Our lovely Saturday in Portland

We had a beautiful Saturday!  Chilly, but sunny.  We went outside to the green space that borders their back yard.  Brennan showed us how he can now ride a two-wheeler, a bike with good tires that can also ride on the grass. 

Then he got out his soccer ball to practice kicking.  He’s on a soccer team now. Jeremy played soccer at his age, and Mike played soccer in high school, so they were kicking with him and showing him some skills to work on. 

We also came inside to watch the Hurricane Invitational, which we were able to bring up on their family room TV.  It was Sophie’s first meet for this year.  SO fun to see her running again!  College competition is tough, and unfortunately she has had ham string injuries that she’s been recovering from. Look for her in the middle, giving it all she’s got!

Back outside again, we went for a short walk and enjoyed seeing some budding trees.  

After lunch we relaxed in the living room while Brennan read to us!  He has come such a long way, and reads with expression.  Then while the kids were playing a video game in the family room, and Mike and Jeremy were upstairs packing for their trip, I relaxed and snoozed on the living room couch with Watson. 

Then it was food prep time! Mike was making his famous Italian sausage red sauce and pasta for dinner.  Jeremy suggested that Tasha and I could make tiramisu for dessert. That was a new one for me!  But we did it, and it was delicious!!

While Mike was finishing up food prep, Dick and Jeremy and I relaxed on the back porch.  It was the best part of my day.  

We had a great time eating our scrumptious Italian meal.  Alana brought garlic cheese toast, there was a delicious salad with a dressing that Jeremy had made, and it was a perfect meal! 

I guess I forgot to get a picture of us at the table that evening.

First day in Portland

 Our flight from Chicago to Portland was long, but as we flew over Wyoming and Idaho the evening sun was shining and we had the most magnificent views!!

Landing in Portland. 

Our adorable welcome crew - Jeremy, Brennan, and Tasha. 

Look how tall Brennan is getting!!

The airport has been undergoing renovations and is becoming so beautiful!

Mike was at home waiting for us, and so was the dinner he and Tasha had prepared.  It was like 11 pm back home, and our bodies were feeling it!  But we had a wonderful time talking and catching up. 

Friday

Dear sweet Lily made me feel welcome!

Brennan went to school, Mike and Jeremy went to work, Tasha and I decided what we would make for dinner.  When Jeremy came home from work around 1:30 we went to the store to get groceries.  

Then Tasha and I got started on the food.  We make a good team!  First two apple pies, then curried chicken thighs and Jamaican rice and peas.  

Dick Sat on the back porch for a long time with Lily.  It was only in the 50’s, but he didn’t mind. Later he was watching a Blazers game with Brennan who has become an avid basketball fan.

As we were cooking, Jeremy and Mike were at the dining room table planning their itinerary while in Spain.  They will be leaving on Sunday. 

Before dinner I went outside to take some pictures.  Green grass!  Flowers blooming!

I forgot to take a picture of the food before we ate, but here’s a curried chicken thigh with some of the Jamaican rice and beans on someone’s plate! And below that, one of the apple pies.  They got too dark because I wasn’t paying close enough attention, but everyone loved it with vanilla ice cream.

Good friends Christy and Alana joined us for dinner, and we had the most fantastic evening around that table - for hours - as we shared stories from our lives.

I was bugging Destiny for more baby pictures, and she obliged!  Ketsi is 8 weeks old now, and getting chubby and smiley!!

And so very kissable!!

Fickle March! Leaving on a jet plane!

 Dick and I are on our way to Portland! 

 I had WiFi  on this second flight, but when I tried to post pictures, all that I had already written disappeared. Ugh!!!

We had plenty of time to get packed up this morning, then we got picked up by our scheduled Uber around noon. The driver was a woman who lives on our street whom we had never met!  We had so much fun talking on the six-minute ride to the State College airport. 

The Penn State gymnastics team was on our flight to Chicago!  What a fun, energetic group of girls!

The Chicago airport is NICE!!  We had quite a hike between our two gates, but it was good to get some steps in between our two long flights.  

This past week has been ridiculous!!  COLD and windy and snowy!  I have never been more ready for Spring to STAY!!   

Dick has put in quite a few job applications and has had several interviews, most of them for driving jobs.  

On Friday we had an appointment with our financial advisor and on Tuesday an appointment with an attorney to update our wills and set up Power of Attorney with Anthony. On Wednesday the three of us went back to sign all the papers.   Little by little we’re getting things done while Dick has this time on his hands.  Feels good.  Although the lack of his paychecks does not. 

