Our Florida vacation, days one and two

On Monday afternoon (May 10th) we got to the Harrisburg airport so early we had to wait over an hour to check in our luggage!   There were others waiting to check their luggage too.  It was a bit annoying.  Allegiant at the Harrisburg airport needs a better system. 

After finally getting that done, and going through security, we had time to grab a late lunch.  We were hungry, and the wraps and chips tasted extra good!

Our flight was direct to St. Petersburg/Clearwater.  Once there, it took a long time in line to get our rental car, even though we had already reserved it.  I took this picture the next day.  We all were so surprised to discover that our rental car was the exact same make and model car as Sophie's, just a lighter gray!  

It was about a 30-minute drive to Lisa and George’s place.  They gave Dick "the tour" since he’d never been at this house before.  (Funny thing is that I was at their place exactly two years ago for Mother’s Day weekend, so my FB memories looked very familiar!)

They had hamburgers and all the fixin’s on the kitchen table, and we sat down to catch up.  

Lisa and I had to get our day-late Mother’s Day picture.

I loved what Lisa did with that picture in her Instagram story.  Here's a screen shot.

I didn’t even get a picture of Sophie that evening because she had already gone to bed before I took pictures.  However, I had gotten a picture of the chenille bedspread we brought along for her bed.  We had bought it at Dad Stauffer's auction last January.  Lisa remembered it from her childhood and wanted us to get it for her.  It looks great with the Boho style of decor in Sophie's bedroom. 

I did get pictures of the "little girls," Stella (brown) and Nilla Bean (white.)  They're the sweetest, chillest dogs and so easy to live with and love.  

On Tuesday morning Lisa and Sophie were off to school around 7:00!  George works from home in his office upstairs.  

Dick and I made the usual omelet and bacon for breakfast.  Stella looked like she'd like to have some of that good-smelling bacon!

I was so excited to eat my breakfast in the screened-in porch.  I took all these pictures, and they're way too beautiful to condense into a collage, so enjoy!

This is the sink window!

Dick and I took a trip to Publix for groceries, and I got this picture of the front of their lovely home.  

I made a recipe for our dinner that I used to make when our kids were young, and I have begun making it again in the past year, because it's somewhat lower carb.  It's called Neapolitan Meal-in-a Dish.  Tuna, green beans, rice, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and garlic in a tomato base, baked with shredded cheese and home-made croutons on top.  We love it.  I don't think there were any leftovers.

In the evening we went to Calvary Christian High School to watch the 2021 Celebration of the Arts. 

My favorite thing was the color guard doing choreography to a mashup of two songs, Awesome God and God Only Knows.  The two songs fit so well together and it was a thrill to watch.  I wish I had thought to take a video.  

I did get a short video of the band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever."

The Calvary Choir was AMAZING!  Here's a short video of one of their songs, "Witness."

After the concert we browsed the art displays in the lobby.  This one was Sophie's from her Principles of Design class.  

Back at home we had fun hanging out at the kitchen table.  It takes a lot of food to feed a super athlete!

Lisa was looking so cute and I wanted a picture of her.  

Then I tried to get a mother-daughter picture, but the giggles ruled, haha!

George was over there filling the dishwasher while we were being silly.  He's used to living with girls.  He grew up with two sisters and no brothers!

I'll be back to tell you about the next few days. 

Our cold Mother's Day weekend

Gotta do a quick post here before we leave this afternoon!  I'm a little bit excited about heading south after the cool (COLD!) weekend we've had here.

Friday was a really fun day.  Pastor Lynn, Vicky Free, and I went on a shopping trip to Boscov's in Altoona to celebrate the end of Pastor Lynn's chemo.  I LOVE Boscov's and have missed it so much since moving away from Lancaster County.  Altoona is just 45 minutes from here, but I have never gone shopping there before.  They also have a JCPenney's and a Macy's.  We have none of those here in State College anymore.  I finally found a new swimsuit top that I really like - just in time!  Also a pair of comfortable Clarks sandals.  You can't go wrong when they were originally $85, reduced to $35 and then 15% off that at the register!!

We ate lunch at Subway, where Vicky's sister joined us.  Lots of fun and laughter during lunch, but not one picture.  Then we went back to Boscov's again.  This time we had fun in the hat department.

