Birthdays, concert, winter carnival

I started this post a week ago, so I'm going to finish it now, and then do another post about this past week.  

We are on the road!  Heading west on Route 70 to Indianapolis.  Destiny’s graduation is tomorrow evening. So I will be having lots of pictures to share next week!

But now I need to share about this past week. 

When we cleaned out the two glove compartments in our Toyota Sienna before trading it in, we could not believe how MUCH we had in them.  Here are just some of the things:

5 air fresheners

3 packs of Kleenex

3 tools

4 insect repellent wipes

3 pairs of sunglasses

5 masks

8 CD's

50 napkins

6 packs of salt and pepper

1 magic marker

1 pack of Clorox wipes

4 pre-packaged hand wipes

1 bottle of hand sanitizer

And that does not include the things we transferred to the small glove compartment in our little Kia SUV.  What can I say? We like to be prepared!  

OR we had no idea what was in there, so we added more - just in case, LOL!!  

On Wednesday, January 22, the day after I wrote my last post, I went shopping at Nature's Pantry, our local natural food store.  I hadn't been there in a long time, but I had a purpose.  Destiny had told me that she was hungry for my homemade granola.  I hadn't made it in a few years, so I needed to go shopping for ingredients.  I found everything!

I am so delighted that since I've started using Lactaid milk, I can again eat cereal and milk.  HOW I enjoyed a bowl of my granola!!!

When I picked Hunter up from school that day, I brought him to our house.  Anthony and Lori were going to a woodworking class!  Hunter and I had fun playing UNO.

Lori gave me this scoop.  She had turned that beautiful handle from a block of wood!!!  Of course Anthony had made one too, and they didn't need two of them, lucky for me!

Thursday was laundry and choir day, as usual.  A VERY cold day.  Here's a new song we're working on.  I LOVE it!!  Now that I have listened to it in order to post it here, it will be in my head for the rest of the evening and overnight and tomorrow morning!!  I know that from experience.  I just love it so much.

Friday, the 24th was Sophie's TWENTIETH birthday!!  2005 does not seem that long ago at all!!  I was at school, knowing Lisa was in labor down in Florida, and when my phone rang to tell me that Baby Sophie Grace had arrived, I was also told that George had emailed me a picture.  Remember - no photo sharing on phones in 2005!  So I ran to the computer room at school and pulled up my email and literally screamed with delight when I saw a picture of her.  There was a middle school class in the computer room, and I had completely interrupted their class, but I did not care.  Neither did they, haha!!  

Pray for our Sophie when she comes to your mind.  Being a student athlete comes with so terribly much pressure!

That evening Lori and I went to a concert on campus, a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King.  It ended up being a tribute to Dr. Tony Leach also, the director of Essence 2 who passed away from cancer a few weeks ago.  He of course had helped to plan this concert.  In addition to Essence of Joy, the Penn State Gospel Choir that Tony started in 1994 and continued to direct until he became too ill, there was a high school concert choir from Pittsburgh, a high school madrigal choir from near Philly, and a gospel choir from Delaware.  Each of them was incredible!!  Lori and I were right up there on the second row.  At the end, all the choirs joined for a few songs, including "Total Praise" which was AMAZING!!!!  That's a Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir song that I used for my middle school choir festival song one of the last years I taught.  

Saturday, January 25 was Lisa's birthday.  She was born in the wee hours of the morning 51 years ago, one of the BEST days of my life!  I really wanted a baby girl, and in those days we did not know until they were born.  

She was so darn cute!!  I made this collage for her birthday.  I told her that baby Lisa was looking to see what she was going to be when she grows up, haha!

We had a HUGE event at church that afternoon.  Our first annual Winter Carnival.  Everything was FREE!  Word had gotten around, and we had a LOT of people and a LOT of fun!

Check-in table.

Food corner

Rock painting

Computer corner

Games

PEOPLE!!

Face painting

Card making

Jewelry making

Numbered duckies for a stuffed animal prize

Game table

Hilarious team games

Snowman cut-outs

Corn hole

Beaver Stadium back-drop for photos

We all worked together when it was over to clean up and get everything ready for Sunday morning's service.  

Sunday morning was great, but I think we all felt pretty tired.  The rest of the day I worked on music plans for my sub who would play piano on February 2, and also for all the instruments of our worship band who would play on February 9.  We had travels coming up, and jury duty for me after the travels were over.  It felt good to have all that preparation done.

On Monday I cooked up a storm.  I made meatballs, sauce, and pasta for Lori and Anthony's family.  I made more granola, and I made a cake for Destiny's grad.  My sink looked a MESS!!  

That evening we did some packing and tried to go to bed earlier than usual.  

And that's it for this post.  All about our travels in the next post.