We had some lovely sunrises this past week.  

And this cool view of the sky when we walked in our neighborhood one evening. 

And just before the snow we saw our first flowers!  Dick put tarps over the front flower beds before the deep freeze returned, and they were still looking just fine when we left home.  We will probably return home to more flowers.  

Well, that’s it for this post.  Blogging on my phone is so very frustrating, but if I wait till I get back home I’ll forget too many things. So I’ll keep trying. 

A good week in March

I'm going to greet you with this bright-eyed little face!

I told Destiny she makes big-eyed babies, haha!  That's Elizer on the right.

Speaking of Elizer - yesterday Destiny Facetimed me while they were waiting in the car to pick up Ozzy's little brother.  I got this great picture!!  I miss him!!

Oh, and here is a picture of him at a FREE indoor park!  You know he loved that!

So, our lives are so different without Dick going to work every day.  Like I said last time, I had a Honey-Do list, and he's been crossing things off.  His first project was my spice cupboard.  Some years ago we had gotten a plastic rack that went around the edges of the lower shelf for the purpose of having two tiers.  But it was cheap and sloped a bit.  Spice jars easily slid off especially if they were glass.  So he put sturdy reinforcements in place, and what a difference!  Besides, in the process of emptying it so he could work on it, I found several items of which I had two or three.  Started new ones before I finished up the old one.  So I combined and then had more room.  Much better!

Another thing that need attention was one of my music cupboards where I keep my choir music.  For some reason only the one side had a shelf.  I was using a big picture frame as a shelf!  So he built a new shelf.  And of course, needing to empty out the cupboard I found unnecessary things, doubles of some folders, etc.  And now it's so much more organized and accessible.

Yesterday and today he was working on his shed and the little basement under our house.  He took a load of stuff to the refuse authority awhile ago and has other stuff for the annual yard sale in our community in June.  

He's also working on some job applications and has successfully applied for unemployment, which gives us some breathing room.  

I decided that I'm going to make our meals from what we have in the freezer.  Of course I cook for Anthony and Lori a few days a week, so some of our meals are from those.  

One day last week I pulled out some pasteles that Frank had brought at Christmas.  That's a traditional Puerto Rican food.  We still have more of those in the freezer.  

Another day I pulled out a bag of cut-up pork left over from our Christmas fondue.  I had a can of sauerkraut and some potatoes on hand.  So we had a New Years meal again - pork and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes.  

Yesterday I pulled out a venison roast and slow-roasted it with carrots and potatoes.  

Today I pulled a ham bone out of the freezer and made ham and bean soup.  Just had some and it's really delicious!

There's chicken in the freezer too.  And that's just the freezer in our fridge.  We also have a small chest freezer in our little basement.  I have no idea what all is down there.  But I guess I'll find out!  

Hunter's 10th birthday was on Sunday.  So it was all about Hunter this weekend.  On Saturday there was a birthday party at Get Air.  It was a great time for everybody.  Austin wasn't there though.  He was sick with a deep cough all last week.  

Then on Sunday evening, the actual day of his birthday we went over there for his birthday cake.  

Of course we always try to sing Happy Birthday in four-part harmony, but it usually takes until the last phrase to get it right!  This time we ended up in five-part harmony as Lori's mother added a high tenor.  Sorry you can't see everyone in the video since Anthony was focusing on Hunter.  

https://youtu.be/MhBQ7DQSM9Y?si=VuhU81gECmRFOrMA

Gotta run!  The weather is absolutely incredible out there and I'd like to go for a walk on this lovely long evening!!

Saying "goodby" to Grace; employment change

 Time to catch up here again!

As I said last week, I was having big issues on my old MAC desktop.  After I was finished with my last blog post here, Anthony told me to bring the computer to his place.  A few days later he had all my things migrated to a newer MAC desktop.  The old issues are fixed, but there are new ones, as is always the case when getting a different computer. 

I'll start here with a little "success" collage.  I've been very gradually taking some pounds off this winter, about 16 so far.  No one has seemed to notice, but I have, because of how my clothes fit better.  I hope I can keep the pounds off and lose a few more. 

I'm SOOOO eager for warmer weather.  We've had a few teasers, and I've walked a couple of times.  So far my plantar fasciitis has not kicked up.  

Last Monday evening our women's group at church had a movie popcorn pajama party!  We don't have comfy couches anywhere at church, and not everyone wore their pjs, but we had a great time eating popcorn and watching the movie "War Room."  

