funny videos in slow-mo and time-lapse.  

When I was ready to take him home after dinner and we went out to my van where Dick had installed his seat, Hunter said, "Am I going home in your van?"  I told him he was.  He said, "Wait!  May I have a fruit roll-up?"  He remembered that every day when I would pick him up from pre-school I would always give him a fruit roll-up!

On Wednesday evening I got a text message from him wondering when he can come to my house again.  I  told him that his mommy and I would need to talk about that!

On Wednesday we finally got RAIN!!  We need it so badly! We even got a rainbow!

I got some fun pictures this week when Destiny and I FaceTimed.  I'm planning to go see them in person tomorrow!  I'm so excited!

And what's that hanging from his mouth?  Some of these scrumptious-looking strawberry-topped pancakes Destiny was making on Tuesday morning!  She just loves to cook.

It's GORGEOUS OUTSIDE this morning!!  I noticed that we have buds on a couple of our rose bushes!  

It looks like we will have cool and rainy the next three days.  Not exactly what we would have ordered for Memorial Day weekend after all this heat we've already had!  It seems like the temperature extremes are just crazy this spring!  Our Monday says 68 and sunny.  That's okay, I guess.   Have a great weekend!

Weekend Recap

We had a very stress-free weekend.  On Saturday we worked outside, cleaning up the flower beds and mowing.  In the late afternoon we went to Lowes and Home Depot to buy flowers to plant as well as two hanging planters for the porch.  In the evening we got everything planted and cleaned up.  Then we enjoyed sitting on the porch and had a wonderful sunset too!

I always like to add the light green sweet potato vines to this planter, but neither place had any.  Maybe I'll look for them at a few more places. 

On Sunday morning at GBRV we had an old fashioned hymn sing.  There was a hymnal placed for each family/couple and they could call out the hymn number they wanted.  It was fun.  Thankfully I wasn't stumped by any of the choices!  I love to slowly introduce well loved, more contemporary praise and worship songs, but I also love the old hymns I grew up with.  I've had such variety in my music jobs over the years!  At Grace Community Fellowship in Manheim (25 years!) I was always trying to keep up with the latest praise and worship songs.

After we came home we watched Calvary's service.  There was an informal chat with Pastor Dan and his wife in which they shared memories from their wedding.  At one point something struck them funny and they almost couldn't pull it together.  They were asking the camera crew to cut!  I was laughing so loud, as I have so often had this experience, and it was fun to see them being so human!

After lunch we went to Wegmans to buy fresh cut flowers and an anniversary card for Anthony and Lori, and we took them over to their place.  Their 18th anniversary is today!  The rhododendrons were even more beautiful than they were on Friday!!  

This was our family at the wedding 18 years ago at Unity Church of Jesus Christ here in State College.  In the back were Sam, Frank, Jeremy, and Ray.  In front were Dick and I, Lori and Anthony, Lisa and George.  And that's Frank's little cutie Destiny sitting on a clear pedestal, front and center. Our daughter Miki and family were not able to be here from Sweden for this wedding.   We have so many wonderful, fun memories from that weekend!

Yesterday and this morning Dick has been doing the lovely prep for his colonoscopy later this morning. It's a routine screening.  I obviously did not need to make his omelet or help to pack his lunch for work this morning, haha!  Thus the time to sit here and blog.  But I need to finish up here and get showered and dressed.  I'll be taking him and hanging out since he won't be allowed to drive afterward. 

Have a great week! 

Home again, home again, jiggity jog

On Monday morning we got up early so we could say goodbye to Sophie and Lisa before they left for school.  We made our regular omelet breakfast one more time and ate it on the porch.  I felt sad to leave this wonderful retreat. 

We packed up all our stuff, said our goodbyes to George and the pups, then headed to a gas station to fill up our rental car before return (all of $15 for the week!) and then St. Petersburg/Clearwater airport.  We were ridiculously early, but I like it that way.  We had plenty of time to relax and grab a bite to eat and to read.  Thankfully we could check our luggage early, unlike Harrisburg airport. 

Our flight was on time and took just a little over two hours.  Here are pics we took from the air.  I love that picture of a bridge that we were flying over and had probably boated under the day before!  The green picture was taken as we approached the Harrisburg airport.  

I was getting the most ADORABLE pictures from Destiny that day!!  Her uncle had taken them to the beach for a day.  Could they get any cuter????  I can hardly wait to see them in person!

We had an unpleasant delay after we got our luggage at the Harrisburg airport.  Dick realized he had left his CPAP machine on the plane!  So I sat with our luggage while he dealt with that issue.  I think it took an hour!  But he did get it back.  We were really glad to finally get home.  A nice sunset greeted us as we got off our exit of 322.  (Our windshield always gets so dirty with bugs when we drive along the river.)

And then the unpacking so we could sleep in our bed!  It was nice to be back to our king size bed again.  

Unfortunately, even though the Servicemaster rep had called me while we were in Florida and told me they had pumped out the stinky water from our AC vents and had gotten rid of the wet insulation under the laundry and that the smell should be gone, it was not gone!  When we opened the front door that dead fish greeted our nostrils.  UGH!!!  I was so unhappy!!  

I've been on the phone this week with the HVAC company, ServiceMaster, and Erie insurance, dealing with our issues.  I think the odor is gradually going away.  A guy was here from ServiceMaster yesterday and is going to get on the HVAC company's case and will possibly get a different company to get our AC back in service again.  We have had a really hot week here in Central PA, and we have used a little window AC that cannot keep up.  I've been extremely strategic with keeping curtains and blinds closed wherever the sun is coming in, opening up at night to let cool air come in, not using lights or the oven if possible, ceiling fans, and oscillating fan.  Yesterday we got a bigger window AC unit from Anthony that seems to be able to keep up better.  We have been so spoiled with central air the past sixteen years.  

There have been happy things too this week.  I had ordered a new laundry rug from FB Marketplace, which I love!  And I had ordered my 4th pair of these bright orange/pink Brooks from eBay.  Actually the first pair I had found at Ross back in 2015 I believe.  They are SO comfortable and make my feet so happy!  But of course, Brooks no longer makes them, which is why I keep trying to find them on eBay.  I couldn't believe it when I had success finding them again for the third time!  

And it's iris season!!  They are so beautiful!

And guess what else is in season??  The rhododendrons!!  I was so excited to see them blooming at Anthony and Lori's when I took dinner over to their place on Wednesday and Friday! 

And now it's Saturday already!  I tried George's version of pancakes this morning - two eggs, two bananas, and some vanilla, cinnamon, and pecans.  With bacon on the side.  They did not work well on a cast iron skillet.  I should have gotten my electric griddle out.  And my bananas were not overripe, which would have made them sweeter.  But they were still good!  It's fun to have a different option for breakfast for Dick. 

His favorite thing when he's over at Anthony and Lori's to mow is to check his trail cams.  Of course he often has deer on the pictures, but here is a fox. 

And a woodpecker. 

The other day Sammy sent me a picture of his soccer team.  I think he's the most handsome guy on the team!!

I gotta run now.  We want to get some work done in the flower beds today.