We took our masks off for the picture, but Vicky thought it looked like she had a beard in this picture, so we had to take another, of course.  I think we looked pretty cute, don't you???  I think you can even hear us laughing, right?

Of all things, I had put my purse down to take this picture. When we were finished, Lynn and Vicky got in line to pay for their hats, and I wandered across the aisle to look at some other things.  After a while I felt like my hands were just too empty.  I walked over to Lynn and Vicky and asked, "Did I really come into the store this time with just my phone??"  They assured me I had not.  I hurried over to our picture-taking mirror, and there sat my purse - right where I had set it down.  Good lord!!!!  

It was a GOOD day!!  

On Saturday morning we had the Florida State track and field meet up on our computer, and got to see the three events that Sophie ran.  She came in second in the 100-meter dash!!  The competition is strong at that level, and she's been dealing with a tibial stress fracture.  We are so proud of her!!!  To be the state runner-up as a sophomore is an amazing accomplishment!!

Hunter loves to send text messages.  He knows how to do things I don't.  Like this adorable 3-second message he sent me Saturday morning.  Melt my heart!!

Lori wanted Dick to show her how to put up our pop-up camper on Saturday.  She has ideas for refurbishing it!  So in spite of the very cold temperatures, we went over there and had a great time.  This fire felt really good!!  He was burning up the wooden patio benches that have been falling apart a little more each year.  We felt nostalgic about it, because they had gotten those benches for the party they had after Austin's baby dedication, and that was such a wonderful day.

Go, Lori!!

And there it is!  First time it was up since August 2019!  No evidence of any critters having been inside, thank God!!!  The funniest thing was when we opened the door to go inside, Hunter said, "Are Sammy and Bianca in there?"  I'm still laughing!  They WERE in there the last time we had it up, but we didn't keep them in there for almost two years, hahahahaha!!

We had fun hanging out inside for a while, but it was SO COLD!  Ugh!  It was warmer in March!

The Spring view from the window was nice.

When I got home I made one of our favorite dinners - roasted brats, veggies, and yams.

Mother's Day was very cold and it rained all day.  We spent the day at home getting things ready for our week away.  I did hear from each of our children by one means or another.  Ray called me from work while I was getting ready for church.  Anthony and Austin brought me a flower to plant.  I had a long video call with Jeremy and the family.  Their weather in Portland was amazingly beautiful and warm.  Lisa and I had conversations about our upcoming visit.  Sam and I had a fun text conversation.  Frank and Anthony gave me Facebook tributes,  Miki sent me a newsy message via FB Messenger.  And I think that's the crew!  Here they are hanging on my wall above the piano!

And here are the grandchildren hanging in the hallway.  I LOVE having these pictures there.  I pass them and think of them many times each day.

Destiny was actually the first one to wish me a happy Mother's Day.  I woke up to her text message Sunday morning.  Later in the day I made this funny video on JibJab for her.  We were cracking up over it. 

And now I'm caught up.  I have no idea if I will try to blog from my phone while we're away or not.  I despise doing it that way.  But I'll never catch up if I don't.  So we shall see!  

We are driving to the Harrisburg airport this afternoon and getting a direct flight on Allegiant Airlines to the St. Petersburg/Clearwater airport.  We like flying from State College since it's five minutes from here, but the cost of tickets from here were outrageously high this time.  We'd rather spend money on a rental car, which we are doing.  

I'm getting excited!!!  

PS.  I should have added that the pain in my fingers (that resulted from the cortisone shot) was gone when I woke up Friday morning.  However, the feeling of pins and needles is still ever present in my left hand, especially my finger tips.  Wearing the braces at night has been keeping me from waking up with extreme pain, so that's really good. 

Nothing more has been done about the water damage here.  Service Master will do most of their work while we're gone and then spray a microbial solution into each AC vent when we return.  Only after that will the HVAC company do their work, and it could be weeks after we return.  No AC during those weeks, ugh!!  Thankfully we had a window unit in the shed that we'll use to keep us from dying, haha!

But enough of unpleasant words now!  We're going on vacation in Florida, woooohoooo!!

