July 4th weekend

Lots of fun things to share since I posted on Thursday!  Like always, the flowers are blooming away! Especially the lilies this week!

Of course, these are my very favorite lilies each year!

Friday was a happy day here at our house!!  The new heat pump was installed at last, hallelujah!!

It actually was not a hot day, and air conditioning wasn't necessary, but I ran it anyway just because I could, haha!!  It's so much quieter than our old central AC unit was.    We have certainly needed it since, and it's WONDERFUL to be done with humidity inside the house.

On Friday evening I went with Lori and the boys to the arboretum.  They just opened the new pollinator garden that they've been building for the past two years, I believe.  First we went to the children's garden.  Can you believe I tried to crawl up onto that big caterpillar and fell off in the process??   I got dirty, but not hurt.  I won't be trying that again!

Three of these pictures were taken in the pollinator garden.  It is huge!  Lovely walkways, interesting structures that I didn't even get pictures of, and so much potential.  This has followed the science of how  birds, bees, insects, and plants are interdependent.  The plants don't look like much at this point because they're so small, but it will become an amazingly beautiful place.  

Destiny sent me this adorable picture that night - Elizer's favorite new cuddle toy - his basketball, hahaha!!  

On Saturday we drove down to Destiny's place.  I had been talking to Ray and he said he was going to be going to her place.  We had not seen him since Christmas day when I delivered cookies to him!  He has since moved to an apartment complex in York County to be closer to his job.  It was so good to be together again!

Bless Destiny!  She had just gotten home from work when we arrived.  She proceeded to start cooking dinner - butter chicken curry and rice.  I folded some laundry for her and helped her in the kitchen while Dick and Ray talked about hunting and looked at Dick's pictures from his trail cam.  Of course, Elizer was toddling around, getting into everything!  After dinner we went for a walk around the mobile home park.  (You can see the end of Destiny and Alex's house on the bottom right picture above.  It is quite new.) Destiny also made some snicker doodles, which were a big hit!  Even for someone with diabetes!  Oops!

It was a crazy weather day.  Sometimes it poured, sometimes the sun came out and it was HOT!  On the way home that evening we drove through really heavy rain.  It was so loud we could hardly hear each other talk!

Sunday morning was beautiful.  Even more so because Brenna was at church to play flute with me.  She comes once a month.  Here is our prelude, an interesting arrangement of 10,000 Reasons.

After the service at GBRV we decided to go to the service at Calvary for the first time since COVID.  It was not nearly as full as it used to be, probably because they do not have children's classes at the 10:45 service, just the 9:00 service.  Also, there aren't many students in town during the summer.  But it was good to be there and be led in worship by other musicians.  

We invited Anthony and Lori to come over for a cookout in the evening.   We made hamburgers, sausages, and hot dogs over the fire.  I also had made broccoli salad and "doctored up" baked beans.  I forgot to take pictures the whole evening until the boys started launching nerf rockets after we were finished eating.  It was a beautiful evening and so good to be together. 

We drove up to the airport and found a place to park to watch the fireworks - through a fence.  Not the greatest view and certainly not a great place for picture-taking, but we enjoyed it anyway.  There were other fireworks behind us too.  The boys weren't sure which way to look!

Dick had a holiday on Monday.  I did not set an alarm and was so surprised when I did not wake up until 8:00!  That is really late for me!

Hunter came for the day.   I was trying to interest him in doing a puzzle, but he wasn't interested.  So we made a deal - if he did what I wanted for 15 minutes, then I would do what he wanted for 15 minutes.  So we did get the puzzle put together.  During his 15 minutes he wanted me to sit and watch him play a game on his iPad!  I almost fell asleep!  

Nothing interests him more than doing math facts.   He turns everything into math.  Here he was spouting off some of his facts!

He wanted me to blow up balloons.  He told me that the orange balloon was the dad, the pink balloon was the mom, and the magenta balloon was the child.  I asked, "So the biggest one is not the dad?"  He said, "No because the mom is 48 years old and the dad is 21 years old and the child is 3 years old." Wow!!  Hahahahaha!!  Our crazy girls had some fun with that!  Lisa said that mom must have been quite the cougar!  Lori said she probably needs to be locked up since the dad might have been only 17 when the child was conceived!  Toooo funny!  And he said it all so innocently!

Dick grilled steaks and we had them with baked potatoes and broccoli salad on the porch.  Such a yummy meal!  It's our July 4th tradition.  

The next few days are all about getting things ready for the weekend.  It's the annual sibling weekend in Manheim!!  We missed last summer because of COVID, so that makes this year even better.  We have not seen Barb (Idaho), Betty (New Hampshire), or Rose (Georgia) in person since July 2019!   We are READY!!