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!