Our Father's Day weekend in the good old summertime!

I've got so many things to write and share.  I love summer so much!!  Especially now that we can go more places and be with more people. 

First off, a picture I took as I sat on the front porch one day last week.  This view just speaks "summer" to me. 

I took this picture of the Cheeseburger Cups I made for Anthony and Lori and the boys on Friday.  Once in a while I like to make something that the boys might especially like.  These called for Pillsbury biscuits, which I did not have, so I made them from scratch - my favorite recipe from the Mennonite Cookbook that I used to serve with my ham and eggs breakfasts back in our bed and breakfast days.  Of course there was dough left for making a couple of biscuits.  Oh my...were they good!  Don't tell Dick, because there weren't any left for him, lol!!

Also on Friday, this little cutie turned 10 months old!  And he's officially a toddler already!  I captured those lower pictures while we were FaceTiming!  

On Saturday Dick and I decided to go to Ella's Place in Elizabethtown where Destiny works.  We wanted to get there after the big breakfast and lunch rush, so we took our good old time, going off the beaten path to enjoy some sights of the Susquehanna River.  

I never tire of seeing the river!

We went to pick up Elizer first so we could take him along to the restaurant.  The timing was perfect.  I think we got there around 1:00, and there were just a few other diners there.  

It looks like he's saying, "Is my mommy around here somewhere?"

How sweet is this??

He was an angel while we ate.  He's crazy over French fries, so we got an order of them for him and gave them to him piece by piece.  

Destiny's job is not a picnic, as anyone who has ever waitressed can understand.  They are so pathetically short-staffed, and weekends are CRAZY.  And the male owner gets very unkind sometimes.  The female co-owner is not that way at all, but has off weekends.  Destiny's days off are Tuesday and Wednesday, their slower days.   They LOVE her, and many customers ask for her.  They call her their #1 waitress.  If you think of her, pray that they hire more help for the weekends.  We have plans with the Stauffer family this coming Sunday that she had really hoped to go to, and she had asked off, but at this point it's looking unlikely that she will be able to go.  

After Destiny got off at 2:00 we took her for groceries and some other things.  I don't know why I didn't get any picture of Elizer in the shopping cart.  He was being SO CUTE, and people just couldn't resist talking to him - both women and men, haha!!  

We left for home around 6 pm and hit rain for a while.  But then it cleared off and was so beautiful.  Still daylight when we arrived home, woohoo!!!  I LOVE summer!!

Sunday morning we went to church.  There were 65 people in attendance, the most we've had since COVID.  It was hard to quiet people down at the beginning - everyone feels the excitement of being together again, and finally without masks, because most people are vaccinated.  I just can't tell you how wonderful it is for me to lead the music with people there after all the months of online services, being there as part of the "skeleton crew" and feeling like I was singing all by myself.   

For many years I was worship leader at Grace Community Fellowship (we moved away) and later at Houserville House of Hope (the church closed) where both places we had a whole team of musicians and vocalists leading contemporary praise and worship.   Here at Greater Buffalo Run Valley UMC, the majority of our music is older hymns and choruses from the Celebration Hymnal.  I do love those too, but I would love to lead contemporary praise and worship with a team again sometime.  Anyway, our closing hymn on Sunday was It Is Well with My Soul, an all-time favorite.  And with 65 people singing, facing Pastor Lynn, she was moved to tears as she dismissed us afterward.  Here's the video of the song. We don't sound like Mennonites (my heritage) or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but we were singing with all our hearts!  Maybe you would like to sing along!

Of course, Sunday was Father's Day.  I made this collage of Dick and the younger dads in our family - clockwise from top left - Anthony, George, Sam, Frank, Alex, Jeremy, and Mike.  We're so proud of each one! 

Because it was Alex's first Father's Day, I made this collage of him and Elizer - each one so precious.  He's a very young dad, but the relationship between those two is a beautiful thing to see.

Alex really wanted pictures of his first Father's Day.  Here are some that Destiny just sent me.  Alex's dad was there too, so they were able to get a three-generation shot.  

Dick and I stayed home all day on Sunday.  After it cooled off a bit in the evening we did some work outside.  Sam and the kids had given me a little potted rose last weekend, so Dick dug out a spot to plant it.  Later he'll dig more on either side to make it flush with the rest of the flower bed.   But he was too hot last evening. 

I took a picture of our very first lily!

And here's our hydrangea.  Will she or won't she this year??  It's been a few years since she bloomed, so we'll see what happens this year.  

After we had everything cleaned up we sat on the porch till after dark.  I just LOVE how it stays daylight till 9 pm!

This morning Dick forgot to take his phone along to work, so after I got dressed I took it to him.  I stopped at the arboretum on the way home to get in a brisk walk before it got too hot.  I took so many pictures that I'm afraid my walk wasn't very brisk, haha!  I'm dumping all the pics here.  Enjoy!

This is the "boardwalk" where we sisters like to sit and chat whenever they come for a visit. I sat for a while and basked in the sun and breeze.  I could almost imagine I was at the beach.

Have a good week!

A delightful 48 hours!

