Sweet Sunday

This morning we went to a closer and smaller campus of Lisa and George's church, Grace Family Church.  What a wonderful place, powerful and excellent music, and a convicting message, the first in a series entitled Overwhelmed.   I loved every minute of being there. Here's a picture they posted today on the Grace Family Church website. At the Waters campus where we were, Pastor Greg was actually on the screen instead of live.  

I'm even posting a picture of the notes from the message, just in case you can see anything on them that is meaningful to you. 

Dick took this pic of Sophie and me sitting in the lobby after church.  

After church we came home and just relaxed over leftovers from the restaurant last evening.  

About mid afternoon, George had to head upstairs to his office for the rest of the day.  He's working on getting his MBA and he had a long, tedious exam to take.  I am proud of him and feel sorry for him simultaneously. Eventually it will be worth it. 

Dick and Lisa got busy cutting and putting up trim in Sophie's bedroom.  Lisa had just stained it this week.  I wasn't allowed to post any picture of it yet, because it's not finished.  But here are pics of them working. 

Sophie wanted to sew.  We cut up an old housecoat and made clothes for a treasured doll my mom had made for Lisa many years ago.  

Sophie was bothered by how dirty the doll was, so we soaked her in Oxyclean, then scrubbed her, spun her out, and put her in the dryer with big, fluffy towels for the entire evening.  She's a stuffed, cloth doll and felt as heavy as a live baby when she was wet!  Tomorrow I'll post a picture of her in her clothes. 

This evening Dick watched football, and Lisa and I caught up on some more things we hadn't yet talked about during this visit.  

Goodnight!

63rd Birthday

This was a really happy birthday.  We left here around 10 this morning to go to Sophie's gymnastics meet an hour away. Because George's sister Dawn was also going, and we really did not want to go in two cars, we smashed us four females into the back seat. That just made it more fun - most of the time. 😃  

Sophie had anxiety going into this meet due to falling off the beam last time. We tried to be very low key to keep her mind off it.  Here she is looking over the line-up when we first arrived. 

She did well in most of her events today and was proud of herself for not crying. This is the video of her beautiful floor routine. 

http://youtu.be/joEixh9jrew

Pictures of our crew today - 

Lisa and George

Sophie and her aunt Dawn 

Dick and I

After the awards ceremony we smashed ourselves into George's car again and made the trip back to Tampa.  We went to a gorgeous Italian restaurant, which I cannot remember the name of, and had a fantastic family style meal. We ended with desserts, one of them pumpkin cheesecake with a candle on top!

We were SO full when we left, and you guessed it - we had to smash ourselves back into the car one more time!  We were GLAD to get home!  

Once home, Sophie pulled out the Life game, and we had a great time playing Life and watching football at the same time.  Lots of good laughs. For once in my life I ended up the richest, haha!!

After the game was over, Sophie and I had fun looking through my YouTube videos  on her iPad. 

Meanwhile George and Dick fell asleep watching the rest of the football game!

I got happy birthday wishes from so many family and friends today. It was a really, really happy birthday.  I'm thankful for these 63 years. 

True vacation

We had a real vacation day today.  No schedule, perfect weather, beauty everywhere we looked.  Even a playful dog.  Sweet Nilla Bean. 

From Lisa's back screened in porch. 

The shelves in Lisa's beautiful kitchen. 

Looking out Lisa and George's bedroom window. 

From the front screened-in porch. 

Sophie was in school, George was at work, Dick helped Lisa to move some furniture, in preparation for some new bedroom furniture that was delivered today.  Lisa and I went to Home Goods and Whole Foods, then when Sophie got home I hung out with her while Dick went with Lisa to Lowes. 

George came home from work with food from Jazzy's BBQ. Scrumptious ribs, chicken, baked beans, cole slaw, baked beans, and little pumpkin and pecan pies. We ate in the back screened-in porch. It was already dark and getting quite cool, so George lit a new heater they had gotten, and it was just perfect. 

While we ate, Dick pulled up the live blog of Manheim Central's play-off game. They won - really won, 72-24!!  I'm so glad, because hopefully we will get to watch next week's play-off game. 

I had fun teaching Sophie how to play Scrabble this evening.  This afternoon we were making funny elf videos. Here's one of them!

Oops, the video doesn't show up in my camera roll from this Blogger app in my phone.  So I guess I can't show it to you.  Sorry about that. It was really funny. 

Tomorrow we go to Sophie's gymnastics competition. That's always a fun time. 

Good travel day

Our day of travel went well. After the drama that accompanied my last two trips to Florida, I was in no mood for taking chances.  

We were scheduled to leave BWI at 11:20, and we left home at 5:15!  Because we've had bad experiences with traffic tie-ups around Harrisburg, also on 83, and of course on the beltway, we decided this time to go the long way by Altoona, Bedford, Breezewood, and on into Maryland - the way we usually go to DC.  It was so much better!  And it meant we were on the beltway only a short distance.  We had our car parked, our bags checked, had gone through security, and were ready for breakfast 90 minutes before we were to fly.   I like it that way!

Our flights to Atlanta and then to Tampa were on time and were smooth.  We were in Tampa by 3:30 this afternoon. 

Lisa picked us up, and we went right to Sophie's school to pick her up.  

We had a relaxing evening here at Lisa's, just catching up and doing a few little projects.   Sitting by the pool is just what the doctor ordered!

I had a lot of fun with Sophie learning new games and things on her iPad. 

 

And now I need to SLEEP!

Outside my front door - in November!

I took more pics of my flowers this morning.  I am afraid everything will have been hit by frost by the time we get back from Florida next week.  That will be sad indeed.  

