Bianca weekend, sweet baby pictures

Life just keeps moving on, doesn't it??

I gotta tell you about our weekend with Bianca.  I have usually had Sammy and Bianca here on three-day weekends when their school has a Monday off.  Last weekend that was the case because of Presidents Day.  However, Sammy had two birthday parties to attend, so he could not come.  Hmmm.  Is he getting to be too popular for weekends at Mahna's house??  (That has always been his name for me - he made it up when he was just a year old!)   

So, this was the first time ever for Bianca to be here by herself.  It was about time, right?  She's 11 years old!  But seems much older than that, really.  On Saturday we met Steph about halfway to pick her up.

Hunter was eager to see her, so Lori brought him over.  We decided to play Monopoly.  BUT... Hunter had never played it before, and he was happily using up all his money to buy properties without thinking what might happen eventually when he would have lots of properties with not houses on them and very, very little cash left.  When that happened he was done.

  

I made White Chicken Chili for dinner.  Anthony came to pick up Hunter, and Bianca and I had some fun with an app on my phone in which I can do AI editing.  I took a picture of each of us, and then we told AI what to change.  We told it to give Bianca a blonde pixie cut, to give Dick brown hair and beard, to give me a brown pixie, smooth skin, and full lips.  Here's what we got, hahahaha!!

It was Valentine's Day.  I had gotten this for Bianca, because I knew how much she loves candy.

  

I smiled when I saw how she had her bed prepared.  Does anybody here remember when she used to bring SO MANY stuffed animals with her?  And she had a name for each. 

And look at this Valentine sweetheart!!!  Destiny sent me this picture and I nearly kissed my phone screen.  Doesn't she look older than three weeks??

Another thing Bianca and I did on Saturday was play clarinet and piano together.  I had a simple medley of God Is So Good and O How I Love Jesus that I had prepared for a girl at church, but we had never done it.  They were new songs to Bianca, and she had never really played her clarinet apart from the school band, but we kept going over and over it.  When I suggested that maybe we could play it together at church Sunday morning since the teens and tweens were going to be doing the call to worship, the sermon, the prayer and share time, etc.  (Pastor Jim was on vacation and had helped the kids to prepare for this before he had left.)  Bianca was unsure at first, but then said she wants to do it.  I was very careful to not push, because I knew that would definitely work the opposite for her.  

So Sunday morning we did the prelude!  It was I who messed up a bit at the beginning, not her!  I was SO proud of her!! 

Another highlight of the service was when Izabella gave the message.  She was so confident, and what she shared was very, very good.  It's been so fun to watch her grow up over the years we have been at this church. 

We had a full day ahead!  Our two afternoon events were both at State College High School.  At 1:00 there was an annual performance of West African drumming and dancing. 

 There were young children, older kids, and some adults (including Lori) performing.  It was all so beautiful and entertaining and meaningful!

Lori was drumming with the older group, but she was behind that side curtain with some other adults. 

From there we went to the other auditorium (yes, there are two!  The school is HUGE.) The drama department was doing the musical "Legally Blonde."   

It was good, I guess.  But I never even watched that movie, so I didn't really know the story line.  I didn't think the singers were as good as the ones at Manheim Central, which surprised me, being such a big school.  And I couldn't see!!  The auditorium did not have a sloped floor, and the lady in front of me was taller and each time I cocked my head one way to see better, she would do the same! Ugh!!  Plus I was so sleepy.  

From there we went to Texas Roadhouse with the gift cards we had been given for Christmas.  This kid ate a lot of those delicious rolls!!  

Back at home we laughed our way through "My Cousin Vinny" on TV. 

On Monday we went to Barnes and Noble and browsed, then got some sweets and drinks at their Starbucks cafe.  

She wanted to make brushetta for us.  So we went to Walmart to get the necessary ingredients.  She knew exactly what she needed. 

Back at home again she got busy with one of my aprons on! 

It was SOOOOO delicious!!!

Then we packed up, went over to Anthony and Lori's to take the pulled chicken I had made for them, then to Dick's shop.  He was getting off at 4:00 and we left from there to go meet Sam and Steph halfway. Always a fun time catching up a little bit!

On the way home we went to a car wash.  So did a LOT of other people. We had to wait in line a long time. The snow and slush and salt makes for very, very dirty cars!

This past week was pretty uneventful.  I went for a WALK one day!!  Because of my plantar fasciitis and the freezing weather I have not walked in months.  But it went up into the 50's that day, and the sun was shining, and I decided it was time to see how my feet would do.  Ahhh!  The did not hurt, and it felt glorious to be outside in beautiful weather.  Even this tree with no leaves was beautiful against the blue sky!

Another evening when I took the boys home from school there were beautiful sunset views from their driveway.

I spent this weekend catching up on some things and relaxing a bit more than usual.

I'm having some really, really frustrating issues with my computer.  It's an old MAC and it can no longer be updated to newer versions of software.  My music composer program has been seriously acting up and then my photos have frozen.  I'm truly surprised that by hook and by crook I was able to access my photos for this blog post.  

Hopefully Anthony will have time this week to figure out what to do next. 

And now some more pictures that cause this great grandma to do undignified things like kissing my phone screen!

Looking at her daddy!

Destiny's mom (on the right) was there last week.  On this picture Ozzy's mom is holding Ketsi.  They were celebrating Ozzy's younger brother's birthday.

Okay friends!  Goodnight!