Beauty and more beauty!

After I wrote my last post on Friday, I did some regular Friday errands - delivering bulletins to the three churches in the Buffalo Run UMC Charge, the bank, the supermarket.  How I wished I were walking so I could have taken lots and lots and lots of pictures.  After a few cold nights with a good, heavy frost, then rain on Thursday, the leaves were suddenly bright and beautiful on Friday.  I could hardly contain all the beauty!!  Isn't there a way we can bottle this up for February??  Here are a few that I managed to get.

This was a stay-at-home weekend, a chance to clean the house, catch up on organization, etc.  Very necessary from time to time.

On Saturday evening we had a delightful time here with my former student, Melody Coyne, and her boyfriend Andrew Houpt.  He is a freshman here at Penn State, and she came up to visit him.  I thoroughly enjoyed catching up on Melody's family, and found out that, while I didn't think I knew Andrew at all, I actually knew his grandparents!   They are two really great kids.

Sunday morning was another beautiful one.  I looked out the bathroom window and saw my mountain in all its glory.  I had to go outside to get some pictures.  

There is one mountain range after the next, as far as the eye can see in either direction.  Sometime I want to try the panoramic view on my cell phone camera.   I'd better get out there and do it before everything turns brown.

During church on Sunday morning I sneaked my phone out to take a picture of the lovely fall decor.  My friends Amy and Sharon do such a great job.  The worship service and the presence of the Lord were beautiful too.

After church Austin came here for the afternoon, as usual.  We napped and played with trains, as usual!  And then we went to Anthony and Lori's for a campfire.  It was cold!!  That fire felt really, really good.

As we sat there eating, we heard a loud bang, and then everything (except the fire) went dark.  Apparently a transformer on a pole blew up.  Anthony called the electric company and left a message.  Eventually we put everything away, and we all headed to our place.  They brought their overnight things, just in case.  After Austin was already in bed and Lori was taking her shower (soon after 9:30, I think) Anthony got a call that the problem was fixed.   Austin was not sleeping yet, so they decided to go back home.  The next day Anthony said that Austin was really disappointed that they didn't all stay overnight.  They live too close to ever do that!  

He is starting to love when I tell him stories about when he was a baby.  I was telling him on Sunday afternoon that we used to live in their house, and his playroom in the basement was our bedroom.  Then I told him how they would put a bunch of pacifiers in his crib with him, and he would push them all out of the crib.  I demonstrated how we would be lying in bed and then we would hear, "Ping!"  "Ping!"  "Ping!"  "Ping!"  as the pacifiers landed on his wood floor above us.  Then we would hear,  "Waahh!  Waahh!"  After a while we would hear thud, thud, thud as either his mommy or daddy went across the hall to his room to put the pacifiers back in his crib.  Then after a while we would again hear, "Ping!" "Ping!" "Ping!"  And everything all over again.  Oh, he just loved that story so much!!

Maybe the next time I'll tell him this story - when he was playing under my sink, found my bottle brush, and went straight back to the bathroom to clean my toilet, hahaha!  He'll really love that one!

I'm so looking forward to this coming weekend.  After Dick gets off work at noon on Saturday, we're leaving for Lancaster County.  My birthday is on Friday and Sam's is on Saturday.  We usually do something together for our birthdays.  So we'll go to their place, probably go somewhere that's kid-friendly to eat.  Then we're going to spend the night at Dick's parents and go to Grace for church on Sunday morning - the first time since January!!  I think it's their fellowship meal Sunday, but we also have a Myers reunion (my mother's family) to attend.  So we're thinking maybe we'll eat our main course at the church and then go to the reunion for our dessert.  We shall see.   Seeing friends and family is the good part.  But the food is always pretty good too!

Pictures from late Octobers/early Novembers past

This has been a busy week of work and not much fun.  Yesterday was a huge deadline day at the church office, and now that it's over I don't feel like doing anything productive!  As I sit here being unproductive, I have been looking through picture files and decided to do a post of pictures from late Octobers/early Novembers past. 

Starting with one from last evening.  Anthony and Lori went to a harvest party at the CMA church.  They invited us, but I was just in the mood for staying home after my big day at work.  So I stayed home and handed out candy to the many Trick or Treaters.  Dick went to the party.  When he got home I asked if he got a picture of Austin.  He said that Austin wouldn't cooperate for picture taking.  So I was very pleasantly surprised to find this picture on Facebook posted by our friend Tracey Jackson.

A year ago we had a wonderful weekend in Pittburgh, including the Kidney Walk in honor of Mike's successful kidney transplant from his sister.  Here's a picture of our wonderful time of reconnecting with Amy Gorno whose dad was our pastor at Grace when Amy and Jeremy were teenagers. 

