I certainly don't have anything to write about this week that compares to my last two posts! I can hardly even remember what I've been doing! It's good I post pretty regularly on FB so I can jog my memory! On Sunday we went to our service at GBRV and then to Calvary. The boys came home with us for the afternoon. Austin played with the Lincoln Logs we recently got from Dick's parents.
Hunter had fun with our little Playmobil farm. He took a good nap too, and so did I.
He melts my heart. Look at those eye lashes!
Here are some pictures I took this week.
Lori's hydrangea blooms, not mine. Sadly, ours did not bloom again this year for the second year in a row.
I love this chair in our bedroom. We got it from Dad Stauffer when we moved into this house nine years ago. It's great for rocking babies and reading to grandchildren before naps. And I can swivel it around, pull up the blind, and have a conversation with the Lord as I look toward the mountain.
Watching a storm approach Wednesday evening as we drove toward home.
We had driven over an hour to the Lewisburg area for a very important purchase. A new truck for Dick!! Not new, of course, but very well taken care of by one owner and much, much lower mileage than the one he had.
He was like a kid getting a new toy! I still haven't taken a ride in it, but he says it drives really, really nice. Now he's looking for a cap for the bed.
Do you like red beet eggs? The other week Dick's brother gave us some potatoes and onions from his garden and one big red beet. Last week I cooked it, sliced it, and added sugar, vinegar, salt, pepper and cloves to the juice, hard boiled five eggs (because that's all I had), and put everything together in a jar for a few days. Ahhh. SO delicious!! We ate all of the eggs, so I cooked a few more to put in the juice again. Of course, these are not as flavorful, because it's the second round for the juice, but they're still delicious.
I've been having too much fun with SnapChat since our vacation. Lisa and Sophie taught me how to use the voice-changer filters. One of the filters is a meerkat with the funniest voice, but Lisa is the only one that consistently has him in her filter line-up. So I always use the little old lady filters to send messages to them. Lisa always answers back in her meerkat guise, and it cracks me up every time. It doesn't take much to humor us! I discovered I could save mine and upload them to YouTube so I could share some with you here, haha! They're each just a few seconds long.
Yesterday morning the meerkat was in my line-up of filters!
But alas, he was no longer there this morning!
Here's the picture I was referring to, haha! Hmmm. Wouldn't it be nice if the smooth skin came with the silver hair??
Today Bianca turns five years old!!! And she'll be off to kindergarten soon! This evening we'll go to her birthday party. That will be the beginning of a big weekend down home. That will be the next post. Gotta run!
Tuesday Tuesday morning started off with a fun breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I guess I was having too much fun, because I didn't take one picture. Lori wasn't with us for breakfast because she was at Fed Ex tracking down a poster she needed for her presentation which had mistakenly been sent to Miami!! Lisa needed to leave after breakfast. She would be flying to Rhode Island the next day to take testing for her certification as a strength coach, and she had a lot of prep to do for that trip and test. We were really thankful she could be with us as much as she was. After Lori was back with her poster and all dressed up for her day at the conference, the rest of us went down to the pool for another fun day. We had reserved the grotto again, which was a really good thing when we got a windy rain storm later in the day. After that passed, everyone was allowed back in the pool again.
Lori joined us late in the afternoon.
The most fun part of the day was early evening when the pool right outside our grotto was emptying out and our gang played a fun ball game for a really long time. I just love seeing the kids, the parents, and the grandpa having such a good time together. The grandma was the photographer, haha!
Later we went down to the lake for some more fun. But I gotta tell you this story first!! George was behind me on our way to the lake (which is right behind the pool area). Not far, no walking through the woods or anything. He said that right after I walked by the building where they hand out the beach towels, a black racer snake, about 5 feet long, slithered right across where I had just walked. A man was jogging and was about to step on it when George yelled for him to watch out!! The snake slithered off into the bushes. YIKES!!! I am so thankful that didn't happen until our last day, because you better believe I was looking at all the lovely bushes and plants a little differently after that! And I started imagining what if a snake had fallen into our grotto through one of the openings in the ceiling??? Oh my goodness!! Unbelievable!
