It's snowing again! I was supposed to be having the final practice for the children's musical today, but now we're down to having it right before church tomorrow morning. Ugh. Not exactly the way I like to have things all down pat and practiced a dozen times. It's so different working with church kids once a week instead of school kids at least three times a week. But we'll do the best we can.
I decided I'm going to take pictures out the glass of the front door throughout the day to compare the snow. They said we might get up to 8 inches, but it usually is less than they say. Here are the first two so far.
9:00 AM
11:00 AM
Boy, has it been cold!! I thought Thursday was almost unbearable, 19 degrees and breezy in the middle of the afternoon. My hot flash years are all past, so I just have the hardest time getting warm. So yesterday I put more layers on, including tights under my jeans. Wouldn't you know - it stayed in the 30's all day and I was hot, hahaha!
So today I am staying in the house all day, and I don't care what the temperature is outside. I'm till in my robe, listening to one of Amy Grant's Christmas CDs, and there is a pine scented candle on the candle warmer. Nice, nice, nice.
For some reason I got the idea that I was in the mood for a dippy egg this morning. I have made them for Destiny many times in the past number of years, but I haven't actually eaten one for a long, long time. It was just as yummy as I remembered, especially with my crusty, toasted Ezekiel bread to dip into it.
Yesterday the sunrise was spectacular. It looked like the sky was on fire. I did step outside the front door to take a picture of it. Dick said on Facebook one time that if you ever want to see his wife in her pajamas, just drive by our house at sunrise. Toooo funny!
The snow that we got last Sunday got a hard glaze of ice on top of it this week. When the sun was shining on it, it was almost blinding! Here's a shot I took one morning.
Since I haven't taken any people pictures, I'll share the ones that have brought me much delight on Facebook this week. George's 42nd birthday was on Thursday, and Lisa posted this gorgeous picture of them. She said he doesn't have one gray hair on his head. He definitely is not a Stauffer!! He is such a truly wonderful man, husband, father, and son-in-law. I thank God for him every day and pray God's blessings upon him.
Lisa also posted the pictures of Sophie's gymnastics photo shoot. I put some of them into this collage. Such a sweet, beautiful girl.
Jenn posted this one of Sammy all dressed up to go visit the Christmas Village last evening. I have no idea how they got him to stand still for this! Just too cute!!
One of Thyda's friends posted this adorable picture from a banquet they attended this week. I'm still praying about that job for Ray!
So I'm thinking about letting my hair get a little longer. Not long. It's way too thin for that. And I'm too old. But just a bit longer. I started thinking about it after looking at this picture from last month. I like the length of my sisters' hair better than mine. But they both have much thicker hair than I do, so I don't know if I'll survive the process.
I looked back, and it's been at least 10 years since I've had my ears covered up. How about this bushiness in 2004?? Haha! Definitely don't want that look! So we shall see!
Well, on to some other form of indoor fun. My sewing machine is still sitting out, so I think I'll do something with that.
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Well, snow and cold temps seem to be affecting lots of people. We've had more snow at least twice since I posted on Saturday! But our home area in Lancaster County got even more than we did.
On Saturday I had a practice with the kids at Houserville from 12 - 2. I had to drive to Bellefonte (just 5 miles from here) to pick up one of the girls. It was a beautiful drive.
After the practice Dick and I helped to clean up from the toy sale that the Mommy Shoppe had, then we went to Walmart and did something for the first time ever. We bought a fake Christmas tree. There just was not going to be any time this year for us to make that wonderful trip to the tree farm to cut down our own tree. Besides, Dick was getting tired of the hassles of watering, needles falling, etc.
We came home and started decorating. What a mess. I had my sewing machine and stuff for making costumes all over the place, and then Christmas decorations too. We thought we would not have any time to work on it Sunday, so it felt pretty overwhelming when I went to bed Saturday night.
On Sunday we had church in the morning, then the cantata at Fillmore at 2:00. The snow had started before we went to Fillmore, and while we were doing the cantata it really was coming down. Our plans were to go to Anthony and Lori's afterward to babysit Austin and his little friend while the two couples went out to dinner. But those plans were cancelled due to the snow.
So it ended up that we did have time to work on the mess here at home. And another unexpected blessing was that while we were doing the cantata, I was looking at the costumes the shepherds, wise men, angels, etc were wearing and was very impressed with them. I asked Judy afterward where she had gotten them. She said she had bought them from Oriental Trading and was glad to let me use them. She has no idea how much time and hassle that has saved me this week. I still have to make a few things, but not nearly as many as I expected.