I'm having a slow start today.  We had such a fun weekend, and apparently it takes me longer to recover than it used to.  Plus I'm having some technical issues.  Since I got a new iPhone a few weeks ago, my pictures are not syncing as well with our Mac desktop.  It's a dinosaur and needs to be updated, so I have been figuring out ways to overcome that.  And then YouTube was giving me trouble too.  In addition to my own channel, I also manage one for the church.  I used to be able to quickly switch back and forth between accounts, but this morning the "switch accounts" was missing from the dropdown menu and I had to waste so much time just to figure that out.  So here goes!

First of all, this picture I took on Thursday evening when I happened to notice the beautiful sunset after 8:30 pm.  I'm going to say it again, I LOVE JUNE!!!  Because I love these longest days of the year and knowing that we've got months of long days ahead!  

I also want to show you this basketful of the perfect, beautiful shells Dick found at the beach when we were in Florida last month!  He has never found so many of these in such perfect condition!

I was so excited on Friday evening when Sam said that he would come up Saturday after work to help Dick with the mulching.  We had had a load of it brought here on Friday morning.  

So on Saturday morning I was MOTIVATED!!  I cleaned the whole house and went for groceries.  Sam and the kids got here around 4 pm.  He and Dick got right to work on the mulching.  

It went so fast with Sam's help!  What would have taken Dick several evenings was done in one shot!

After I was finished making a batch of peanut butter rice krispie treats (with almost no Rice Krispies, because I discovered the box was almost empty, so I used Cheerios and Corn Flakes),  the kids and I decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood.  It was such a beautiful day!

As we walked around the block we noticed two familiar-looking guys hard at work, haha!  Can you find them?

The kids ran across the neighbor's yard and jumped behind our tall grasses for a picture. 

We cooled off on the porch for a while. 

When the guys were done mulching we had a cookout.  Hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, watermelon, and s'mores.  I was too busy to take more pictures.  It was the most perfect weather for this, and we were out there till almost 9:00!

I just had to get a few more pics of the mulching as I walked into the house for more things for our cookout. 

When we had brought everything indoors, the kids each took a bubble bath in our big tub, Sam brought out a box of some of his collectibles that he keeps here, then Dick brought out his coin collection.  So it was a LATE night!

But somehow we all managed to get up for church Sunday morning and were there shortly after 8:30 am!

When we got home from church I immediately started making chili.  The kids were eager to start playing Monopoly, but they put this floor puzzle together while they waited for me. 

Then the hours-long Monopoly game began!  We couldn't interest the guys - they were watching tennis.  

At one point we paused the game to eat lunch - "Mexican Pile-up" as we call it.   Chili and rice with all the fixin's.  Bianca set up some of her "friends" to guard the game while we ate, lol!!

We paused our game a few other times too - once for a photo shoot and once when the tennis match got really intense and we wanted to watch.  But we did keep playing until we got to the point that each of us owned so many properties with houses and hotels on them, but we each had so little cash on hand, that we could no longer afford to pay the high rent when we landed on each others' spaces!  So we quit!  

Sam's babies are getting too big!!!

They were so disappointed when Sam said they needed to pack up to leave, and they begged to be able to stay over.  I said they could and I would take them home the next day. 

After Sam left, we decided it was time to get out of the house.  We went to Talleyrand Park in Bellefonte.  We had the greatest time walking around the entire park for a couple of hours.

We were so fascinated by the ducks and the huge fish. 

We were getting hot and hungry and walked to nearby Maria's for some air conditioning and yummy pizza!

We got back to the car just in time!  The rain came and then the STORMS!!  We watched the movie Rio, and the entire time we watched it, and until about 11:15 pm there was storm after storm, with crazy lightning and thunder and so much rain!  

I had never seen Rio before, and I loved it!

Of course Monday morning was a work day for Dick, so we were up early, as usual, to take care of his breakfast and his lunch packing before he left at 7:30 am.  

But the kids!  Bianca woke up around 9, and Sammy slept till almost 10!  I had made bacon and pancakes for them. 

They had one thing on their minds when they woke up - LIFE!  So we spent a couple of hours playing that!  In the end Bianca won, to Sammy's complete surprise.  She had so many children, he had none.  She was making only $20,000 compared to his $100,000.  But she had collected so many LIFE cards, and in the end they were worth a lot of money!  All that while she was a teacher and he was an accountant!  We had so much fun.

We had leftovers for a late lunch and then headed to the arboretum.  The weather app said there was a severe thunderstorm watch, but there didn't seem to be a dark cloud in the sky. 

They had a lot of fun in the children's area of the arboretum. 

Of course, before long there were a darkening clouds!  Grrr.  So we hurried to the fountain for some pictures before the rain hit us!

I was hoping to recreate a picture from May 2016, but there was no time.  We were practically running!

We went to Dairy Queen for Blizzards and then went home to pack up.  Bianca slept almost the whole ride home, and Sammy was playing a game on his tablet, so it was a really quiet drive!  Luckily I had had an extra cup of coffee before we left! I met up with Jenn at a Giant where she was getting groceries, and we said our goodbyes till next time.  We had packed so much fun into those 48 hours!

I drove most of the hour-and-a-half trip home in rain.  According to pictures a few of my local friends posted, I missed a really amazing rainbow!  Our friend Ross Hardison captured this incredible view!!!

Time to get on now with some real work!  Have a good week!