A couple of beautiful things

As I said before, this has not been the most beautiful Fall we've ever had.  Many trees are looking dull and brown, even many of the leaves on them.  But I was delighted to see this lovely sight when I drove into Anthony and Lori's place yesterday.  

Then I saw another beautiful thing inside the house - Austin's school picture.  My heart fell in love with this boy all over again!

I am posting this with the Blogger app on my phone. I seldom use it, because it usually drives me crazy. But I'm hoping to be able to post from here sometimes while we're in Florida. So I'm giving it another try.  

So much football, so much fun!

Our trip to Bjorn's football game on Friday was uneventful - no traffic jams, no rain, no snow (-:.  We arrived before the game started, just in time to see the seniors give their tribute and picture plaques to their parents.  Of course, Bjorn gave his to Fred and Deb, but Deb showed me later that his tribute was written to his parents completely in Swedish.  I'm disappointed I didn't think to take a picture of it.  I told Miki to have Bjorn send her a picture of it.

It brought back memories to me of the times we were out there in that parent line and our boys, Frank and Ray, gave their plaques to us (1997 and 2000).  I remember coming back to my seat and wishing I could be all alone to cry, because I was so moved by what they wrote.

Here's Bjorn in line, waiting for them to call his name.

Bjorn standing with Fred and Deb.

The game started off with some real competition.  It was scary to think that they could lose and thus set a very unhappy record - the team has never lost three consecutive games!!

By half time they were ahead.  The Solanco band performance was really good.  I have heard that Manheim Central's band performance is spectacular too, but we never got to see it.  Since we have only attended home games, their show was always pre-game, and we were never able to make it in time for that.

Our reserved seats were near to where the Manheim Central band sat, however, and we thoroughly enjoyed watching their very entertaining director.  Here's a little video of him that Dick took on Friday evening.

The game ended with a 34-3 victory.  Very, very happy players and fans!

It was especially sweet, because it was the last regular season game for this year and also the last regular season game for coach Mike Williams, who has coached football at Manheim Central for thirty-four years.  They held a tribute ceremony for him after the game, followed by a fireworks display.  He is the one in the red cap.  The winningest coach in the state of Pennsylvania!

Our great-niece Natalia, one of Bjorn's ardent fans, wanted her picture taken with Bjorn afterward!   He's holding a cut-out of Coach William's head!

Then we hit the road for home.  We were in touch with Jeremy and Mike throughout the evening as they travelled from DC to our house.  We all arrived within fifteen minutes of each other, sometime between 12 and 1:00 am.  Of course, Watson and Molly were along too.  They were GLAD to be out of the car and had to work off their pent-up energy.  Just like kids, they loved chasing each other around the circle of our rooms.  One time they ran right behind Dick's recliner, yanking the lamp cord out of the socket, and the lamp fell off the end table in the process.  But nothing broke!

The night was very short, since the guys were heading out early for a Penn State game.  I had put together a breakfast casserole on Friday and got up in time to put it in the oven Saturday morning.  Jeremy and Mike have a neighbor who grew up in State College.  His parents have an RV that they park at the Penn State games for tailgating.  So around 8 am our guys headed to their house to catch a ride to the game in the RV.  Jeremy's neighbor and his wife were also up from DC for the game.   As you can see, they were ready for cold and rain.  Yuck.  I was so glad to stay home!

During the game I kept track of things on TV while I prepared dinner.  It was a very tough, close game the entire three-and-one-half hours.  In the last two minutes I saw that the score was 17-19, Penn State ahead.  And just like that, Maryland got three points and won.  What a let-down for Penn State.

Here are a couple of picture Dick took at the game.  The classic 70's RV they rode to the game in!

He was so impressed with the Blue Band performance.  I would really love to see them sometime.

The guys had told me to pick them up at 5, which was about an hour-and-a-half after the game ended. Even then, getting there was CRAZY!!!  We live just five miles from Beaver Stadium, but there was so much one-way traffic and the resulting detours!  I was SO CLOSE, but had to go the other direction.  After I did pick them up, trying to get back home was just as bad.  

Anthony and Lori were already at our house by the time we arrived.  We had a great evening together.

No, Austin was not pouting.  He was keeping a constant vigil over the dogs in their cage right behind his chair.  How do you eat when there are dogs to play with????

Dick was so zonked after our short night and then being outside in the cold at the game all day, he went to our bedroom to take a short nap after dinner, but never heard his alarm.  You guessed it - he came out to the livingroom in a daze around 11:00 and decided to go right back to bed!  Jeremy and I stayed up talking till midnight, but it was nice to realize that with the time change, it really was only 11:00!

Dick and I went to our two church services this morning, then went out to eat with our kids.   We went to Happy Valley Brewing Company, a really great restaurant in a  refurbished barn.

We were a bit disappointed that they gave us a table in the lower level, which was darker with low ceilings. But we had so much fun and the food was excellent.  

Austin fell asleep before lunch and took a nap the whole time we were there!  Thankfully, it was padded bench seating and he could be completely comfortable. 

Anthony did not take a nap while we were there, except for my pictures.  (-:

We all came back to our house for a while after lunch.  Austin wanted more play time with the dogs.  I tried to get a picture of him with Molly and Watson.  We told Austin to sit down on the floor.  After he was sitting we said, "Now tell Molly and Watson to come over to you and sit!"  Just like that, Watson heard the word "sit" and that's just what he did right then and there!  So cute!

Trying to get both dogs to cooperate with picture taking was futile, however.  So we settled for this!

By 3:30 everyone had left and I got a nap.

And NOW!!!  Every minute counts as I accomplish all that has to be done between now and Thursday morning when we leave for our trip to Tampa.  CAN.  HARDLY. WAIT!!