Here are some tree pictures.
I enjoy this view from my kitchen.
I have never had a CD player at home that could play more than one CD at a time. I always missed the way I used to put a stack of my Christmas records on. Sometime during the year Dick got a CD/cassette player/radio and speakers at a garage sale. He used it out in his shed! I got the bright idea on Saturday that we should bring it into the house for the Christmas season. I think he was pretty surprised that I wanted it in here. But I LOVE it! I can put 3 of my Christmas CD's in it and just listen away to my heart's content. And it has really great sound too. He loves when his need to collect things turns out to produce something I actually like!
It's definitely looking like winter. I think this is already the third time we've had snow this season. As always, I can't help but take pictures of the snow on the evergreens right outside my window.
I managed to get somewhat caught up this week after our big Thanksgiving family weekend. Dick and I are singing with the Fillmore Choir's Christmas cantata, Sing a Song of Christmas, which will be performing tomorrow afternoon. One of the ladies will be doing a medley of songs on her bell tree. I took this very short video at Thursday evening's practice. Nothing like bells to put you in the mood!
At Houserville we're preparing a children's mini-musical called Christmas Carol Special Report. It's only 20 minutes long, so we'll be performing it next Sunday morning. It does have a manger scene, so this week I made a trip to Goodwill to buy sheets, scarves, etc. to make some quick costumes. I miss having all those already-made costumes at Manheim Christian!!
I discovered online yesterday morning that Goodwill had actually taken $77.64 from my checking account, instead of the $11.64 I had spent! That required a trip to the bank and then to Goodwill yesterday to get things all fixed up. I think they should have given me an extra $10 for all that extra trouble, don't you??
And then I shopped for some groceries for Anthony and Lori before going to their place to cook dinner. I discovered after I got to their house that there were only 11 eggs in the carton! I guess someone stole an egg! So that required an extra trip back to Giant to get a new dozen of eggs. It was raining a very COLD, almost on the verge of icy rain by then. I was so glad to get home later.
So I posted on Facebook last night about the eggs, and it started a conversation about checking inside the egg carton before buying. That honestly never occurred to me!! Where have I been? Upon thinking on it, I realized that I haven't used store-bought eggs most of my life. I grew up on eggs straight from the chicken house, and during most of our years in Lancaster County we either had our own chickens or got our eggs from friends who had chickens. So I guess that's how I missed out on that "Always check the eggs before buying" advice!
My house has no tree and no Christmas lights or decorations yet. Oh dear. Maybe after today's practice with the kids at Houserville we can do something about that. But I have costumes to make too….. Yes, it's beginning to feel like Christmas.
This day is almost over, but I still want to write the story of how Ray joined our family. Today is his 31st birthday. Here's a recent picture that Thyda sent me - Ray all dressed for a job interview. Actually, yesterday he had a second interview for a job he really wants. The interview went well, so we are PRAYING it will result in a job offer.
Ray joined our family just a few days after his 14th birthday in 1996. That year had been a tough one for us. In May Dick had been diagnosed with lymphoma after months of extreme pain and lots of testing. Six months of chemo followed - the kind that made his hair fall out. But he made it through.
That fall Frank (a junior) had decided to quit basketball and try wrestling instead. As Dick and I ate out for my birthday, we discussed the fact that we would have no one playing basketball for the first time in years. (Anthony had played it all through high school and then Frank for a couple of years.) We realized that we would really miss that. I joked, "Well, we'll just have to get another basketball player."
The next week we got a call from our foster agency asking if we would consider taking a 13-year-old boy. And, yes, he did like basketball! But after discussing it, we decided that maybe we should say "no" this time because of Dick's health and the fact that we already had so many boys keeping us our lives a little too interesting.
A few more weeks went by. We got another call from the foster agency asking if we would take a child for an emergency placement, just for the weekend. I said we could do that, then asked more about the child. They admitted that it was the same one they had asked us to take a few weeks prior. Hmmm.
Dick was planning to go to a Manheim Central play-off football game at Hershey on the Friday evening of that weekend, so we decided that the boy would just go along with him. The caseworker arrived with him just a few minutes before Dick was planning to leave. I opened the door when they arrived, saw that boy, and fell in love. I immediately knew that we would be having him for more than just the weekend, and I felt like the agency knew that would happen if we just met him. And the rest is history. In just a few weeks, this boy that had been so quiet in the previous placement that they thought perhaps he should be evaluated for some kind of disability, became a loud and funny guy that caseworkers barely recognized. He's still our loud and funny guy.