So we had fun at the lake anyway. Again I was the photographer as the younger ones tried the water bikes and trikes and pedal board.
Here are George and Sophie on the bikes.
Lori and the boys went on a trike.
Then Lori tried the pedal board and loved it. Looked like good exercise, like a stair stepper, only a lot more fun!
These swings were by the lake.
Then we packed everything up and said goodby to our three days of fun at the pool. What a fantastic place!! George and Sophie had to hit the road for home after that.
So sad to say goodby. Austin and Hunter are Sophie's only biological cousins, and she just loves connecting with them. After they left she sent me a text message asking if I had any pictures of Austin at age three. She was comparing facial features between her 3-year-old pictures and the boys at that age (Hunter's current age.) So I went back to my 2012 blog posts and found her some pictures of 3-year-old Austin. I also found this collage I had made that summer!! Sophie at age three in 2008, and Austin at age three in 2012. I should take one like this with Hunter now.
We got cleaned up and dressed for dinner and I couldn't help but take this adorable picture. "Nobody helped me to dress me yet? No problem, I'll just sit here and read!"
On our way out of the hotel that evening I took these pictures. Everything was so very beautiful!
The view right outside the elevator on our floor.
The view out over the lobby at the end of our hallway.
That evening there was no storm (finally) and we drove to Disney Springs to eat at The Polite Pig. What a wonderful time walking through the little town, and what scrumptious food!! I got the slider trio - pulled pork, brisket, and fried chicken. So delicious!!
We were worn out when we got back to the hotel!! The vacation part of our vacation was now over, because checking out and getting to the airport on time the next morning was no vacation, haha!!
Wednesday
Some of us did take a little time to eat some breakfast the next morning. I just love their yogurt, fruit, and granola parfait. And their coffee, of course! Hunter was as cute as could be with his new Disney merchandise from the evening before.
There was no way we were getting all of us and our luggage into the rental SUV, so Dick and I got an Uber ride to the airport and took Austin with us.
By 11 AM we were all aboard! Austin sitting with me, Lori and Hunter right in front of us, Dick across the aisle, and Anthony two rows in front of Lori.
Goodbye, Orlando!
There were a lot of children on that flight. When we landed in Philly it seemed to take FOREVER to get off. At one point before we had pulled into the gate they said that everyone had to have their seatbelts on. A boy right behind me said, "I have to go to the bathroom." His mom said, "Well, you'll just have to hold it." A little later I heard an attendant say, "You need to stay in your seat!" The boy's mother said, "He's going to pee his pants if he doesn't go to the bathroom." So they let him go and he was back in his seat in no time! His mom said, "Did you make it on time?" When he said he had, she breathed a loud sigh of relief!
THEN, after we had pulled into the gate and were waiting and waiting to be able to unload, a little boy who had been sitting across the aisle with his grandma (his mother was sitting beside me in the aisle seat) started to THROW UP!!! His desperate mother grabbed a cup, but it was not large enough, so I quickly handed her the big plastic bag that held one of Austin's toys he had gotten at Disney Springs. But alas, some of it had gotten on the floor and on the mother's hands. So I dug the pack of Wet Ones (which I always carry) out of my purse and handed her the whole thing. The smell was getting to my nose and my stomach. Thankfully Lori was very occupied with Hunter and did not notice or she would definitely have thrown up too. Whew!! We were glad to get into that airport!
We had to take the shuttle bus to our terminal. Everything is an adventure to Hunter! And Austin just couldn't resist trying some of his Ninja moves! It was a fun ride!
