All in a few days time!

Quick catch-up here.  We have a new baby great granddaughter!!  

On Wednesday evening we knew Destiny had had some mild contractions throughout the day.  So before Dick and I went to bed we prayed together that she would go into labor and have the baby so they could go home before the impending snow storm.   I even decided to not put my phone on silent overnight so I'd hear any text messages or phone calls.  But when I woke up I discovered that she had informed me at 2:45 am that they were heading to the hospital, but I had slept right though that text.  

Then as I was packing Dick's lunch at 7:15 I got another text, "She's hereeeeeee"  

She weighed 7lb 3oz and was 19.5 inches long and has a headful of black hair! 

They went home on Friday, and Elizer saw her for the first time when he came home from school.  At this point it seems he finds her quite boring, haha! 

Her name is Ketsiyah Amor - pronounced KET see ya.  I will probably call her Ketsi.   I googled her name and discovered that in the Biblical story of Job, after everything was restored to him, one of his daughters was named Keziah.  Here's the passage:  

"And he also had seven sons and three daughters.  The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch.  Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughers..."  Job 42:13-15.  Well, how about that??

On Friday Dick and I went to Lancaster for a gathering with a few of my Witmer cousins and our only remaining aunt - Grace Shenk.  What a PRECIOUS time we had together!!  We met at the Friends Meetinghouse community room and each brought food for the meal.  We also had old pictures to look at.  We talked and talked and laughed as we ate.  

Then we made a circle of chairs and we sang hymns.  Here's a very short video of "Open the Wells of Salvation."

Singing the hymns led to more stories.  It was getting towards 10 pm and we still needed to clean up, but we just didn't want to stop.  

Here's a picture of Aunt Grace with us cousins.  She is 88 years old, still drives, lives in an apartment at Landis Homes, and is very active.  She and her husband David and their children lived in Somalia and then Kenya as missionaries for many, many years.  She told us of how she had longed for and pursued her bachelor's degree at an older age and then was able to make use of it when she and David went to Lithuania for four years and her job there required a degree.  

Here's an old picture we treasure - all ten Witmer siblings in age order.  My dad was third, Grace was ninth. 

We stayed at my sister Mary Ellen's overnight and were hoping to stop by Bjorn and Jess's house before heading home on Saturday.  But there was a big snow storm coming our way and we felt we needed to get home to prepare.   

By the way, did I ever tell you that Bjorn and Jess are expecting number 3?  A girl!!!  Here's their adorable Christmas card.

So that will make FIVE great grandchildren for us!

It's a good thing we went back home when we did on Saturday.  Soon after we arrived we discovered that we had no water running out of our faucets.  Frozen water pipes for the first time in our 15 years of living here!   We were able to contact the owners of our park, and they sent someone out to look at our heat tape.  Meanwhile Dick used my hairdryer on the pipes and we soon had running water.  The maintenance guy replaced our heat tape, so we should be good to go for another 15 years, haha!

We also have been thinking about getting a small generator since our three-day power outage last Spring.  We depend completely upon electricity for our heat, both the heat pump and also our baseboard electric heat.  With all the nearly zero-degree weather we've been having, the thought of a big snow storm that could mess with power lines was a truly horrible thought.  So we've been looking on Marketplace, and on Saturday on the way home we saw just what we wanted.  We contacted him and agreed to go see it when he would be home at 5:00 pm.  He was just 11 minutes from our house!

As it turned out he already had it on the back of his truck and he agreed to bring it to our house and help Dick to unload it.  He said, "There you go!  I hope you don't need it!"  And we agreed!

So it snowed all day today.  Church had already been canceled.  The forecast had us getting at least 20 inches, but we definitely did not get that much.  Maybe 12.  We went outside several times today, Dick using his snowblower and me doing a little bit of shoveling and taking pictures. 

Each day Destiny sends me pictures of Ketsiyah.  I just want to pick her right out of the pictures!

We are planning to drive to Indianapolis on Saturday (8-hour drive that takes old people like us 10 hours, lol).  We'll drive home the next Saturday.  I so look forward to holding that baby and playing with Elizer and talking with Destiny and helping her.  It will be SO hard to say goodbye when we leave to come home.  

That all for this time!

In the COLD midwinter

How's everybody doing on this cold, winter week?  Good grief, even Lisa in Safety Harbor, Florida had ice on her windshield yesterday morning.  We've been spared from having much snow, but it is just so terribly cold!!!  