I dug up this family picture taken the first week after he joined our gang. Some of us had a bit more hair!
Back row: Sam, Dick & I, Frank. Front row: Jeremy, Anthony, Lisa, Ray. Miki was married and living in Sweden by then.
And that's all for tonight.
What a quiet house I am sitting in right now! After four fun, crazy days of people and noise, it is now just Thyda and me and the sound of the Mannheim Steamrollers on TV!
On Thursday Dick and I cleaned and prepared food for the troops. This year I brined the turkey ahead of time, and it was BY FAR the most moist, scrumptious turkey we ever had. We all agreed on that. Because there were going to be so many of us (17), we decided to have our Thanksgiving meal at Anthony and Lori's house. It's bigger and there are more toys. We ate around 5:00 and did it cafeteria style.
I wanted Anthony to get pictures of everybody with his good camera, but that evening we only managed to get pictures of Frank, Destiny, and Jvon with Frank's girlfriend Alexia and her son Dion.
And of Ray and Thyda. We had such good intentions of his getting pictures of everyone else over the weekend, but it never happened. )-:
Later in the evening most of us went to our house. Jeremy, Mike, and their dogs stayed at Anthony and Lori's.
Destiny and J'von had fun with Photo Booth on the computer. I sang and played the song Germs, My Invisible Dog to the kids. They loved it. Dion was especially intrigued with the piano.
Sammy had an unfortunate encounter with the corner of a wall in a game of chase. He got quite a goose egg, poor baby.
Destiny begged for us to play our favorite game, "Dictionary", but we could only get people willing to play Scrabble instead.
So where did we sleep this many people in our little house? Dick and I had our own bedroom. Sam, Jenn, and Sammy had the spare bedroom with double bed and air mattress. Destiny and J'von had an air mattress and a cot in the den.
Frank, Alexia, and Dion had air mattresses in the dining room.
Ray and Thyda had the sofa and love seat in the living room.
These pictures were obviously taken Friday morning. Most of the young adults had talked into the wee hours of the morning, so when Sammy woke up at the crack of dawn with his loud talking and squealing in our very open floor-plan of a house, I decided to take him back to our master bathroom and let him play in the tub for a while.
Later Jenn and Thyda helped me to make pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Here's the first crew...
….and the second crew. Anthony came at some point after an attempt at a Black Friday Walmart deal. Dick was at work. )-:
Sam, always the child-at-heart, went outside to play in the snow with the kids.
Even Destiny enjoyed Austin's trains.
About mid-day, Frank and his crew needed to leave. I had hoped Destiny could stay for the entire weekend, but that didn't work out this year.
Most of the crew went Black Friday shopping in the afternoon. I went grocery shopping with Sammy. In the evening we had chili and the fixin's for dinner and just hung out here afterward.
Sammy showed off his new camouflage jammies.
How cute is this??? Watson and Molly with Mike.
I wish you could hear Sammy singing Rock-a-bye, Baby.
On Saturday morning I made scrambled eggs with home fries and sausage for breakfast, then ran some errands.
In the afternoon Jeremy, Jenn, Thyda, and I went to see The Book Thief. What an INCREDIBLE movie!! I highly recommend it. Now I really want to read the book.
Jenn had made pulled pork in the crock pot, so that was dinner for most of us. Later all the young adults went out and we kept Austin and Sammy.
You can see his boo boo on this pic.
Austin NEVER tires of trains. Never.
But he did take time out from them to play with balloons and jump on the pillows.
And to listen to me read. This is always my favorite part. First time with these two boys together.
One thing I have no pictures of is the huge stack of photo albums I pulled out from the boys' teen years. They produced lots and lots of laughs!
This morning we had church, of course, followed by my practice with the kids for the Christmas musical. Then we hurried home. I had made my curried sweet potato and chickpea stew for lunch. YUMMM!!
Dick and Ray were busy getting all their stuff carted out to the truck, and they left for the Stauffer deer hunting cabin in Juniata County, probably by 1:30. Gradually everyone else, except for Thyda, left too. Because we never got the rest of the pictures with Anthony's camera, I insisted on taking some with my phone, even though they're not even close to the quality of Anthony's pictures. It's the people on the pics that I love.
What a great memory-making weekend. I'm so glad that they are willing to come such a distance to be with us for the holidays. It really blesses this mamma's heart.
