Remembering Uncle John

On March 16th my dad's brother John Witmer passed away on his 92nd birthday.  He always liked that his name was John and that he was born on 3/16.  When at an appointment and asked for his name and date of birth he would quip, "John 3:16."   How awesome that he died on that date too!  

In July 2023 when we sisters were together for our annual weekend we went to visit him and his wife Evelyn.  He was so talkative and jovial that day, telling story after story from his youth.  Our dad was ten years older than John, but he had memories of our dad that we loved hearing.  It was a wonderful afternoon that we will never forget. 

This past Saturday was his memorial service in the chapel at Fairmount Homes Retirement Community where they lived.  It was a wonderful service of remembering John and honoring God.  He had a true servant's heart.  

Afterward there was a light meal served.  I remembered, right before we left, to get some pictures.  I wish I had thought of it earlier. 

John and Evelyn have three daughters - Deb, Sheryl, and Judy.  They are AWESOME!!  And they were so devoted to their daddy to the very end.  And now to their mother. 

John and Evelyn also had one son, Dennis, who passed away a couple of years ago from cancer.  This is his wife Lori.  She is a chaplain at a different retirement community, and she did a wonderful job leading the memorial service. 

Aunt Evelyn is experiencing some memory loss, but I saw her having a great time with some of her grandchildren.  Someone said, "She's in her happy place."  How well I could relate!!

Three of Evelyn's sisters were there.  Does one of them look familiar??  Dick's stepmother "Grandma Arlene" is indeed her sister!   Evelyn was my aunt long before Arlene married Dad Stauffer and became my children's grandmother in 1982.  

My dad was from a family of ten children.  Just one is still living, my Aunt Grace Shenk (second from left.)  On her right is her son Tim, on her left is her son Jon, her daughter Doris, and Doris's husband Caleb.  Her oldest daughter Karen had already left when I took this picture.  Grace and her husband David were missionaries in Somalia and Kenya when their children were growing up.  They were always our heroes! 

What a wonderful day!!  Many cousins were there too.  I hate that it takes a funeral to get together, but that's just a fact of life these days. 

Now I will back up and tell you what Dick and I did on our way to the funeral, which was in Lancaster County.  We stopped along the way to have an early lunch with Steph and Sammy and Bianca.  Sam had to work, so we did not get to see him.  

We had SO MUCH FUN!!  Can you tell?

Sammy has gotten even taller than he was at Christmas!!!  

He's a 13-year-old seventh grader!  Good grief! 

Bianca was delighted to discover that she is now as tall as me!  She's a ten-year-old fifth grader.

Looking at my Facebook memories as we drove that afternoon I found a picture of me holding Sammy exactly 13 years prior.  Crazy!!

On Sunday morning at church, before the kids went to children's church, they were each given a carton of plastic eggs numbered 1 - 12.  They were given "mini's" to put in the first four eggs.  I can't remember all the things, but I remember a mini towel, coins, a mini palm branch - each thing symbolizing a part of the Easter story.  On the next two Sundays they will get more things to fill the rest of their eggs.  In class they are being taught what each "mini" symbolizes.  On Easter Sunday they will get to take their carton of eggs home and "teach" their parents all about Easter.  What a great idea!

On Sunday afternoon while I was working on the music for the next week, Dick was putting together the porch rockers that had arrived from Sam's Club.

I love them!  Now we just need some warmer weather for porch sitting.  And a lot less wind!  They are polywood, so they will not be breaking and peeling like our last ones.  They're really heavy. 

We discovered our first daffodils that afternoon.  

Last evening (Monday) our ladies group had our monthly activity.  We made flower arrangements to be "planted" in the ground when we have our Easter Egg Hunt in a few weeks.  

We do not yet have many places to hide eggs on our new church property, so some creative minds came up with a plan!  The eggs will be hidden inside the flower arrangements and other places too. As always, we had a lot of fun!

Spring!! And storms!

