One picture for this evening

I have so many pictures to share from our wonderful weekend together, but I just haven't found the time yet to get them organized into a blog post. So for this evening, here's my favorite one from the weekend - our three-generation portrait.

A big weekend coming up

This weekend we will be celebrating Dick's 60th birthday (which is actually on Monday).  Our Florida kids are flying up early tomorrow morning and staying until Monday morning.  It's actually Dick's weekend to work.  We had hoped he could have at least one of the days off, but then we got bold and requested both days off, explaining the reason why, and they gave him both days off!!  This house will be fuller than full, but that's okay.

The weather is playing a very mean joke, however.  We have been having the most lovely warm weather for several weeks, including temps into the high seventies today.  BUT, a storm rolled through this evening, and we are to have temps in the forties and fifties all weekend, along with some rain.  Unbelievable.  Jeremy said it will just confirm in his mind that moving to Florida was the right decision!

Life with Austin is kicking into high gear. Today he mastered the art of muscling his way up onto stuffed chairs, and then has no fear of falling off.  I try really hard not to overuse the pack and play, but there are times when I  need to put him in it just to save him from himself, hahahaha! 

First steps alone!

As much of a rough and tumble, touch everything, throw everything, climb everything kind of guy Austin is, he has taken his good, old time at walking alone.  For a long while he's been walking around everything, often with just one hand, but not alone.  This evening we were shrieking with delight (at least I was) as he carried the hula hoop back and forth between Anthony and Lori.  It was too cute for words, and he was just enjoying himself tremendously.  Be sure to have your speakers on when you watch this little video, so you can hear him giggle. 

Earlier today we met Lori at her parking lot on campus.  I caught this adorable picture of my son and his son.

Getting into his work

Look what I saw when I turned around yesterday!! I guess he was really getting into his work, hahahaha!

Today I took Austin to the YMCA for a program they call Play Pals. Lori and I think the program leaves much to be desired, but at least it gives Austin a chance to be around other kids, different toys, a big space. They had a container of toy instruments and flags. There was one cymbal. What can you do with one cymbal? Not a problem for Austin. He did what he does with everything - he spun it!!

When I take him for our daily walk, he is increasingly recognizing things that mean we're soon home. He used to get excited when we headed toward the porch. A few weeks ago he started getting excited as soon as we turned into our culdesac. Yesterday he got excited as we headed up the hill toward our culdesac. What did he see? The mailboxes at the end of the street, at which I always stop to pick up our mail. Oh, I just love watching children learn!

Stauffer wit at its best on Facebook

Dick grew up in a family of five boys with a dad well known for his quick wit.  All five boys followed suit.  A Stauffer gathering is usually one big wit fest.  

The grandchildren are coming right along in their fathers' footsteps, as was quite apparent yesterday on Facebook.  Dick's nephew Japheth in Minnesota posted a sweet update about needing to go to Texas for sewing machine training (he owns a store that sells and services sewing machines), and he has decided to take his wife along.  They have a large family of young children, so getting a time for two is quite rare and special.  

Japheth immediately started getting comments about how special it was for them to be doing this.  Then along came Lisa in Florida with one simple comment containing a pun, and the battle was on.  First just between her and Japheth, but eventually those of us here in our household in State College had to get our two cents in as well.  There were many nice and normal comments from Japheth's other friends, but below I am posting just the ones our family made, plus one other one that contained a good pun.  (You may need to know a bit about sewing and quilting terminology to get all the puns.)

Japheth:  I am looking forward to taking my bride to Texas for a couple days! I have to fly there for sewing machine training so why not make it a date? :-)

Lisa:  Sounds like sew much fun.. 

Japheth:  Oh Lisa, are you trying to needle me with your humor?

Lisa:  Who knows.. I may just leave you hangin by a thread on that one.. 

Did my humor leave you in stitches?

Japheth:  Yes Lisa, I am busting at the seams with laughter! I'm frayed that you have caused my sober outlook on life to become totally unraveled! I was doing sew-sew until you came along and made me rip a gut laughing! (top that! :-)

Lisa:  It's nice to hear a Brother talk about his wife in that way. I'm glad you still Singer praises.

Anthony:  I am bobbin up and down with laughter at all these puns.

Japheth:  rofl! You guys are good!   I must say that you are both batting a 1000. Though my other readers are going to have to do some piecing to figure out the humor. BTW, we have had to put a Baby Lock on a few machines because there are so many kids running around here! Oh well, I better quilt while I'm still a thread!

Lori:  Well, I was going to add my own humor, but I hurt someone's feeling and now have to go and try to make aMENDs.

Jean:  It was my feelings she hurt. KNOT!!!

Lori:  Seriously though, it's so good to know you both are getting a chance to get away alone together. Tailor I said hi.

