The men visited with my dad in the lovely sunroom.

The ladies did the final preparations to the meal we had made.

The table was ready and inviting us to sit around it.

My brother (plaid shirt) prayed a blessing on our meal and on my dad.

Facing the camera: Dick, my brother-in-law Elvin (formerly married to my late sister Janet), my sister Doris, and her husband Dale. (Elvin's wife Pauline had a meeting at church and could not join us this time.)

Other side of the table: my brother's wife Nancy, my brother Dick, my sister Mary Ellen, my stepmother Mary, and my dad.

And one last picture - here's our girlie, looking so tall in her Tinker Bell outfit. She got to spend some time with her daddy today while we were at the birthday celebration.

What we've been doing around here

On Wednesday after school I picked Destiny up to take her to her regular doctor appointment. We're still trying to find the right dose and timing for her medication. I'm concerned that in this school year she has grown 2 inches, but lost 4 pounds. Now if only I could do that without trying!!

Since she had a dentist appointment first thing Thursday morning she stayed overnight. And since she had no school that day due to parent-teacher conferences, after the dentist visit I took her to Great Grandma Stauffer for the day, who took her to That Pet Place where she fell in love with a baby mouse. Hmmm. I was a mean grandma when I picked her up and said we were not going to go buy the dear little thing.

She stayed overnight again and today she came to school with me for the morning. Part of the time she was in with my first grade and kindergarten music classes, then she spent the rest of the morning with the first grade class she would have been in this year if she had still come to this school. It was a really good morning for her. After lunch my nephew's wife Jennifer came and picked her up, took her home and baked cookies with her. When I got there after school to pick her up she was in her glory trying their American Girl doll clothes on her doll. My brother's wife had made lots of them for her granddaughters' dolls. I'm going to have to borrow those patterns. I think it would be fun to make doll clothes.

I had a crazy busy day at school, as usual on Fridays. I didn't even have time to eat lunch. This evening I made a layer salad for tomorrow. My siblings who live in this area and our spouses will be taking dinner to my dad's place to celebrate his 85th birthday.

Keep praying for my brother-in-law Scott, who had the neck/spine surgery two weeks ago. Even though it was recommended that he go to a rehab hospital before going home, his insurance would not pay for that, so he was sent home from the hospital already last Friday night. He has been dealing with a fever and some breathing issues this week. On top of that, his parents, who have been available to help them out with childcare during this hard time, left today for a previously scheduled trip to Israel. Scott's sister and her family live there, and now that his parents are retired they are planning to spend seven weeks with them. How we sisters of Betty wish we were available to be there for her right now.

Our rainbow

We did not get a huge snowstorm yesterday like they did in the midwest, and we did not have the horrendous devastation of tornado damage like they did in the south, but we did have crazy weather. The high temp was 64 degrees, a record setter. As the cold air moved in we had rain and thunderstorms. Late in the afternoon I spied this rainbow. As usual, I did not have my camera with me, but my cell phone was put into action again. We had another torrential downpour after I went to bed last evening. My heart goes out to those whose lives have been so greatly disrupted by the tornadoes.

We hit the big time!!

I've been seeing a few other blogs who posted their pictures on the front cover of a magazine, so I just decided to try it before I go to bed. How funny! This was the only magazine cover on which the title did not hide Dick's face!

Back to work, lots to do

Well, it's back to work, work, work again. All of a sudden it's February and there's lots to do for spring. This evening I was arranging a new song for the instrumentalists in my middle school worship team - actually the one Stand in Awe that I posted the lyrics to last week. Wow, I wish you could have heard the first graders singing that song today. I told them afterward that I think it gave God goosebumps when He heard them sing it! They thought that was funny.

So these next weeks I will be working hard at getting all the songs ready for the worship team. Also, I am doing the musical, The Slingshot Heard 'Round the World (story of David and Goliath) with the Intermediate Chorus (grades 3, 4, & 5), and there is a LOT of choreography to learn. And the Middle School Chorus is learning songs for the Jr. High Choral Festival, and like I said before, I've found that it's very helpful to put the songs into my composer program on my computer and play them out through my digital piano when we practice them. But putting them into the computer is really time consuming. Last Tuesday I stayed after school to put one of the songs into the computer and I stupidly saved it on a 3 1/2 disk, not on the hard drive. The next day when I was all excited about having that song ready for Middle School Chorus period, I discovered to my horror, that the disk had somehow gotten corrupted and absolutely would not open up. I have lost so many songs on disks that have gone bad that you would think I would know better than to save them that way. I must remember to take my jump drive to school.

