Dick and Jean Stauffer Family Reunion - part one

Okay.  Here we go!  This past weekend is going to have to be three separate posts.  There are just tooooo many wonderful pictures to share.  Some of these are mine, at least one is from Lisa, and many are from Anthony.  

Early on Saturday morning Miki and Ingo, Dick and I loaded up both our vehicles and headed for Lancaster County.  Our destination was Grace Community Fellowship near Manheim, our home church.  They allowed us to have our "Dick and Jean Stauffer Family Reunion" there.  (I have to say it that way, because simply saying "Stauffer Reunion" sounds like it means Dick, his brothers, and parents.)

Gradually the troops arrived.  

We ate.

And we had fun outside!

Later the local Witmers and Stauffers dropped in to see our crew.   We ate some more, had more fun, and got our family picture taken.  I'll post pictures from that part of the day next time. 

Movies, Harleys, and cookies

We're having a good time this week, having quality time with Miki and getting to know Ingo.  What a sweet, unselfish, caring man he is!  I'm so happy for Miki.  

On Monday Dick and I both worked, and Miki and Ingo had a much needed "down" day after their travels and our busy weekend.   In the evening we enjoyed watching the movie The Butler.  Ingo is a very expressive movie-watcher!  Sometimes I wished he would be quiet, other times I enjoyed how much the emotions in the movie affected him.  It really was fun.

Yesterday Miki dropped me off at the office and they took my car and my hand-drawn map, for which I am very famous, and they had a day exploring State College and shopping.  In the evening Dick took them to our local "Harley Heaven."  Miki is a Harley girl, so she was in her glory.

Today I stayed home and baked cookies for the weekend.  You know something special is coming up soon when my kitchen table looks like this!

How sweet to have a house guest who asks where my vacuum cleaner is and then uses it!

She's HERE!!

I can't keep up, I can't keep up!!  I want to blog about our fun weekend with Miki, and I now discover I have not updated here since last Saturday!  Oh dear.

So first of all, I need to share about last Sunday evening.  I went to the CentreSings Finals competition. The talent was AMAZING, again from a little third grade girl to a retired Penn State professor.  Even the judges performed this time, one of which just blew us away with his incredibly powerful voice.  I had a wonderful time!   This is a video I took of the winner, a 12-year-old girl who has already sung and acted in New York - Hannah Richardson.  This was her final song after she was announced as the winner, an Etta James song, At Last.  If you don't have time to listen to all two minutes of it, start at 1:00.   You will not believe she's 12!

This past week was all about working at all my jobs plus getting READY for the weekend.  My mind was in so much turmoil over the details of Miki and Ingo getting from the JFK airport to here on Friday evening.  I truly did not feel like we could go pick them up, since Dick had chemo this week, and he always feels the worst on Friday and Saturday afterward.  About midweek Lori informed me that she had been communicating with Miki and decided that she would take the Megabus from here to Manhattan, then a train from there to JFK to meet them, then do the reverse trip with them.  She's a seasoned New York traveller, so it did not feel overwhelming to her.  That brought incredible peace to my mind.  

So it came to pass that on Saturday morning a little before 4:30, she delivered them to our door.  Of course, even at that hour, we sat and talked until Dick had to leave for work at 7 am.

After that the rest of us slept for a while.  Thoughout the day Miki and I had lots of opportunity to talk and talk and talk, good heart to heart talks.  It was SO GOOD at last.  Ingo gave us lots of opportunity to laugh, right from the beginning.  They and Lori had come up with a prank to play on me upon arrival - they pretended that Ingo could not speak or understand English.  I was thinking, "Wow, I never thought to ask her about that.  This will be interesting."  Then at some point  (after about fifteen minutes!) they admitted it was a joke on me!

In the afternoon we went to Giant to get some things they needed.  They were overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of choices in our stores!

In the evening Anthony and Lori came over for our first cookout of the year.  It was a gorgeous evening.  Dick made the most delicious chicken breasts on the grill.  

Later we came inside and watched the disc of 175 FUN pictures Miki had brought along from their wedding party last Friday.  

This morning we had the pleasure of introducing them to all our friends at both Fillmore and Houserville.  Ingo is a very enthusiastic worshiper and it was great to have him in our midst.  Miki and I sang a song together at both churches.  It had a been a long, long time since we'd sung together and we both enjoyed it thoroughly.  This is the video Dick took with his phone. 