Lisa:   Y'all are getting ahead of me. I didn't want to type while driving.. Causing me to Zig Zag through traffic... I know, I know .... this becoming quite a Stretch

I apologize on behalf of my family to all the other commenters.. We just really like to cut it up.

Lisa:  Ok George is Hemming and hawing for me to stop...

Not really, he just really wanted me to use hemming and hawing.

Kathy:  I think that Lisa is serging ahead in the comment dept.

Lori:  I'm all out. Not sure if thith is a thign or thimble that I need to get off fathbook for the evening.
I think I tried too hard on thith one. Good night!

Dick:  This is a SHEAR example of the Stauffer wit that doesn't have any pattern!

Japheth:  Ok, this thread has gone long enough and is quite threadbare of puns at this point! I am sure that there are many eyebrows knit together trying to come up with another one, but...is the west end of a horse going east. :-)  

A brief overview of the last few days

This has been a full day that started very early this morning.  I am too sleepy to write, but I'm going to post pictures from the past few days with a few captions.  Maybe  tomorrow I'll have time to fill in some more details.

Seeing green for the first time on the way to Lancaster County on Friday evening. 

Tulips to welcome me to our Lititz house. 

A trip with Destiny to Lititz Springs Park.

Painting Easter eggs a week late with Destiny, Frank, and Jovanni.

Tulips welcome me home this morning. 

Seeing more green on my walk with Austin today.

Austin rearranges the furniture and empties the drawers while I work.

Grandpa comes home from his last chemo treatment this afternoon, but without a hat to play with.  Maybe a watch will do.

Ready to leave

I'm packed and ready to leave for Lancaster County for the weekend.  Dick will not be able to leave until after work tomorrow evening.  He has to work Saturday since he needs Monday off for his LAST chemo treatment.  Yeehaaaa!!  

I've got a hair appointment tomorrow with my favorite guy.  I had to wait eight weeks this time for him to be able to fit me in on a Saturday.  I feel shaggy and very two-toned, and I do not mean highlights, hahahaha!!

I surely do miss having a computer when I'm down there, but atleast I have my iPhone.  

Gotta run.

A dose of summer!

Boy, have we gotten a dose of Spring, more like Summer, this week! And I'm not complaining AT ALL The trees are finally starting to green up. This is a view on my daily walk, taken a day or two ago. I'll take a shot there again in a few days, and I know it will be much greener.

Austin tries every door. He has learned to open a few of them. He wants to get out there and play!

Yesterday he emptied most of the shoes off the shoe rack inside the door, as he frequently does. When he came across his own little shoe, he sat right down and tried to put it on!

I thought it was so neat this afternoon when he went over to his toy corner and immediately sat down, picked up a book, and paged through it.

This evening as we sat on the deck listening to the birds, Anthony downloaded a bird sounds application onto his iPhone. As he played through some of the more familiar ones, we recognized the sounds of cardinals, robins, tree sparrows, and chickadees as ones that we hear frequently. After a while we heard a chickadee out in the yard. Anthony would play the sound on his phone, then we'd hear it out there like an echo. Soon we noticed that two chickadees had come and sat in a tree near the deck. I think we attracted them with the iPhone application! It was so cool. I think we'll be doing that again.

Some Florida news

I am so terribly sleepy this evening for some reason - can hardly hold my eyes open.  But I really, really want to share some of Lisa's pictures with you before I go to bed.  Here's the first one.

 

This is Lisa sitting next to my niece Lori from Michigan yesterday.  How did they get to be sitting next to each other?  As you may remember, Lori is the one who is fighting her third battle against colon cancer.  Last year after her major surgery, she and Jim decided that they would do a family trip to Disney this year, a first for their kids.  Of course they did not know that she'd be needing chemo so soon again.  They decided to go for it anyway.  She had three days of chemo last week, and she'll have three days of chemo when she gets back home.  But right now they're having a blast at Disney  

Lisa, George, and Sophie spent the day with them yesterday.  Sophie was heart broken when it was time to say good bye to her second cousins.  They had such fun together.  

I look at these pictures and miss Lori's mom.  I want to say to her,  "Look at our beautiful girls, Janet!  Look at our funny grandchildren!"  Oh, I miss her so. 

This is Sophie with Sydney and Jared.

Lori and her family - Jim, Sydney, Bradley, Jared, Lori. Please pray for them when you look at their picture. They are such a precious family.

Here's a family picture of George, Lisa, and Sophie, followed by other cool pictures Lisa posted on Facebook today.

And one more.  A few weeks ago George's company helped to sponsor and plan a walk for Multiple Sclerosis.  They asked Jeremy to sing the National Anthem.  He didn't realize he'd be singing in front of 1300 people as well as TV cameras.  But like always, he didn't disappoint.  How I wish this picture came with sound.

Early this morning Jeremy flew from Tampa to High Point, NC where he'll be working for a week-and-a-half  setting up furniture displays at some big furniture event.  I can't remember all the details.  I just know he said he'll be working long days every day. 