It was a short flight to State College, just enough for Hunter to fall asleep and need to be carried out of that little plane and down the steps. Bless his strong mamma! And then Lori's luggage was not there. She said it happens so often, which is why she seldom checks her luggage in, but this time she did. Ugh!!
It was nice to get home before the day was over and have time to do come catching up. Home Sweet Home!
This was a vacation to cherish in my heart forever. Thank you, Anthony and Lori, for including us. Thank you, George and Lisa, for taking time out of your busy week to be with us. It was WONDERFUL!!
On Saturday afternoon Lori and the boys and I left the State College airport soon after 4:30. The little planes that take us to Philly often have just one seat on one side of the aisle and two on the other! So Austin and I shared a row, Lori and Hunter were behind us. Hunter exclaimed loudly over everything! The flight to Philly was less than an hour long.
We ended up having much more time than planned at the Philly airport. Our 7:39 departure time was changed to 8:45. So we had plenty of time to eat and shop, etc. I decided that since the night would get very late, I should have another coffee. I walked to a nearby coffee and snack shop and asked if they had iced coffee. The young man said he did not. He said, "I have hot coffee." I replied that I was not in the mood for hot coffee, was there anywhere else nearby that would have it? He wasn't sure, but directed me way back toward the middle of the terminal. I said I didn't have time to go that far. So I asked, "Do you have ice?" He said he did. I said, "So could you fill a coffee cup with ice and then put coffee in it?" He said, "Then it would be cold." I said, "Yes, that's what I want." He reluctantly agreed to do it and said this would be a first for him. He put ice in a cup and I had to tell him to please fill it all the way to the top with ice. Then he obediently put coffee in the cup, leaving just enough room for me to add cream, as I instructed him to do. I walked away from there, sipping that delicious iced coffee through a straw, and wondered, "What rock has he been hiding under???" I told Lori about it when I got back to our gate, and she was just as surprised as I was, and so were the ladies sitting across from us who heard my story. So we landed in Orlando very late. Hunter was sleeping by then and Lori was carrying him until he finally woke up and could walk. We had to wait forever at baggage claim and then had to go out to car rental and decide on an SUV that would be big enough. It was about a half hour from there to the hotel where Lori's conference was being held. We were trying to hear the GPS lady directing us from my phone, but Hunter was in the mood for singing VERY LOUDLY!! Half the time he was just making songs up, and we even liked some of them. They kind of had a minor Hebrew sound and rhythm, hahahaha!! By the time I decided to take a video he was singing a more familiar tune.
At last we arrived, but then Lori needed to take the car to a distant parking lot and get the shuttle ride back, so Hunter and I got out with all the luggage while Lori took Austin with her to the parking lot. The lobby was a beautiful place to wait, and Hunter was reading.
It was 2:00 AM when I was finally in bed on the pullout in Lori and Anthony's suite on the 12th floor.
I did not notice until morning that outside my room was a large private deck!
Sunday
We went down for a late breakfast in the morning.
All the food on the buffet was beautiful and delicious. And like everything else, the place was gorgeous.
Hunter loved the fruit. Austin was more interested in trying to solve his 7x7 Rubik's Cube. He did eat some cold cereal - out of all those choices, lol!!
The views from the windows and decks were AMAZING!! It was a spectacularly beautiful place!
Then we got ready to head down to the pool area. Again, what a beautiful place! There were several different pools and rock formations with "tunnels" you could walk through to get from one place to another. There was also a beautiful lake.
After a while Lisa, Sophie, and George arrived from Tampa, and we had a lot of fun together for the rest of the afternoon.
George left to go pick up Dick and Anthony from the airport. We got ourselves changed and ready for dinner.
We were planning to get a shuttle ride to The Polite Pig, a favorite BBQ restaurant at Disney Springs. But alas, we had missed the last shuttle (8 pm), and besides, a very bad storm was descending upon the area.