Since this is such a boring post so far, let me end with a funny story from the weekend. Our Friday lunch was provided by the Hilton as part of the conference package. We started out with rolls and a very brothy soup, as in a lot of broth with a few pieces of chicken and vegetables in it. That seemed like an OK appetizer. Next came the salad - a dinner plate of lettuce piled high. Now I am not talking about a variety of greens mixed with other veggies. This was just light green lettuce - a lot of it. On the table were croutons, grated cheese, and Caesar dressing. So we had ourselves some Caesar salad. The man beside me kept saying, "I don't think I've ever eaten this much lettuce before." He obviously is not a salad guy! Well, gradually we came to realize that the salad was really our entree. There was nothing else coming. And to add insult to injury, neither was there any dessert!! That broth, rolls, and salad was our entire meal! The man beside me said, "McDonalds, here I come." We all laughed and he said, "No, I am serious." And he was.

We had fun at school today sharing our various stories about that meager lunch and The Long Ride Home! But we all agreed, the good stuff we learned at the conference and the bonding we experienced with each other outweighed those other inconveniences. Also, it became very clear today that God's hand of protection was upon us on Thursday. As we entered Pittsburgh our driver actually missed the exit for the Hilton the first time, and we had to circle around it for a while. Knowing now that the brakes only gave out as we arrived, it occurred to us that it was the Lord's blessing that we missed that first exit. Suppose our driver had not known how serious the brake problem was until we were on our way home Friday? Thank you, Lord!

Here's a picture that one of the other teachers took of me when I was sleeping on the bus. Boy, am I ever glad my mouth wasn't hanging open!

Our trip to Pittsburgh

On Thursday school dismissed at 11:30, and immediately afterward our administrator, our MCC volunteer, and ten of us teachers made haste to the shopping center where we were to be picked up by a "coach" that another local Christian school was taking to the conference in Pittsburgh.

We were soon to discover that it wasn't quite the "coach" we had envisioned, but you know how it is for Christan schools - we need to save pennies every way possible. I guess this was one of those ways. The teachers from the other school had taken up residence in the front two-thirds of the bus, so we made our way to the back.

At this point we were still feeling quite happy and chipper.

Pictured above are, left to right, Rachel (2nd grade), Laura (kindergarten), Danelle (1st grade), Jean (kindergarten),

Pam (4th grade), Wendy (1st grade), Judy (librarian, computer teacher),

Ruthie (Bible and phys ed), Wendy (art and Pre-K), and Ren (our one-year volunteer through Mennonite Central Committee from Cambodia.) Ray, our administrator, was in the back beside Ren. You'll see him in the next picture.

Our other teachers who did not choose to go to this convention visited other schools instead.

So what do you do in a less-than-comfortable bus for five hours on a Thursday afternoon? Some caught a few ZZZZ's, others worked on craft projects, most of us talked and laughed most of the way there.

My favorite part of the afternoon was when the 4th grade teacher knelt backwards on her seat, started shaking it back and forth, saying, "I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored!" (The things we do when there aren't any students around, ha, ha!!)

We hit Pittsburgh during rush hour, so we had plenty of time to observe the myriad of bridges and crisscrossing highways.

This was our first sight of our hotel, the Pittsburgh Hilton.

Of course there were many other teachers from many other schools arriving as well. This was a convention of Mennonite schools from all over the east coast. While many of our staff and patrons are not from Mennonite churches, our school was begun by the Mennonite church, and we belong to this organization of Mennonite schools. We started out standing in a long line, holding all our things because we were too tight to let a concierge help us - typical Mennonites for sure.

We were delighted when our administrator motioned us over to a side desk where he had already registered all of us. He takes such good care of us.

After we were finally registered we found our way to our rooms on the 12th floor.

This was the view from our window.

Then the next order of business was finding something to eat. We were HUNGRY by 6:30 PM! Our administrator and our MCC volunteer chose to go out for Chinese food. We 10 ladies did not feel like going outside, so we went in search of the options inside the hotel. We found a fine dining room, but the prices looked prohibitive to us, so we opted for The Pub!! We observed that the fine dining room was empty, but there were other teachers eating in the Pub. We laughed as we realized that Mennonites, who hate to waste a penny, would rather eat in a pub than to pay too high a price for food!