Two years ago we were basking in the sweetness of baby Sammy every chance we could get.  

In 2010 I captured this picture of Austin with his leaves.  They were his number one favorite thing that fall.

He was just starting to get around on his own in 2009.

Going back to 2008, different time, different place - we still lived in Lancaster County and I was at Manheim Christian.  Here's a picture I took during drama club practice.  Oh, the CRAZY times we had!!

In 2007 Sam helped Dick to build a ramp to our deck.  Hey Sam, wanna help do that again?

In 2006, a hilarious picture of the first grade class!  Amazingly, these kids are now eighth graders!

In 2005, a gorgeous picture on my drive home from school.

In 2004, an adorable picture of Destiny and her babies.  She just loved lining them up on these steps in our farmhouse. 

In 2003 I had my middle school worship team students at our house for lunch after our program at Grace.  I don't know who had the most fun - my big girls or Destiny!

I do not have picture files before 2003, except those that I have scanned in.  Just so happens I did scan one in earlier this week from 1983!

This was the Witmer family on the day Dad married Mary Zimmerman.  For the younger children on this picture and the many children born since then, Mary has been the only grandma they ever knew.  What a blessing she has been to us ever since.  

Going through our mother's short battle with pancreatic cancer the previous fall had left a big wound in our family.  A young pastor friend of my dad's eventually suggested that maybe he would enjoy talking with his mother, who had lost her husband to pancreatic cancer as well.  I don't think they needed to talk very many times before their spirits connected.  On one of their first dates, our first time to meet her, we were watching Dad's slides of his trip to Israel.  Jeremy (just turned 3) was sitting beside Mary. There in the darkness of the room he cozied up to her and asked,  "Are you our new grandma?"  Hahahaha!!  How perceptive!  She and Jeremy have had a sweet connection ever since too.

Mary's six sons and Dad's seven daughters and one son gave them an equal number of seven of each!  The Zimwits were created (although we never came up with that name until my dad's funeral, unfortunately.)

Well, my trip down memory lane is over now.  Time to get productive again.

My Boy Scout adventure

On Friday afternoon I drove to Lancaster County, arriving at Sam and Jenn's around 5:30.  I hadn't seen that little two-year-old for four weeks, and that was long enough!  Sam was having a guys' night out, so I didn't get to see him.  Shucks, I wanted to see if he looks any different as a married man, haha!!  But I had a lot of fun with Jenn and Sammy.  What a chatterbox!!!!  Totally non-stop.   A lot of it still unintelligible,  but that did not deter him in the least!

We decided to go to Green Dragon Farmer's Market.  Soon after we started walking around we discovered a memorabilia stand with a singing Santa.  He was totally awe-struck!  He called him "HoHo"!  It was funny at first, but not so much as we ate our dinner at one of the little restaurants, then walked all around the place and had to listen to, "Where's HoHo?" over and over and over and over again.  Each time we would say, "We said bye-bye to HoHo."  Then it was, "Why?"  We'd say something about wanting to see other things, etc, and then it was, "Where's HoHo?"   By the time we left we were wishing we had never seen HoHo!!  Here are some Sammy pics.

I left their place at 8:00 pm and headed to Reading.  I was sleeping at Destiny's house.  Her mom was still at work when I arrived, but I had brought snacks, and Destiny and her brother Shalimar and I pigged out.  (That almost looks like raw hamburger meat in front of Destiny!  It was glazed donut holes that I had bought from an Amish stand at Green Dragon!)

Then it was time to hit the sack.  Saturday morning we were all out the door before 7 am.  Shalimar has joined the Boy Scouts, and there was a Cub Adventure Day for families at Hawk Mountain Scout Reservation about an hour away.  We drove separately, since it was actually on my way home.  Destiny rode with me, and I enjoyed the chance to catch up with her.

There were many, many cub scouts and their families there.  The troop from Reading was the biggest of all - almost 40 boys, I think, plus many family members.  I can't even imagine the logistics of planning a day like that.  We were given a map and a list of our scheduled activities.  There was also lunch served to everyone.  They must have fed hundreds of people.  I am in awe of the people who give their time to something like this.  While it was freezing cold, trying to keep kids' attention was a constant battle all day long,  and the children became bored when they had to do so much waiting due to the size of our group, nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience for them.  It was out in the fresh air, in an absolutely beautiful environment, and they were exposed to educational and wholesome sports.  Here are some pics from the day.

Registration.

Fishing.

Learning about fire prevention and fire fighting.  Keeping kids from throwing leaves and sticks into the fire was not an easy task!