So after the guys arrived, we went down to the main restaurant (where we had eaten breakfast) and were informed that there would be an hour-long wait for a group our size. So we put our name in and then went up to the lobby, deciding that we would just get something to snack on from the little lobby restaurant. The server told us it would probably take an hour to get the soft pretzels we ordered! But she promised she would put it in as a rush order.
Anthony said, "What's the chance we would go down to the main restaurant when they're ready for us and then we would still have to wait another hour for our food down there?" We decided to just stay where we were. We pushed a few round tables together, put the kids on a couch at the one end, and we had an AWESOME, relaxing time right there in the lobby. Looking at these pictures just makes me want to go back there and do it again. Our server was great, and the food was too. And there WAS a really, really bad storm most of the evening. The lightning was pretty spectacular in a place with so many windows.
That night Dick and I had our own room, which was right adjacent to Anthony and Lori's suite, with a door that connected them. So it was like a big two-bedroom suite with living room, kitchen, and deck.
George, Lisa, and Sophie had a room on the 6th floor. We were just thankful they were able to be in the same hotel. The nutrition conference that Lori was there for was huge. There were people walking around everywhere with conference badges on. Lori tried to stay incognito as long as possible, haha!
Monday
Lori was not the only one that needed to plan our time together around a work schedule. George and Lisa had to do that as well. They had come in two cars from Tampa. George regularly works two days a week in Orlando, so on Monday he was working until late afternoon. Lisa had to go back home for her first cross country practice that morning. It started at 8 AM! I decided to go with her to keep her company. I took these pictures of the lobby at 5:45 AM, the time we met to leave for Calvary Christian High School in Clearwater! I had gotten a delicious iced coffee at the little market place cafe in the lobby.
So we had time to catch up as we made the almost two-hour trip. I always love the beauty of going across the Tampa Bay. The lower picture is of Calvary Christian High School.
When we got there I enjoyed getting to meet some of the other athletic staff members. I especially enjoyed sitting on the bleachers with the cross country team as Lisa introduced herself and gave them all kinds of information and expectations.
I went along out to the track where they were having timed try-outs. It's a really beautiful campus.
When we left after practice we went to a doctor's appointment that Lisa had scheduled, then to Panera for lunch, and finally back to Orlando. We were having all kinds of giggles over some Snapchat videos she had made. Maybe I'll share some of them later. Of course we had been keeping in touch with the rest of the gang back at the hotel. Lori had reserved a cabana, which in this case was called a grotto because it was in a "cave," and they assured us they were having a great time relaxing in the shade! We couldn't wait to get there!
The picture on the left is our grotto from the outside, the picture on the right was our view from inside.
It was SO comfy!! We did play in the water, but I didn't even get any pictures of it that day. Of course Lisa and I were so sleepy from our early morning trip. I couldn't help taking a funny picture of her totally sacked out beside Hunter, and Anthony sacked out on the other side of him. Later I found out Dick had taken a picture of me sleeping with my mouth hanging open, hahaha!! Those pictures will remain for our family's eyes only!! Here are the approved ones!
Lori had to leave around 4:00 to get ready for a reception she had to attend. The rest of us had to pack up and go back inside around 5:30 when a storm came up and everyone was chased out of the pool. We decided to order in and eat on the deck that evening. But that stormy weather once again had other plans for us!
It did stop raining, but it would drizzle from time to time. We hung out as much as we could out there because we loved it so much. But for the most part we were inside eating all the goodness Lisa had ordered in - pizzas, bread sticks, eggplant, and more. Can't remember it all. We talked and laughed and watched American Ninja Warrior on TV. Another wonderful evening for my memory bank that I wish I could do all over again.
On top of the world out there on the deck!
Sophie wanted to be out on the deck as much as possible between raindrops! When we noticed that we could see several different fireworks displays from Disney locations, she and Austin and I just stayed out there in the drizzle to watch them! So much fun! And how about these pictures of Sophie and Hunter???
I'll end this post here and do another one about our Tuesday and Wednesday later.
