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.