We had a lovely Resurrection Day today.  First thing this morning, before leaving for church, we noticed that Grandpa and Austin were matching!  Aren't they both looking good?

When we arrived at church I noticed that no one walking into the building was wearing a hat, so I lost my nerve right then and there and left my hat in the car!  Once inside there were quite a lot of hats, mostly huge and fancy, but the majority of women did not wear one.  Besides, if I had held Austin he would have ripped it right off my head, and then what would my hair look like?  I wasn't taking any chances!

But for you curious ones, here's what I would have looked like in my hat.

And here's what Dick would have looked like in it, hahaha!

The children's choir at church sang two songs, and I must admit it gave me tears.  While it felt wonderful to have no responsibilities for Easter service music for the first time in ages, I really felt like I wanted to sing with some kids again. I'm sure I will again someday.

 After church we had fun taking pictures.  Some of these are mine, the better ones are probably Anthony's camera.

This evening Anthony grilled some tilapia and asparagus on the grill, and Lori made some scrumptious roasted garlic potatoes in the oven.  

Austin couldn't sit still for long, not even in the swing, so Lori was walking him all over the place.  She has more energy than I do, but I'm working on it!

Remember the big bushes in the one corner of the yard that I showed last fall, the ones with a little alcove in back which I said we'll call "Austin's Alley"?  I discovered what those bushes are now - forsythia.

After eating we Skyped with Lisa, George, and Sophie.  She wanted to see Grandma in her pink hat, but she got to see Grandpa in it too!!!  We will actually be getting to see her in two weeks!!  Lisa, George, Sophie, and Jeremy are coming to State College for the weekend to celebrate Dick's 60th birthday!  We're hoping some of our other kids will be able to join us too. 

My car is washed!

It was another beautiful day in State College. Dick called from work and said there was a fraternity doing a car wash for a donation on the sidewalk at Pep Boys. My car really needed a good wash, so I went. They were having so much fun.

This will be a very different Easter for me. Since it's Dick's work weekend we are up here. He does, however, only have to work from 3 - 6 tomorrow, so we will actually be able to go to church together tomorrow morning, for which I am very, very happy. But I will have no responsibilities for the Easter service! That probably has not happened in thirty or more years!

With one exception. In 2001 we (Dick and I, Anthony, Jeremy, Ray, foster daughter Maggie, and baby Destiny) drove to Charlotte, NC for Easter. Lisa and George lived there for one year and we spent Easter with them. (I so remember the worship team at their church doing Crown Him with Many Crowns. I have probably used that song every Easter season since then.) We had so much fun on that trip. How I wish I had my photo albums here so I could scan some pictures and post them. Destiny was only six months old, and I asked to take her along on the trip since things were majorly falling apart for Frank and Destiny's mom. We all fell so in love with her that weekend.

She has probably spent every Easter of her life with us. But this year she's with her mom. Next weekend we'll do our traditional Easter egg painting and egg hunt.

Tomorrow is hat day at Anthony and Lori's church. I have never worn a hat for church in my entire life (except the Mennonite covering of my earlier years). But Lori got me a hat, a big, pink, floppy hat that she thinks looks adorable. She promised me there will be much bigger hats there tomorrow. Hmmmm.

Time for summer clothes

I don't know if Spring was ever this glorious!! This afternoon after Austin went down for a nap I sat on the deck with my feet propped up. The sun was hot, but there was a gentle breeze, and I fell asleep. This evening when I sat out there the birds honestly sounded like they were competing with each other! It was like being at a concert!

Because our temp was to hit 80 degrees today, it was time to bring out the summer clothes. Really, what is cuter than a chubby baby in a Onesie?

Maybe a little boy in overall shorts, pushing his mommy's computer chair around!

He gets so excited to see Dick either leaving for work or coming home from work. And guess why? He loves Grandpa's hat! That's their spot right there in the corner, either playing with the hat or reading books.

I have to tell a funny story about Sam. He texted me today for a rice recipe which I did not ever remember of making. He claimed it was a cold rice recipe. Cold??? The only cold rice recipe I have ever heard of was rice pudding, which I have never made. He said he remembers that I sent it with him when he lived in an apartment at West Chester his second year of college. I had to think back to that era of my life to try and imagine what I would have cooked and sent with him. Then I remembered my Puerto Rican cookbook and a very delicious rice and beans recipe I used to make from that book. But we didn't eat it cold! That is, WE didn't eat it cold. Sam did. He remembers how I sent along with him this big container of it, and he ate it for a whole week right out of the fridge, because he liked it so much. I am still cracking up as I write this. Does that sound like a college student, or what???? So when I get down to my Lititz house the next time, I will get my Puerto Rican cookbook and find that recipe and send it to him. I may even bring it here and resurrect it. If Sam wants to eat his cold, he may go right ahead and do so. But we'll be eating ours hot, hahahahaha!