The last time I posted here on my blog I mentioned that Pastor Jim had done a really cool thing with the kids that morning in church. Each of the kids chose a color of sand (representing themselves) to add to a jar.  The result was a gorgeous design of colors flowing together, never to be separated - just as we in the church, the body of Christ, are individuals that are bonded together.  Later the adults did the same thing as they came forward for Communion.  Some of the kids stood there making sure the adults were told to use just a small amount of sand.  They felt so important, lol! We ended up with two beautiful jars of sand.  

They are now sitting on beams at the front of the sanctuary.

Last week we had "Taco Tuesday" at church.  That was fun, and so yummy!!

On Thursday evening Destiny texted me pictures of mini pizzas she and Elizer had made. 

The next morning she said she thinks she might have gotten food poisoning from the pizza because she was throwing up.  But Elizer wasn't sick.  She had an appointment with her midwife that morning and they hooked her up to a scanner.  They could see she was having mild contractions and told her to go home and let them know when they were five minutes apart.  But they stopped.  I thought maybe her baby would share a birthday with Austin, but that was not to be.

Saturday was Austin's 17th birthday!!  As I said on Facebook - he plays piano, he lifts weights, he writes, and now he sings!  I look forward to seeing what's next!  He has struggled with extreme ADHD and being on the Autism spectrum, so each accomplishment is a cause for great rejoicing. 

We went to their place Saturday evening for birthday cake.  Anthony caught me giving some "choir director" instructions at the beginning of this video, haha!

A few weeks ago I had seen on Facebook that there would be a live Mariachi band at our local Rey Azteca on Sunday evening, and I knew I really wanted to go.  Destiny cracked up when I told her.  I said, "What? You think we'll be the only old white people there??"  Hahaha!  We went to a Mexican restaurant after her graduation last January, and there was a live band there that night.  I just LOVE that music!  

Anyway, we went to Rey Azteca on Sunday, and so did Anthony and Lori.  The band was absolutely fantastic!!  We had such a great time!

Monday was Martin Luther King day, so no school.  I couldn't believe it when Destiny said that they had gone to the zoo, because it was free on the holiday!  She's due on Sunday! I told her maybe all that walking will help her to go into labor. 

I love how excited Elizer is in this video as they looked at a platypus.  The other boy in the video is Ozzy's younger brother.

And of course, meerkats are about the cutest things ever!

They saw so many different animals.  It must be a really big zoo.  Ozzy took a lot of great videos.  I felt like I was there when I watched them.  

I am praying her labor starts on its own this week.  That's what she really wants.  It seems so common these days for women to be induced, especially if they go beyond the due date, and then have a difficult time. 

So remember last time I said we sisters, Barb, Doris, and I, who were the Witmer Trio, were reminiscing about our "trio dresses."   Well, here's a timeline of dresses.  Each picture has a year on it.  I'm sad that the pictures are such poor quality.

We did lots and lots of wedding singing, even more church and banquet singing, and we made two albums.  We also recorded many songs for a radio broadcast called "Sunday School Meditations."  

And about this weather!  I found this cute meme this evening!

Stay warm!!

Beginning of January

My goodness, here we are eleven days into the New Year, and I haven't post yet!  

I'm sure you have been noticing that it's getting dark a bit later each day.  I took this picture about a week ago when I was delighted to realize how daylight it was at 5 pm!!  

Dick's eyelids have been slowly healing, and the bruising and swelling is disappearing.  I just took a picture of him, and I put it in this collage beside the picture I took right before his surgery two weeks ago.  I would say it was successful! 

He had off work the whole week after his surgery, then went back this past Tuesday.  

Last Sunday Dick and I left right after church for a trip to Manheim to see Grandma Arlene.  She would be turning 94 in a few days.  Dick's brother Steve and his wife Faye were there too, and we had the most wonderful time catching up!  Arlene enjoyed all the chatter!  

After we got back to State College we went to Anthony and Lori's place to pick up Hunter.  Lori would be leaving in the wee hours of the morning for an annual writing retreat in Jamaica, and Hunter was staying with us. 

Each morning I took him to school and picked him up afterward.  On Monday and Wednesday I cooked for them and took the food to their place after I picked Hunter up, and he got to see his daddy that way.  He has to be the easiest kid EVER!!  So pleasant and agreeable.  

Face-timing his mamma.

He loves ice cream!

He took a shower each evening, except for Tuesday when he had a bubble bath in our jetted tub.

