April 9, 2005
| Birthday party for Maria... |
Sunday was a lovely communion day. The only drawback was the lost hour of sleep in the morning due to Daylight Savings Time. I thought the service was especially inspirational with special singing by "Work in Progress" and the feet-washing meditation by Ralph Dickerson. We came home and whipped up a quick dinner of kale greens over rice. Then an afternoon nap before going over to Bill's for Maria's birthday party. Ralph Dickersons were also there with their children. We had a great supper of pizza casserole, baked corn, veggies & fruit with dip, cake & icecream. After supper the adults played some chicken track dominos. Fun evening, then home for bed. |
| Quality time... |
Monday morning we had a rushed breakfast of "Mother Strite's Granola" then I hurried off to work. It was a beautiful day but some of the joy went out of it when my car died at the shop. Mark Hochstetler quickly got his tow truck over and towed it back to the shop. The timing belt had broke. We knew that it had been making some noise & needed to be replaced but our mechanic hadn't been able to fit it in yet. Ina Sue kindly raced the mini-van in to me so that I could finish up my service calls. We skipped supper in the evening and instead drove over to Carl's for some pine straw. After we finished spreading it we came in and I worked on updating the webpage while Ina Sue read blogs. |
| The wisterias seem to pop out everywhere. |
Ina Sue & Carolina road with me in to Barnwell Service Center Tuesday morning so that I could pick up my repaired Camry. Then they went on to do some grocery & Walmart shopping. I drove up to Orangeburg for some service work then back in to the shop. I was able to come home just a little bit early in the evening and we were able to get two more loads of pine straw. When we got back I started mowing the yard while Ina Sue spread the straw. |
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Gathering pine straw. |
I spent the day Wednesday at the shop while Ina Sue did various & sundry jobs around the house. She mowed, weeded, Round-Uped, raked, pruned, painted, washed, dried etc. In the evening we had prayer meeting. Carolina Sue had some behaviour issues during church and we had a little session outside.... After the service the church brethren met for a while to discuss some changes in our school board structure and new building management. |
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Carl was chopping rye this week |
I got left around 5:45 Thursday morning. I left the lady folks sleeping and met Kent in Columbia for our drive to Jonesville. The Puerto Rico Mennonite Council meets halfway between Va, & GA one or two times each year and this was the one time. We started our meeting right at 10:00am and adjourned just a little after 4:00. For lunch we ate at the "Cracker Barrel" It was about 8:00 by the time I got home and Ina Sue had a wonderfully romantic supper fixed with flowers & candles and "The Ultimate Seafood Fondue" (Red Lobster Recipe). It was so nice to be at home and with my family.... |
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A romantic candlelight dinner |
On Friday Ina Sue worked on the weekly cleaning, but in between drove over to Myron Brubaker's dairy to pick up some overflow milk they were giving away. She brought back 4 gallons and promptly made us to pans of custard. Yum! In the evening I made up a 10lb bag of potatos into potato salad for the youth weekend tomorrow (we are supposed to help cook) Ina Sue mixed up 5 gallons of tea concentrate. We waited up then for our company to get here. My sister Laura & her friends Kimberly Eshleman & Elizabeth McKinnon were here to stay for the weekend. When they finally got here they were hungry so we had leftover seafood fondue with bread chunks, celery & blue cheese, and chocolate bars. |
| Picking pig.... A good time together |
Saturday was another of our very full days. We got up around 6:00 to put our breakfast in the oven. We were supposed to meet at Delmars to help pick the BarBQ off the pig. (Delmar Diem is a world class pig BarBQ'er) but the pig wasn't quite done yet. Instead we met Delmars and his cooker at the church and got to work there. We had most of the meat picked off by dinner time but a few chunks stayed on the coals until after dinner. For dinner we had the chopped pork, rice & hash, cole slaw, green beans and Oreo ice-cream for dessert. |
| Some of the youth played softball |
By the time we ate and got all the mess cleaned up it was getting on in the afternoon. We also put together meat, cheese, and cookie trays for the supper. We hurried home and had about 3/4 hour to rest before we needed to head back to the church to get supper on the table. For supper we served make-it-yourself subs, chips, potato salad, pickles, cookies and fruit slush for dessert. The youth really seemed to enjoy the food but didn't near eat everything. We had quite a bit left over! The youth had three sermons throughout the day Saturday mixed in with some softball & volleyball. David Yoder from PA was the featured speaker and from what we heard gave challenging and inspirational sermons to the youth. |