It's C-c-c-c-cold Outside!!

 Two big events since I posted a week ago. First was the bread baking class at church on Wednesday evening. 

Our friend Curt is the teacher.  He spent a week at the King Arthur Baking Company campus in Vermont a few years ago and has become a master baker and teacher! He has his own kitchen in the basement of their home.  Here are a bunch of pictures from that evening. 

We had so much fun!!!  He had dough ready to bake so could have some to eat that evening.  So we were able to take home the dough that we made.  

On Thursday morning I baked my bread.  Oh my goodness!!!  My house smelled AMAZING!!

We had light snow that day.  Choir practice in the evening. 

On Friday I got caught up on a lot of things here at home.  I got a phone call from Destiny.  She was ELATED that she had passed her State Boards that morning!  It was also her last day of school. 

She is now a licensed aesthetician!  Her graduation is a week from tomorrow.  Dick and I will be going to Indianapolis from Tuesday to Thursday next week for her grad.  I have been checking the weather for both here and there, and it looks really good.  Sun all three days!  And up to 45 on the day of her grad.  Compared to the 0 degrees we both are experiencing right now.  Hallelujah!!!

On Friday evening we went to Anthony and Lori's for Austin's 16th birthday cake. We had a lot of fun.

He got an 11x11 Rubik's Cube from Anthony and Lori. 

Before long it looked like this!

Dick and I gave him cash.  He read our card aloud.  It was so sweet.

Cutting his cake!

Sixteen years ago he was this sweet baby that wooed my heart to State College at a difficult time in our lives (unemployment for Dick.)  Some of you remember that.  Dick was offered a job here and I left my beloved music teaching job at Manheim Christian to become Austin's nanny

Here we are sixteen years later!

On Saturday Anthony and Lori and the boys went to Philly to celebrate Austin's birthday.  Austin got to play a 130-year-old Steinway piano!!  

And THEN they went to a place called iFly, and he did this!  This is a screen shot from a video, which is much more fun to watch!

Dick and I went to a memorial service at church for our dear friend Cheryl Houser.  

What a WONDERFUL service!!  We have only known Cheryl for maybe six years, and we appreciated her in the choir and when she filled in preaching from time to time.  But there was SO MUCH MORE to know of her as family members shared.  She was a truly amazing woman.

This is her sister Diana telling so many interesting things about Cheryl's life. 

There was a delicious meal served afterward.

On Sunday our church service was cancelled due to snow.  I took this picture in the morning.  

We actually only got a few inches even though it snowed most of the day.  Pastor Jim and his wife live on a mountain about 45 minutes away where they had more snow than here, and they would not have been able to make it. 

I spent some of the day working ahead on music plans for the coming weeks. 

Monday morning was really cold, but at least it was sunny.

My sunny kitchen as I cooked did not give a hint how cold it was outside. 

Later in the day when I came out of the grocery store after 5 pm I was almost giddy that it was still so daylight!!  It was 6 degrees at that point. 

This morning we had negative 2, and tomorrow morning we'll have negative 5.  So many people in the south are getting snow!  My sister Rose in Charleston, SC is getting snow and ice right now, hoping they don't lose power tonight.  My sister Mary Ellen has friends in Mobile, AL where she had lived for many years. They have 7 inches of snow, the most since the 1880's!  

This past weekend Sophie had an indoor track meet in Lubbock, Texas.  Lisa was there to watch.  Early Sunday morning when Lisa needed to drive to the airport she had to drive on icy roads - first time since she moved south in 1998!!  

I gotta go to bed.  I hope everyone's staying warm and safe!

A cold, but good week!

As I said last week, we had choir practice on Wednesday because of the very important (to us) Orange Bowl game between Penn State and Notre Dame on Thursday evening.  

What a game!!!  They were SO close the whole way through it and we hated to go to bed before it was over.  So we went to bed with the game on the bedroom TV, which we rarely use.  It was so CLOSE!!!  I think it was around 11:15 when Notre Dame won the game.  UGH!!  We stayed awake late for that, haha!!

Also on Thursday I watched the entire Jimmy Carter funeral service and was SO blessed by it.  The Lord and the scriptures were lifted high throughout the service.  I wish I could find the pictures we have of the time Dick's dad and brother Steve participated in a Jimmy Carter work week for Habitat for Humanity.  There was a group picture at the end of the week of the whole work crew, including Jimmy.  

On Friday we did a something we've never done before.  We bought a car that's only two years old.  We have always bought older cars because we knew that Dick could fix them.  But Lisa, Anthony, and Jeremy said they are no longer comfortable with that, considering Dick's age.  So they helped us financially, and we bought a 2023 Kia Seltos.  The kids warned me that I won't be able to take "the whole family" with me anymore.  It's a 5-passenger instead of a 7-passenger.  I confess I feel really sad about that.  But we feel REALLY BLESSED to have something so reliable and warm, and much lower gas mileage too.  

 

Lots of bells and whistles, and I haven't figured all of them out yet. 

That evening Destiny and Ozzy left Indianapolis to come here.  It was snowing a bit when they left.  We were hoping to be able to meet Alex's dad to get Elizer that evening, but they wanted to wait till Saturday.  I was disappointed. 