The good, the bad, and the ugly

One of the best things about this month is the lilacs.  They are prolific this year and I love them.  As I came out of my hair salon on Tuesday I walked right by a lilac bush.  I stopped to take in a deep breath and took a picture, which I posted.  The very next day my friend Kris knocked on my door with this lovely bouquet of lilacs from her back yard!  Her daughter had seen my post.  What great friends!!  The fragrance of lilacs is very nostalgic to me, because as a child we had a lot of big lilac bushes, and we would always bring huge bunches of them inside.  

Here's another beautiful sight.  Each Thursday morning for the past six weeks I have gone to the lodge at Calvary Harvest Fields for Abide - the women's Bible study.  I think it was cloudy almost every week until this morning, our last session.  I was finally able to get a picture of the spectacular view of the State College area.

And now I'm going to tell you a few of the unpleasant things happening in my life.  You may or may not remember my washer overflowing back on April 13.  I had wiped it all up with lots of towels, feeling sure I had gotten it all.  Dick figured out what the problem was, ordered the necessary parts, and fixed the washer.  However, on Sunday, April 25 when my sisters were here, I started smelling something "fishy" in the dining room, which is next to the laundry.  As the week went on it got stronger and stronger.  I was getting down on my hands and knees trying to figure out where the smell was coming from.  Dick looked under the house in search of a dead animal, but there was none.  This past weekend, during one of my floor sniffing escapades I suddenly realized it was really strong at the AC vent.  We keep all the AC vents closed over winter, and when I opened the vent, the odor was even stronger.  For the first time we started thinking that maybe this problem started with the overflowing washer.   Dick thought about the AC floor vent in the laundry, and that possibly some of the water may have gone down that vent.  

So on Monday I called our HVAC company.  A technician came on Tuesday.  The first thing he did was take the cover off the floor AC vent in the laundry, and of all things, there was water sitting in there!!!   Then he went under the house and ended up pulling out the big round AC ducts because they had water and mold in them!  He said he's afraid there is also wet insulation, but that was not his specialty.  He wanted me to call Erie, our homeowner's insurance company, before anything else was done.  These are the big ducts he took out. 

Today an insurance adjuster came out and also a rep from Service Master, a restoration company.   Thankfully we are having cool weather between now and when we leave for Florida on Monday, so we are not missing the AC.  We're giving permission for work to be done while we're away, and hopefully we'll come home to things all fixed up and smelling better.  And paid for by insurance, except the $500 deductible, of course.  

Meanwhile, the pins and needles in my left arm and hand, sometimes also in my right arm and hand, and the pain at night, have been ongoing.  Last week I had an EMG and was diagnosed with moderate carpal tunnel syndrome in my left hand and mild carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand.  Yesterday I had an appointment with an orthopedic hand specialist.  He gave me a brace for each hand to wear at night (the one I had gotten by prescription of my general physician did not fit well), and he also gave me an injection of cortisone in my left wrist.  He said it might feel worse before it feels better.  Well, he wasn't kidding!  My wrist and fingers are really, really painful now and the pins and needles aren't much better, if any.  If the pain is still so bad tomorrow I'm going to call.  I feel like he must have hit a nerve he wasn't supposed to or something.  

I don't think I mentioned that last week was the regionals track and field meet in Florida, and this Saturday is the State meet.  Quite a number of Lisa's team are going!  Looks like Sophie will be doing the 100 meter, the 200 meter, and 4x100 relay.  

We'll be missing it by two days!  But when we were getting our airline tickets, Lisa wasn't sure if there would be limitations on spectators, so we decided to wait until after that meet to arrive.  She and Sophie will be less busy next week with track season finished.  

One last picture.  Alex's mother and her new puppy are visiting Destiny and Alex from Florida this week.  They arrived last night.  So this morning Elizer was both fascinated and terrified of this tiny Yorkie named Bear!  I got this adorable picture when we were Face Timing. 

That's it for tonight!

Another great weekend

On Saturday morning I drove to pick up Sammy and Bianca for an overnight stay.  Once again we stopped at Arby's on the way back.  I like it there because they do have indoor dining, but there's never more than a few other people there.   It was such a beautiful day for a drive.  The green on the mountains at this time of year is so bright and fresh.