Yep, we were sitting right next to the Coors Light poster! There was only one waitress on duty, so we waited incredibly long for our food. Some of us had been waitresses before we were teachers, so we had great mercy on her. We ended up getting to the first general session after the music was all finished.

Friday morning this was the view from our hotel window. It was a very dreary day outside and we were thankful to be able to stay indoors.

This is the ballroom where all of our general sessions were held and where our lunch was served. The keynote speaker was Shane Hipps from Arizona, author of the book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture. He was a very animated speaker that made us think HARD as we tried to take in all he was saying. Many of the things he spoke about were very sobering, challenging, and convicting.

In addition to general sessions there were networking groups and workshops to attend. This was the music teachers' networking group I attended in the morning.

Somewhere throughout the day we started getting rumors that the bus which had brought us to Pittsburgh had lost its brakes right after we had gotten off the day before. Late in the afternoon we were told that another bus was going to be brought out to Pittsburgh to pick us up, arriving at 8:30. We had planned to leave right after the last workshop at 5:30, so we suddenly had lots of time on our hands.

We decided to walk to nearby Max and Erma's to eat. The food was absolutely delicious. Here we are at our tables of four, chowing down and talking up a storm.

When we got back from Max and Erma's we were informed that the bus would arrive at 9:30 instead of 8:30. So we just hung out. Some went to see a play that was being put on, some watched TV in the lobby, I contented myself with my laptop and visiting Blogland.

The bus arrived MUCH later than 9:30, actually closer to 10:30. And what a bus it was! No bathroom, no luggage compartment, very narrow seats and rows, basically a glorified school bus. We crammed ourselves into the back end of the bus for The Long Ride Home. (Sounds like the title of a book or a play, doesn't it?? Believe me, if it were a play, it would be a comedy!) I don't think the bus had any shocks either, and the PA turnpike does not get any prizes for smoothness. The wind was howling outside, the windows steamed up so that we could not see outside, and we bumped along in the darkness feeling like we were in a missle heading for the moon. We laughed a lot, slept some, shared our snacks, and stopped for potty breaks twice.

What would have happened to that top suitcase if we had had to stop suddenly?

These two teachers were held hostage in the back corner behind the stacks of luggage.

After I got pictures of everyone else they made me get in a picture. I had not yet decided what to do with all my stuff, so I just sat on top of it. Boy, in that big blue coat I look like an elephant.

We finally arrived at our car pooling location at 3:30 AM!! Because our luggage had been crammed into every possible nook and cranny it took a while to find everything.

In the picture below, the black thing in the middle is our very dignified and beautiful art teacher lying on the floor of the bus in search of her bag!! Believe me, by that time we were ready to do whatever it took to get out of that bus!!

Still in Pittsburgh

Well, here I sit, still in Pittsburgh. We were planning to leave right after a workshop that ended at 5:30. However, we found out that the bus we came on had brake trouble, which we did not know about. Apparently, when we were dropped off yesterday, the brakes gave out completely!! Talk about the Lord's protection! On that bus were 12 teachers from our school and 15 - 20 from the other local Christian school. Anyway, we are waiting for another bus which is being brought out here for us. It is supposed to arrive by 9:30. I surely hope I can sleep on the bus. It's a 4 hour drive.

I gotta tell you about the stupid thing I did yesterday. We stopped for the bathroom at a turnpike plaza. After I came out of the stall and went to the sink to wash my hands, I waved my hands back and forth under the faucet, expecting the water to start running. Nothing. So I waved them some more, and finally looked at the woman at the sink beside me with a puzzled look. She said, "You need to pull that handle up." Can you believe it? It never occurred to me that I might have to turn the water on manually.

And today we had to check out of our rooms by 12 noon. There was a place for us to keep our bags until we would leave on the bus. This afternoon my roommate reminded me that we had left our coats in the closet! The front desk gave us a key, we went up the elevator to 12th floor, and found the cleaning lady in the hall. She had already cleaned our room and had taken our coats down to security in the BASEMENT!! She took us down the employees only elevator to the basement, through a maze of halls, past the laundry, past many, many employees, to the security desk. We had to sign to get our coats back! Then the cleaning lady stayed down there, and we had to find our way back. I kept feeling like someone would stop us and ask what we thought we were doing. I lost half an hour of a workshop till it was all taken care of.

Well, hopefully we'll get home safely yet tonight, and I'll catch up with you all and post more pictures tomorrow.