Last week we started to have much warmer weather.  It was marvelous!! I had not walked at all this winter, so I made myself get out there, even if it was just around the block.  I couldn't believe how slow and stiff I felt.  But I was SO happy to be walking in warmer, sunny weather.  I even thought I saw tiny red buds on this tree.

I decided the time had come to get our new porch rockers.  I found these on Sam's Club's web page, and the reviews were all very positive.  Besides, since we are plus members, the shipping is free.  So we ordered two of them.  

I spent many hours last week preparing arrangements of songs for the choir and the band.  We would be singing/playing at both the Sunday morning service as well as the next Tuesday evening District Lent service.  On Thursday evening we had a long rehearsal.  

I really do love what I do. I'm still using a computer program called Noteworthy Composer - ever since 1998!!  It is no longer supported, but it's what I'm familiar with, and it works for me.  On a phone call I was telling Jeremy what I had done with one of the songs.  He suggested that  I could have gotten ai assistance to make it easier and quicker.  Hmmm.  I don't think I feel like learning any new tricks.   

The boys didn't have school last week because of Spring break.  On Friday Hunter was my boy.  We played Monopoly and Scrabble.

Then we went to Talleyrand Park.  Ahhhhh!!  It was so good to be there again, but oh, how I missed Elizer.  Hunter missed him too.  

When we came home he wanted to go to the little playground behind our house. 

On Saturday Lori went by train to a women's conference in Brooklyn.  She was one of the speakers.  She came back that night.

I got some things done around here.  I enjoyed watching the birds as I was folding laundry. 

Later in the afternoon we went to Get Air with Hunter. He couldn't believe we didn't have any other grandchildren along!  Eventually some kids from his school came, so he had a good time. 

Meanwhile at their house Anthony posted this picture and said, "Sometimes it's hard to watch TV."  That's Austin doing a hand stand in the middle of the room!  

He is ridiculously strong!  He works out after school several days a week.  Here's a selfie he took. Yes, he is putting all his weight on those two dumbbells!!

And now to our Sunday.  It was wonderful to have the band there.  You can see my little white head behind the piano, lol!

We went to brunch with friends after church for the first time in quite a while.  I enjoyed the St. Patrick's Day decorations.

When we got home we were greeted by our first crocuses!!

There was a tornado watch in our area that afternoon.  When sideways rain started hitting the house I went to our closet for the first time since we live here.  It's the only place in our house without windows.  I lay on the floor for about then minutes.  It truly sounded like a train outside. When I came out of the closet, there was Dick sitting in the kitchen where we have four big windows!  I guess if houses and trees were going to blow around, he wanted to see it, lol!!

As we were to find out, we were very fortunate.  Just a mile or two from here there were trees and a lot of electric poles blown down.  On the other side of State College, Anthony and Lori were without power.  Not far from their place a young man was electrocuted to death when he got out of his car due to a tree across the road.  He stepped on a live wire.  

In the evening we drove around, partly out of curiosity and partly because we needed gas and a few groceries.   There was a rainbow in the sky.

Anthony and Lori found out their power might not be restored until Wednesday.  They do have a generator for the first floor.  But her 89-year-old mother lives with them now (in the apartment over the garage that used to be an airbnb and then was Lori's office during COVID.)  So they were keeping that warm with a space heater that was plugged into an extension cord from the first floor.  

On Monday evening Lori stayed with her mother while Anthony and the boys came here for dinner and the evening.     

That night the propane for their generator ran out!!  It was a very cold night.  We had 28 degrees, they probably had lower than that.  And they had no power at all!  

After the boys went to school Tuesday morning Anthony reserved two hotel rooms for the rest of the day and night.  And of course, then he got a message from West Penn Power that their power was restored!  Thank God!!!

On Tuesday evening our church hosted a district Lent service.  It was WONDERFUL!!  Very uplifting, worshipful, and inspirational.  We led the music.  Our pastor and  pastors from other churches participated in the service, our district superintendent preached (she is SO GOOD!)