Displays and demonstrations of emergency services.

LOTS of hiking.  (Destiny and her mom in front of me - hard to tell which is which!)

Archery.

BB gun shooting.

Destiny, her mom, and brother.  The sun was in their eyes.  Believe me, we were SO THANKFUL for the sun.  We were still so cold even with the sun shining.  It would have been unbearable without it.

We said our goodbyes around 3:00.  They were heading back to Reading and I to State College.  After a day of physical activity in the cold, cold air I was so sleepy.  About half way home I stopped at a Sheetz gas station and took a 30 minute nap, got some fresh fruit, ice water, and gas.  Once again I got to listen to some of A Prairie Home Companion.  I just cracked up listening to his old people version of some of Johnny Cash's songs.  

I was ready to go to bed by 9:00 last evening and still not ready to wake up at 6 this morning!

A fun day with Austin; an interesting meeting of Stauffer designers

Our wonderfully mild Fall weather is leaving us this week.  I'm about to need a coat, I'm afraid.  And they even have that "S" word in the forecast.  NOOOOO!!  I honestly do not know anybody that is looking forward to that, at least not at this point.

First of all, I want to share some pictures I took around here.  We're not having a spectacularly colorful season like last year, probably because of that hot spell we had, but there is still beauty all around.

On Sunday evening we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire at Anthony and Lori's.  Believe me, the fire felt really, really good!

Austin's preschool was closed Monday, so he spent the day with me.  We got a new train track, and he LOVED it.  I am not exaggerating when I say that we spent HOURS on Monday, just playing with the train and Legos.  We were in an imaginary world where the train would carry loads of "materials" and then dump them off for me to build my school house with.  He built a swinging bridge for the train to go over, and it would be in great danger of collapsing.  Then he would say,  "You need to pray to Jesus, Grandma."  So I would pray for the angels to keep the train from falling into the muddy marsh.  Sometimes it got across, other times it would fall down and we would have to call in all the rescue equipment.  I seriously was having a blast!  I just love his imagination!

He decided that my schoolhouse needed to have a bouncy house on the playground.  So this is what we came up with.  Looks just like one, wouldn't you say??  He even attached a "motor" to blow it up with.

I finally convinced him late in the afternoon that we should go outside in the sun before I took him home.  We went to the little playground near our community.  He discovered that he could do the monkey bars all by himself now.

He loved jumping off.

I asked him at one point how old he is now.  A few months ago he had told me that he was four-and-a-half and one month old.  Later he had updated it to four-and-a-half and two months.  But this time his updated answer was "four and three quarters"!!


Something really, really cool happened in Highpoint, NC last evening.  But I need to give a back story first. 

When Dick was a young boy his parents took in a relative, Elam Stauffer.  Elam's father had died and his mother was unable to provide for all her children.  I think Elam was 9 or 10 when he came to live with Dick's parents.  Dick would have been a baby.  Elam lived with the family until he went off to college.  He married a beautiful woman, Doris.  They were missionaries in Central America most of their adult lives and adopted two Guatemalan children, Gloria and Luis.  Whenever they were home on furlough they would spend time with the Stauffer family.  At some point they settled in the Columbus, Ohio area.  Sadly, Doris passed away eight years ago due to brain cancer.  Elam has done a wonderful job of keeping us updated with his Christmas letters.  We knew that Gloria and her husband are missionaries in Costa Rica.  A few years ago he mentioned that Luis and his wife have a successful design company in Columbus - Crimson Design.  I looked it up and was very, very impressed.  I had mentioned it various times to Lisa and to Jeremy.  

There is something called "market" in High Point, NC where designers and furniture retailers go to buy.  Last evening Jeremy attended an event there and was at a table enjoying a conversation with several women.  After an hour-and-a-half Jeremy mentioned that he had come from Lancaster County, PA.  One of the women said, "Really?  My husband has relatives there."  Then she wondered what his name was.  When he said the name "Stauffer," she and her employees just about died as she said that was her last name too!  After talking a bit more she finally said, "I think we're related!"  She recognized Dick's dad's name, in fact, remembered visiting him and Grandma Arlene with Luis!   Then Jeremy said, "My mom has been telling me about these relatives that have this awesome design firm in Ohio!"  He called me right away and said, "You will never believe who I am sitting with."  We just screamed laughing!!  It was so unplanned and so wonderful!!  

Here Jeremy is with Luis's wife Cheryl.  Luis and Cheryl do a lot of traveling for their business and she was very interested in Jeremy's work in Jordan.   I think these Stauffer designers have not seen the last of each other!