There were lots of purple blossoms on trees along the way. 

When we got back to State College we went right to Discovery Space.  We had not been there in over a year.  They recently resumed open hours, but by reservation only.  

Bianca always finds a friend!  I just love it.  

We decided afterward that it was fun, but not quite as fun as before, because there were less things to do, which we expected.  I'm sure they will gradually bring back all the fun things as COVID becomes less and less of a problem in our area.  

They wanted a picture at the tie-dye table when we were leaving.  I suggested a picture from this angle so the Discovery Space building would be in the picture.  

But Sammy suggested we take it from the other direction so that in years to come, when we look at this picture we'll remember what buildings were across the street.  He said, "We'll say, 'Remember there used to be a Sleep Inn over there?'"   Seriously, what child thinks like that??  Sometimes I think he was born with a 50-year-old inside him, hahaha!

When we went home I made a dinner he had requested - oven barbecued hot dogs and mac&cheese.   The kids found plenty to do.  Bianca rediscovered the Lincoln Logs and built a boat.  She even had a person chillin' in the back of it!  She also polished her own nails, took a bubble bath, and tucked all her "babies" into the guest bed.  

This guy had NO END of trivia questions for me.  His head is filled with facts.  Facts about history, about events, about presidents, about rocks and metals, about actors, movies, music.  I seriously don't think he ever forgets anything he hears or reads.  He was pulling the trivia questions right out of his head, not out of a book.  He's a third grader!  He just couldn't believe I didn't know many of the answers.  I think I'm starting to wonder about my intelligence!

They had fun with the triangle peg game (like Cracker Barrel has on their tables).  Bianca enjoyed making new designs with the wooden puzzle.  

I gotta tell you a story about that wooden puzzle.  Dick and I bought it at a flea market-type place in Manheim last March (Prussian Street Arcade), the weekend before the shut-down started.  Sam and the kids were here for the rest of that weekend, and they started working on that puzzle.  We soon discovered that one piece was missing.  We were so disappointed.  Dick and I remembered that when they had bagged our things at Prussian Street Arcade they had dropped it and had to pick up the pieces.  We suspected that one of the pieces may have fallen under the counter.  We thought we would call them the next week to ask.   But then came the shut-down, and we never did.  

Last week one day I was vacuuming, and when I looked at the couch cushions, I thought the middle one was looking a bit worn, so I decided to turn it around.  And would you believe, THERE WAS THAT MISSING PUZZLE PIECE!!!!   Over a year later!!  Apparently, with very few people here this past year I have never vacuumed under the couch cushions!  Please don't hate me!!

Here's the puzzle before and after the piece was found.

Sammy worked and worked at the triangle peg game.  I found a video on YouTube that gave a sure strategy.  He did it that way a few times, but he preferred to figure it out his own way.  Under the triangle it tells you how you did, depending how many pegs you have left.  If you have two left it's "Close, but no cigar!"  Thus my cigar comment at the end of the video above, haha!

Sunday morning we went to church.  The kids were delighted to find out that there was going to be a drama in children's church.  Afterward Sammy said that he was Peter who was led out of jail by an angel. And nobody believed it was him when he went to his friends' house.  Great story of the power of God!

Our excellent flute player, Brenna Bixler, was at church and I was delighted to play prelude with her.  She adds so much to our music, playing along so beautifully with all the congregational songs.

After church we came home, packed a lunch, packed up all the kids' things, and hit the road.  We took these two home to Jenn's house.  And no, they did not keep the peg puzzle!  Gotta have something at my house that's special, haha!

Our mission for the day was to help Destiny and Alex move a few things.  They have recently moved into a mobile home that had been her mom's.  They have much more room to spread out, and certainly more room for this busy boy to practice his new skills!  He gets around!!!  

I have no idea what I did that was so funny, but this was his reaction.  That big smile!!!!  He is SO precious!!

Once again, there were beautiful and ever-changing views of the sunset on our drive home.

I have other stories to tell, but I don't know if I'll find the time.  We leave for Florida a week from today, and between now and then I have a lot to accomplish and several appointments. Hopefully I'll be able to get back here at least once before we leave.