Afterward we gathered in the social hall for cake and coffee.  

Pastor Jim had gotten a big cake with this symbol on the middle of it.  

Well, here it is Thursday already!  Gotta go to church to update the choir books before practice this evening!

Donuts and birthdays and beginning of Lent and Spring!!

 

Last Tuesday I was feeling desperate for Spring.  I went outside and pushed some dirt and leaves around, and voila!!  There was what I was looking for!

When I looked ahead and saw that on Sunday we would begin Daylight Savings Time, and that there were temps in the 60's coming up the next week, I felt like I was soon going to be released from dark, cold winter jail!!

I was planning to write my weekly update here on my blog that day, but I happened upon this picture of my cousin Judy celebrating Fat Tuesday, hahaha!!

I was suddenly inspired to do something I hadn't done in YEARS - make a batch of donuts!  I had just one pack of dry yeast on hand, so I had to cut my old recipe to 1/3.  But I do indeed still know how to do it!

I would have made a glaze to dip them in, but I ran out of time.  I was frying the donuts right up to the minute I had to leave the house for Bible study.  So granulated sugar and confectioners sugar had to do instead of glaze.  I took the warm donut holes to share at Bible study.  They approved!

The picture above is a pan of the donuts already cut out, but needing to rise for an hour before frying.  I knew just what I needed to cover them, and lo and behold, I still had two of them in the very back of my dish towel drawer - thin, old calendar towels.  

This one from 1973, hahahaha!!!

On Wednesday I made a new concoction for dinner.  I made a really yummy cheese sauce that had some heat, then mixed it with shredded chicken, bowtie pasta, and broccoli, topping it with buttered cornflake crumbs.  I met Lori later to give some of it for their dinner.  

We had our Ash Wednesday service that evening at church.  We had HEAVY rain and thunder during some of the service.  It was really, really loud on our church roof! 

Before I went to bed that night I had a phone call from Austin.  He wanted to play a song for me.  Oh my heart!

On Thursday I worked all day on choir music in addition to doing our laundry, then had choir practice in the evening.  

On Friday I grocery shopped, paid some bills, made a pan of roasted veggies and brats, folded our laundry while I watched an episode of Call the Midwife, (my favorite hour of the week), took some of the dinner over to Anthony and Lori's place.  Austin played piano for me in person. 

Saturday was tax prep day.  I was glad for a day to do it and even more glad when I was finished!

It was also Hunter's 9th birthday!

Nine years later I can still hold him!

They went to a really fun kids' place in Carlisle (about two hours away) that afternoon.  When they were about an hour from home that evening, Dick and I went to Dairy Queen to get an ice cream cake, candle, and balloon.  We were ready for him!

He read my card aloud.

What a fun time we had together!  We adults reminisced the details of the night he was born.  As usual, the blog post I had written answered all our questions, haha!

Sunday morning was special.  We do not have children's church on the second Sunday of the month.  Instead, they stay in the sanctuary with the adults and are included in the worship service many different ways.  

They sang a song.

Pastor Jim, since most of the kids were not at our Ash Wednesday service, had an Ash Sunday service just for them.

A few of the teens helped to serve Communion.  

And we have a "Jingle Jars" collection on second Sundays.  The kids each get a little tin bucket to take around the sanctuary, collecting change that people bring for that occasion.  

We play the Doxology as they bring their buckets of change to the front, then they dump them into a bigger bucket, the louder the better.  They love it!  The money from the Jingle Jars collection goes to a charity chosen by the teens.  

Now I'll give you a glimpse into my view across the street this week.  For the past year or so, the house across the street was falling into disrepair and neglect.  I will not go into the details, but the house is being torn apart and removed.  It's a really huge job, and I so admire the guys who are working on it day after day.  

I pray that someone will buy a nice home to put on that lot.