yep, that's right...a skating party was planned on my behalf by my very dear daughter and cooperative husband! this party was the grand finale to a weekend of birthday fun!
saturday, we packed up to go to my parent's house...where we dropped off the kids for an overnight stay...somewhere! i had no idea what was in store for me! we headed off to central pennsylvania, to a small town called columbia. it's about 40 minutes south of harrisburg on the susquehanna river. we went to a local market/bizarre thing to browse around. we met two really nice women selling their handknits/handspun and they had wheels with them...so i was all ga-ga over them. we left there and went straight to the pharmacy across the street. totally old fashioned place: a diner in the front with locals staring as we walked in. odd toys and bits for sale amidst balm, toothpaste and remedies. i purchased a small
schleich lamb...to put up for inspiration to one day own a real one! we walked around the town a bit, then drove a bit to hike over to chickie's rock. a really beautiful view of the susquehanna(didn't take my own photo, so here's a borrowed
one). from there, we drove north on 441 to harrisburg for a great tapas dinner at
suba. YUM...loved every morsel. we high-tailed it out of there to lancaster, for some possible contra dancing, but finding ourselves a little on the tired end, decided on coffee and dessert at the prince street
cafe. (ps-we even saw our friends' son's photo on the wall - christopher burkholder will be playing there in march!) (pps-the contra dancing WILL happen next month!)
so, not knowing where we were staying, i started to ask questions...and little by little realized we were heading to the exact same place we stayed on our wedding night! this AMAZING bed and breakfast that has a detached spring house - 3 floors, fireplace in the living room, cozy bedroom and roomy bathroom...and the breakfast is soooooo good! it was all too much! i was beaming from ear to ear!
we awoke to snow falling lightly...ate the amazing peach-french toast breakfast and went back to the spring house for fireside coffee, bible time and knitting. oh, it was good!
from there we headed to shillington...to
skateaway! when chris asked stella what she wanted to do that was "special for mama" she said, "we HAVE to go roller skating!"...so we did. my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews, and friends, loren, rich, milja and iona all joined us! hilariously fun. (and kinda good in the workout way) SO memorable. we ended up back at my sister, lura's house for pizza, cupcakes and icecream...and gifts! can it get better? oh yes it can...in addition to some girly gifts from my sister and a neti pot from loren and rich, my parents, sister, husband and in-laws all went in on this for me:
a
zojirushi home bakery supreme! holy cow! all ingredients are in now for honey wheat bread now, timer set to have freshly baked bread at 6:30am! oh yes!! this thing is amazing...says it can bake all sorts of breads, prepare doughs, create a sourdough starter/bread, make jam, make a meatloaf miracle (love that name), and create your own recipes. this is ridiculously exciting for me!
i am a blessed woman!
so...what a weekend! and i do have some photos for sharing...but will have to wait on them, as it is getting late! however, dear friends, our family has committed to something BIG this week.
we are having a Media-Free Week. no tv. no dvds. no videos. no computer(gulp). no blogs/blogging. no googling. no facebooking(like i do it anyway!) we need to reclaim some peace and quiet in our lives, so this is a big step towards that. we'll see if chris and i can agree to possibly on posting photos of the weekend...but i can't promise it! i do have to much to catch up on, too...some sad, some wonderful...but it will all wait until after next sunday. so, thank you all for the well-wishing on this day, and i hope you have a lovely week. we'll be eating lots of bread. and maybe some jam. and possibly a meatloaf miracle. i'll let you know. next week.
stella lost tooth number 3. this one being the top left. top righty has slanted himself over to try to take over the whole space, thus making our beautiful girl look slightly hill-billy-ish. teeth number 4 and 5 are seriously wiggly. toothfairy's gonna be busy.
10 in 10...from chris to me for january...this amazing chalkboard was completely made up from scratch with a wonderful rim to hold the chalk and a nice big blackboard for me to write all kinds of stuff on for school. it currently has some questions from the catechism for young children and our bible memory verse. we use it for reading, memorization and copy work. pure love.
time for bed with a clear conscience.