My "mothering mentor" passed away last week at the age of 87.  Grace Faus, mother of 12, grandmother of 101, great grandmother of 150, mentor to many!  When I was a child her husband Sam was one of the older teens at my church, and I remember when he married Grace and brought her to our church.  Within a few years they had two baby boys and then a set of twins, a girl and a boy.  The summer I was 13 I was her hired girl.  My dad would drop me off at their farm on his way to work Monday mornings and pick me up on his way home Friday evenings.  Sometimes I stayed till Saturday.  I continued each Saturday during the next school year.

Fast forward to my becoming a mother in 1974.  By then Grace had 8 children!  She took me to my first La Leche League meeting (breast feeding support group) when Lisa was 3 months old.  Gradually that group became one of my circle of friends, and Grace was our leader.  We moms and children were at her big farmhouse a LOT.  Grace was also an advocate for natural food, natural childbirth, and we "groupies" became natural everything!  Even as Grace and her family joined a more conservative Mennonite church and she was required to give up her membership in La Leche League, she still stayed in close touch with us "worldly" younger moms.  

In 2020 we had a small reunion at Sheree's house, and Grace came.  We had the BEST time reminiscing.  It was the last time we were with her.  (She is second from left on the front row.)

On Sunday there were two viewings and on Monday a funeral.  Dick and I drove to Manheim right after church and met up with two of my friends, Sheree and Donna, to go to the 2:00 viewing.  

As I expected, there were a LOT of people there already when we arrived before starting time!   There was a VERY LONG wait, but we were seated the entire time - first in a tent outside the church and then inside the church. Of course Grace's enormous family took up at least half the sanctuary seats.  Her husband Sam was seated right next to Grace's casket, then the 12 children and their spouses were seated all across the front of the sanctuary in order from oldest to youngest.  I didn't want to take too many pictures (well I DID want to), so I took just two.  This one shows some of the people waiting behind us.  I didn't want people to see that I was taking a picture, but I think that one lady did!

This picture shows the people greeting the family in the front. 

Sheree took this selfie of us three "groupies" haha!

When it was FINALLY our turn to view Grace's body and greet Sam and the children, we were those obnoxious people that hold up the line.  They all remembered us, even by name, and we had the BEST time reminiscing with them.  

This is the most recent picture I have of their family taken in 2010 when they were celebrating Grace and Sam's 50th anniversary. Of course the family has grown even larger since then!

What a day to remember!  After we went back to Sheree's house and said our good byes to her and Donna, Dick and I went to Manheim Twin Kiss for a bite to eat and then to my sister Mary Ellen's house to relax a bit and tell her about the viewing.  

I wanted to take a sister selfie before we left for home.  We didn't know that Dick was taking pictures of us taking the selfies, hahaha!

Dick and I are entering an uncertain phase.  We are not financially ready for official retirement, but Dick was "let go" from his job as an auto mechanic.  He was told three weeks ago that the shop is too slow, not making enough money, is in fact losing money, and that his last day would be February 27. 

On Friday he rented a trailer and loaded up his big tool box, his smaller tool box, all his many tools and other things onto it and into his truck.  On Saturday he took it all over to Anthony's place and they moved it into the bottom floor of Anthony's barn/studio.  He'll be selling a lot of it.  54 years as an auto mechanic!!  

 

So now what?  

They told him he would be eligible for temporary unemployment, so yesterday he applied for that.  

I have a "honey-do" list about a mile long that he is getting started on. 

Jeremy is flying us out to Portland for a week to stay with the kids and dogs while he and Mike are away.  That will be later in March.

We have not been to Lisa's in Florida for two years, so in April we are taking a week over Dick's 76th birthday to go down there.  Sophie will be having a track meet in Gainesville which we will go to.  We have not been to any of her collegiate track meets, and she's already a junior!!!

And Dick will be applying for jobs.  We knew that some of the jobs he was doing as an auto mechanic were getting too difficult for him.  We're kind of glad they made the decision for him.  At least the unemployment gives us time to breathe a little bit and figure out what comes next.  He already had an offer for a full-time job as an auto parts delivery driver.  We were shocked at the low pay, so he said no.  The guy at the tire department at Sam's Club seemed interested in him, so he'll explore that.  That would be only part time and maybe temporary, but their pay is better. 

Change of subject!!  Gotta share the baby pictures from this week! Look at these!!!

When I told Destiny about our upcoming travel plans she said, "And you'll be coming to Indianapolis again." Hmmm.  No plans for that, but it surely is tempting!

Next time I write we will be having longer evenings.  Woooohoooo!!