Today we took much needed naps.  Austin was here too for his nap.  Afterward he discovered that Miki is a really fun playmate (thus giving me time to catch up here.)  And now Anthony and Lori are here again and I'm enjoying listening to the fun and conversation.  I'm feeling so very blessed

June, here we come!

This has been a week of catching up and looking ahead.  June 1st is tomorrow.  I love June!!  I think it comes from years of teaching and the relief that came with June.  It was always the month that was the longest away from the beginning of the next school year.  And now the part I like the most is that it's the lightest month of the year.  I can wake up so early with no problem because of how light it is.  

This June will be one for the books if all goes as planned.  A week from today our daughter Miki and her new husband will be here from Sweden.  We have not seen her in person since she visited with her children in 2008!  I am very, very eager to have them here.  

In two weeks, on the weekend of June 14 and 15, we will be getting all seven of our children and their families together for the first time since Lisa's wedding in 1998.  Sometimes when Miki visited us, Lisa and George got tickets for them to Florida for part of the visit.  Another time Miki and Lisa were both visiting us at the same time, but some of our boys couldn't make it.  So I PRAY that everything works out for everybody, and we will really and truly have them all together.  We'll be going to Lancaster County for that weekend to make it easier for everyone.  I wish we could afford some great vacation spot for this event, but I know we'll have a good time anyway.  

This is the crew,  not in order of age, but in the order in which they came to our family.  I could sit and look at this collage for hours.  Aren't they a great bunch of kids?

As you can probably tell, Lisa, Anthony, and Jeremy were born to us.  They have that distinctive Stauffer look.  The other four came to us as teenagers.   We have funny stories about that.  

Miki is just fifteen years younger than me, and we got such a kick out of the new birth certificate that arrived in the mail after we adopted her.  It listed her father as Richard Stauffer, age 16, and her mother as Jean Witmer, age 15.  I said, "Boy, our descendants will have fun with that tidbit of information some day!"   One time when she was visiting I had her come to school to talk to the kids about Sweden.  When I introduced her to our middle school I said,  "This is my daughter Miki.  I was 15 when she was born."  And I paused.  The look on their faces was too funny.  Then I said, "But I didn't get to meet her until she was 14."  

The big joke was that some people just assumed that the boys were our biological sons because Dick, with his dark curly hair, could have passed for another ethnicity when he was younger.  The funniest story is from his basketball-playing days at the Lititz Rec (after the boys were grown up).  From time to time one of the boys would go with him to play when they were home.  One evening several of them joined him, and they all ended up on the same team.  One of the boys mentioned that all the Stauffers were on one team.  Another player looked at him and said, "Is he yours too, Dick?"  Dick said that he was, to which the guy said, "Man, Stauffer, you were ALL over town!"  We have cracked up over that so many times since then!

One interesting fact:  Sam, Frank, and Ray never lived in our home at the same time as Miki.  She married and moved to Sweden in 1991, Sam and Frank did not come to us until 1994, and then Ray came in 1996.  But during some of Miki's extended visits they became well acquainted.  

Many other children and teens joined our family for periods of time, but we've lost touch with all of them except a very special sibling group, Nicole, Krista, and Joseph, who were adopted by a wonderful couple.  Thanks to Facebook, we are able to be more in touch with them than we've ever been in the 22 years since they left our family.  

If I ever had the time, I could write a book that would make me a millionaire, hahaha!

Memorial Day Weekend, part three

It was nice to wake up Monday morning at Sam and Jenn's with nowhere to go.   We had a wonderful, laid back day at their place.  And the weather was just PERFECT!!!  

Dick was an eager beaver first thing in the morning.  He found a screen panel to replace the glass in the front door.  Then he replaced the torn screen in the sliding glass door.  He had some help with that!

Then he made some adjustments to the mower and proceeded to mow some of the lawn and blew the maple "wings" off the blacktop.  He loves that mower!

When Sam and Ray discovered all that he had already gotten done that morning, one of them asked,  "What is Dad ON??"  I couldn't help myself and jokingly answered, "CHEMO!!"  

Later he took his turn to relax.  Here he and Sammy were watching Sam do some of the mowing.

Somewhere along the line I found my phone like this.  These BOYS!!  They said they were staging an intervention to help me get over my snake phobia.  I was dismayed to hear that San has already found a few snakes (non-poisonous) around their place.  GRRRRR.  