We had the most interesting conversations to and from school!  We gave each other quizzes on which musical instruments belong in which instrument family.  We gave each other questions about our experience with musical instruments, classes, bands, ensembles.  

One day he had a paper on which he had written equations, starting with half of 1/2, then half of that answer, then half of that answer, and on and on.  I asked what he was using to get the answers.  He said, "My brain."  My brain hurt just looking at his paper!!

On Thursday evening we had our first choir rehearsal since before Christmas.  Hunter went along and quietly did things on his school Chromebook and his iPad.   

Choir feels discouraging to me right now.  I had two good tenors.  One has died and the other is leaving for Florida till May.  I have two good altos, and one of those is having knee replacement surgery this month.  Maybe we'll just sing everything in unison for a while. 

On Friday Anthony picked up Hunter after school.  Dick and I had a great evening with some church friends.  We ladies told each other stories about our weddings, our childbirths, the places we were from, the deaths of loved ones.  We laughed a LOT and shed some tears. 

I don't know what the guys in the other room talked about.  Dick said we were so loud they could hardly hear each other, haha!

Everybody brought food, and there was SO MUCH.  I had made a banana nut cake with cream cheese frosting because I had bananas to use up.  It was a recipe for a 10" square pan.  I thought that wouldn't be enough, so I doubled it and put it in a 9x13.  It got SO HIGH!!  Then I put the frosting on top of that!  It was way too delicious!!  There was so much food there that my cake had only one row eaten.  After we left we went to Anthony's place to take Hunter's suitcase.  I gave at least half of the cake to them.  And we still have some.  It's just so delicious and moist.  

On Saturday we put away all the Christmas stuff except for the soft white icicle lights on the porch.  What a chore!!  Why does putting it away feel so much more overwhelming than getting it out and putting everything up??  But we got'er done.

While we were working we were listening to our old 1978 Witmer Trio cassette.  Of course that required lots of texting with my sisters Doris and Barb.

Then to get a better look at our clothes and hair I had to pull out our two records so we could see the pictures on back of them.  This was the one we did in 1976.

And the one in 1978.

That required a search in my photo albums for pictures of our "Witmer Trio dresses."  But Anthony has some of my albums, so I'll have to complete that search later.  I told the girls I'll make a slide show, hahaha!!

Pastor Jim did the coolest hands-on "sermon" this morning with the kids and then the adults.  I have so many pictures, but I need to go to bed.  I'll post them another day.  Or you can see them on my Facebook.  

Our New Years week

What an unusual week for us!  I think we're getting a little stir crazy.  Dick has been taking it really easy as he recovers from his hooded eyelid surgery.  He doesn't have pain, but the bruising looks so bad.  On Wednesday we did go out and about just a bit - to get gas and a few groceries.  He wore sunglasses in Walmart and Sam's Club!  

I took this picture earlier in the week, but he looks worse now due to the bruising.  Hopefully he'll so turn the corner and the bruising will heal.

I've been getting lots of "paperwork" done at the desk.  It feels so good to be catching up and getting things in order.  Much more to do, however.  

On Wednesday the power plug for our Christmas tree lights arrived in the mail.  And voila!!  The lights on our tree turned on when Dick connected it!  I can't remember what I had shared in previous posts about our Christmas tree saga.  But here's a quick update.  

We bought this tree last year on Amazon and we LOVED it!!  All kinds of choices between white and colors and blinking and non-blinking, etc.  But this year, after just five days, the lights no longer worked.  Dick did all the things, but nothing worked.  He began communicating with a "help" thing on the manufacturer's website.  They suggested contacting the seller.  Meanwhile, after a whole week of no lights, we put an old string of white lights on it.  I went on Amazon and left a bad review on the tree.  Then we got an offer of a 25% refund and a new power plug from the seller.  I agreed, but said that if the new power plug does not work, I want a 100% refund.  

SO the new power plug works AND we got a 25% refund!  Woohoo!!

We of course stayed home for New Year's Eve.  Dick did not last till midnight, but I did.  I never miss it!!  I sit in the dark with just the fireplace and the TV on and take pictures!  I thought the ball was spectacular this year.

I just LOVE when the countdown ends and Auld Lang Syne plays and I start getting text messages from our kids.  

Eventually I went to bed and did not wake up until 8:30 am!  There had been a light snow overnight and it was so sunny, but so cold.

Today I got our laundry done and made pork and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes for our New Years dinner.  Just us.  Dick will take some of it over to Anthony and Lori tomorrow.  

Wishing you a 2026 filled with good health and lots of joyful experiences!