I woke up at 4:22 AM Saturday and checked Destiny's location, fully expecting to see that she was in our house.  But alas, it showed Columbus, Ohio!  Yikes!  It looked like they were in a hotel parking lot.  I texted her, but she didn't reply.  She had said they would pull over if they got sleepy, but my mind went everywhere.  Did they freeze to death??  

I went back to bed, turned my phone volume on, and prayed for them.  I actually did go to sleep and was wakened by the ding of a text message.  She said they had stopped to take a nap, but slept longer than planned.  They were again on their way.  They arrived here late Saturday morning and went right to bed.  

Later we got Elizer.  He fell asleep too.

When we got home Destiny and Ozzy were up, and Destiny and I cooked up some Italian sausages and peppers and onions for hoagies.  Yumm!

This was Elizer's pose for the camera!

Then it was bath time.  As usual, after his bath I sat him on the counter to trim his nails.  I remembered that in my FB memories that day I had after-bath pictures of him from the two previous Januarys.  (Is that how you spell the plural of January?? It looks weird!)  So I took a picture of him again and later made this collage.  I miss that sweet baby face, but I love the four-year-old stage.  So much easier!!

On Sunday morning he went to church with us.  Everyone was so happy to see him.  It was second Sunday, and instead of the kids' classes they stay in the worship service,  and Pastor Jim does a lesson with them.  

 

We ate "dippy eggs" and toast for lunch.  Then we hit the puzzles.  I helped Elizer to do some of his favorites and Dick helped Destiny to do a 500-piece puzzle from her childhood. 

Look closely to see the silly thing Dick did right before I took the picture, haha!

Elizer had so much fun playing with all his toys he hadn't seen in six weeks.  I think he played with EVERYTHING!  And all the pieces of everything were mixed together.  I told Destiny it looked like a toy salad around here, haha!!  But I didn't care.  They were here for such a short time. 

And then they were on their way.  

Destiny will graduate from beauty school on Wednesday, January 29.  Dick and I are going to Indianapolis from Tuesday to Thursday.  We booked an Airbnb.  It will be nice to have a car that gets good gas mileage!  We're praying for good weather, of course!

After they left I put that tablecloth over these puzzles.  Destiny will finish hers next time, whenever that will be. 

No one knows!

Yesterday (Monday) I picked up Hunter from school and took him and the stirfry I had made for them to their house.  But Hunter really wanted to come to our house, so Lori said she'd come for him later. 

We played Scrabble after we had eaten dinner.

We weren't finished when Lori arrived, but he didn't mind because he had just pulled ahead of my score with that triple-word YARN at the top of the board. 

And that's it till next time!  Stay warm!  

Christmas is over and it's COLD!!!

I'm sitting here trying to remember what I've done lately.  If I don't take pictures I can't remember much!

But I do remember that last Thursday I worked all day on music.  Suddenly the Christmas season was over and I hadn't really planned for what the choir would be doing beyond January 5th.  So on top of getting some choir songs ready, I also had a lot of things to get ready for the instrumental ensemble.  They play one Sunday per month.  

We had both choir practice and ensemble practice Thursday evening.  

On Friday morning I had to go for groceries.  Winter was making its presence known, but the heat in my van did not care.  We've been having issues with it, and Dick keeps doctoring it along, but that morning it did not work at all.  Dick said he's afraid we need a new head gasket or new engine or something.  It would not be cheap, and it would be an enormous job for him to do.  We were feeling quite discouraged.  I have not driven since.  We have really been in a deeeeep freeze.  

On Saturday I caught up on our bookwork and started un-decorating.  That's actually quite early for me, but if I was home anyway I figured I might as well get it done. 

Sunday morning was great.  I just love when I have lots of instruments to play piano with.  Here's the arrangement of "In the Garden" I prepared for the prelude. 

Melanie, the cellist, just started playing cello during COVID!  She is multi-talented.  She goes to another church, but loves to sing and play at our church whenever she can.  

When we were getting set up for the service I looked up from the piano and noticed how she coordinated with the altar flowers.  We cracked up!!

In the afternoon we had a fun reunion of the Fillmore Choir.  That's where we went to church the first 7 years after we moved to this house.   These people were our first friends up here.  It was a fun afternoon at Peg and Bill's house. 

When we came home from there we had a fun video call with our bio kids.  They were helping us to think through some car options.  Lisa would strangle me for posting this picture, hahaha!  She doesn't even know I took it, and she doesn't read my blog, so I think I'm safe, lol!!

One day this week I came across this picture from their childhood.  We had gone to DC for the day.

I decided to make a collage of pictures from this past year.  Each of them is so gifted in their area of expertise that Dick and I wonder how they're even related to us, haha!

We've been having snow for days it seems, not that it's amounted to much.  But it is SOOOO COLD!!!  Destiny said they had at least 8 inches in Indianapolis yesterday.

I was working on another choir song today.  We'll be having practice Wednesday evening instead of Thursday this week BECAUSE there's a very important football game on Thursday evening.  The Orange Bowl - Penn State vs Notre Dame.  WE ARE!!  

That's all till next time!

PS:  Last week I took the time to update the pictures on my sidebar.  It had been a while.  If you get the chance to check them out, I think you'll enjoy them.  You gotta see that little Louie!