Then we were getting hungry.  Ray was the grill man and he did a great job.

As we ate I wanted pictures.  I love this one.  Jenn has her "pregnant glow," doesn't she?  Their baby girl is due the beginning of August.  We can't wait!!!  

Getting a picture of us was not as easy.  My husband just wasn't cooperating.  

I thought we got a good one, but Sam said, "Uh, Mom, I don't think you'll want to use this one."  Oh dear.  I didn't know that piece of cheese was hanging out of his mouth.

OK, next try.  Look at that hat.  What am I gonna do with this man?

I guess this one will do!

Meanwhile Ray was chillin' in the sun.

And where was Sammy?  Right there in the carport sleeping in his wagon.  For a couple of hours!  

He woke up just in time for our skpe session with Thyda.

We had a lot of fun talking with her.  Ray even took her on a tour of the house!  I love technology!  And I miss Thyda, but this helped.

We even got to see sweet Leo.

Then Sam got Sammy's Jeep out.  Oh my goodness!!  I was just cracking up watching him.  His body language on these pictures is just hysterical!

After a while he got tired of trying to steer properly, and he slid over onto the passenger seat and wanted Sam to get into the driver's seat.  He's such a funny boy!

And so adorable!  His shirt says,  "I'm the big brother."  He'll be a wonderful, gentle big brother. 

Later Frank came with Lauren and Jada.  He has been working on fixing Sam and Jenn's air conditioning and came on Monday to "calibrate" it, whatever that means.  But he knows his stuff, that's for sure.  

Cute cousins!

That wagon is such a wonderful, multi-purpose item.  

I love this picture of our "boys".

We left for home shortly after 6:30.  Such a full, wonderful weekend.  

Two things missing though.  Grandma Mary had been away with some of her boys at a cabin for most of the weekend.  I was so torn as we left Sam and Jenn's on Monday, because we practically passed her house on the way to the turnpike.  I really wanted to stop in, but I really wanted to get home.   This time home won out.  The other thing missing was time with Destiny.  She made some poor choices last week and was grounded. That made me sad on several levels.  

And where was Austin all weekend?  In New York with his other grandma.  Here's a picture Lori sent me from the beach.  I saw him yesterday and he is BROWN!!  Lucky boy with that beautiful skin.

I'm still trying to catch up with so many things.  Gotta run!

Memorial Day Weekend - Part Two

On Sunday morning, after having a fun time playing with Sammy, we went to our home church, Grace Community Fellowship.   SO MANY dear friends!  It was just amazing.  Three college-age girls, Steph, Karlee, and Hannah, whom  we have loved dearly from childhood on up were also home for the holiday.   It's a totally rare occasion that any of us are there on the same Sunday.  It was hard to get a chance to talk with everyone, and there are some that I long to have extended time with.  Maybe someday.  

We went to Dick's parents' for lunch.  What a precious time we had with them!  There's such a sense of peace in their quiet house surrounded by the beautiful woods.  After lunch we napped.  When I woke up I looked out the kitchen window and this is what I saw.

We love them so much.   Here are more pics from our time with them.

Dad dared us to find a weed in his gardens.  He said they don't stand a chance.

After we said our goodbyes to them we went a few miles away to say goodbye to my home place.  This is the house my family moved to when I was eleven years old.  Years later, after my mother passed away and my dad married Mary, they bought a smaller house, and my sister Doris and her husband bought this house.  And now they have recently moved to big, beautiful home with their son and family and will be selling this old homestead in June.  I did a walk-through, but so many years have passed since I moved out of that house (almost 43!) I really didn't have a lot of sentimental feelings in saying goodbye to it.

From there we went to East Petersburg to see my sister Mary Ellen.  She was having a cookout with some friends.  They were such a fun bunch of ladies.

From there we went to see my sister Doris's new, BEAUTIFUL home.  She gave us the grand tour.  Oh my goodness!!!!  I just love everything about it, and I'm so happy for her and her son's family to have found this wonderful place.

And then we headed back to Sam and Jenn's where we had more fun playing with Sammy and hanging out with Sam, Jenn, and Ray.  After Sammy went to bed we watched the movie Captain Phillips, which some had not seen before.  It wasn't quite as intense as the first time I watched it, but still intense enough.  When Ray was deployed his ship had had a part in one of the Somali pirate tragedies, so it was interesting to watch it with him.  

Stay tuned for part three.  LOTS of fun pictures from Monday.