Mother's Day Weekend

What a perfectly delightful weekend I had.  Here are a few highlights:

1.  Anna came.  What a blessing.  With Ethan gone, I worried that I would be feeling mighty bad.  However, she came from NYC (between juries and a recital last week and finals this week), brought lots of sunshine and reminded us all how much we love her and how good life is.  She even brought me a beautiful orchid for Mother's Day (and amazingly protected it the entire bus ride).

2.  Remembering my grandmother, Sylvia Caruthers.  We spent Friday afternoon making egg rolls, rice and fruit salad to take to a family (the 30-year-old mom has breast cancer).  Anna encouraged us to play for her when we dropped off the food, so while I cut the fruit, the kids headed into the living room and worked up an arrangement of "Where Can I Turn For Peace?"  Wonderful memories came flooding back of G-Mother and all the service she rendered while dragging us along for entertainment.  I didn't like it as a child, but I can appreciate now how much joy it brings to others.  The kids sounded wonderful and brought a sweet spirit to the family.

3.  Playing Aquaretto with Johanah, Glo and Anna.  I know this might seem silly, but Aquaretto is one of Ethan's favorite games, and Anna picked it up like a champ.  In fact, she ended up skunking us by several points and winning!

4.  Getting ready for a community garage sale.  A whole bunch of families in the neighborhood had stuff to sell, but not enough stuff to hold individual sales, so we all brought our offerings and set up shop.  Since our house is off the beaten path, the Kreiners let us "borrow" their driveway.  Not wanting to spend all Saturday morning sitting there, I offered a deal to Glo:  she could keep any money from the things that she sold.  In other words, I collected all the stuff around our house (and managed to clean our several closets and parts of the basement), and she sold it.  She netted over $40, so she was a happy camper.

Meanwhile, Anna and Mark went running together.  Anna is training for a 1/2 marathon in November, and she's committed to training.  Mark has been running a lot lately in his gym class, and I had no doubt that he would love some alone time with Sunshine.  We plotted a course through the neighborhood, and they were off.

When they came back, they joined Glo and me and the Kreiners and spent an hour or so, talking and laughing over stories in the Kreiners' driveway.  The sun was shining, Glo was making money, the kids had exercised, the Kreiners were meeting and falling in love with Anna also, and I was with friends and family.  Pure delight.

Mark thought that he should be a mannequin at our garage sale, demonstrating the cool things we had.
Here he is, showing off a Nerf gun.  In the end, nobody bought it and Glo gave it to Alex Kreiner :-)

5.  Anna got to see Mark and Johannah skate.  You really can't believe it until you see it.  Too, she saw that they really have the best job on the earth--skating while making money?  It's a good thing.  Much to my surprise, Anna put on a pair of skates too, and Glo went around the rink with her.  However, I was glad to see that she soon had the same thought I did--what if she fell and broke her wrist?  The skates came off, and my socks were returned to my feet :-)

The roller derby babes!

6.  Ferret races.  Wanting to give Anna a true taste of central Pennsylvania, we headed to the ferret races at our local pet store.  Yes, ferret races.  This is what we do in central PA, on a Saturday afternoon!  We had attended the hamster races before and laughed and laughed, but the ferret races were a bit more demure.  They had two activities:  walk through a cardboard tube the fastest, and tip over the most cups. I'm embarrassed to say that we stayed there for the entire 45 minutes! :-)

7.  Seeing John in Huntingdon.  Okay, I can't say that I was overly thrilled about driving to Huntindon (about 40 minutes away and another non-descript small PA town), but John was there and had been there all weekend.  He wanted to see Anna, and us, and he couldn't come home, being on call.  Try as I might, I couldn't find a legitimate restaurant there, so we ended up at the fine dining establishment of Pizza Hut.  Man, we ordered a lot of pizza.  And breadsticks.  And wings.  And pop.

Honestly, as much as I complain about State College, I realized that we really are blessed to live here.  The Huntingdon High School prom was that night, and guess where the kids were headed to dinner?  You got it--Pizza Hut.  Satin prom dresses, and greasy pizza.  I can't think of a worse combination.  Yes, Virginia, we do have a good set up in our town.

In the car, watching "Paycheck"

8.  Movies, movies and more movies.  This wasn't a highlight of my weekend, but I found out from Glo yesterday that it was definitely a highlight of hers.  On the way to and from Huntingdon, Glo and Anna sat in the back of the Volvo, watching the only movie available:  Paycheck.  It's one of Ethan's favorites.  It was hilarious to hear their reactions while they had headphones on and the rest of us didn't!  Simultaneous reactions, and talking to each other while still keeping the headphones on.  They didn't quite finish it by the time we got home, so they curled up on the couch, under a blanket and finished it out.  Meanwhile, I headed to the other side of the house to get my Sunday School lesson ready.  I started to wonder exactly how long that movie was when two hours later they were still under the blanket and still watching a movie.  A different movie.  Glo recounted it this way:  Anna turned to me and asked me if I wanted to watch another movie.  I told her that I should come ask you (me), but she said that she was sure you wouldn't mind.  Yes, there are so many reasons we love Anna :-)

9.  Sunday morning.  Three cheers for Mother's Day!  Glo got up around 6:30 to start cooking cinnamon rolls, and at some point, she woke up Anna to help her with the fruit salad.  Johannah and Mark tagged along when they saw what was going on :-)  I loved my breakfast, I loved being sung to, I loved the cards, and I loved having my kids on the bed with me.  Happy smiles everywhere and lots of love.  There is seriously no better job than being a mother.

For church, Johannah and Anna played a beautiful duet of "Love at Home".  I didn't look around, but from what I hear, there weren't a lot of dry eyes.  I must give "props" here to Johannah.  It can be intimidating, playing with someone with much more experience than you have, but she held her own, played out and sounded brilliant.  Three cheers for Hannie!

I taught my Sunday School class and we headed straight home, took some pictures, and prepared for our...

10.  Phone Call to Ethan!  Yay for Mother's Day and the rule that missionaries can talk to their family!  We had 40 minutes, and we knew that Ethan wouldn't go over by even a minute, so we had a list prepared of things to ask him.  Turns out, we didn't need it.  He got on the phone, and he could hardly contain his excitement that he and his new companion, Elder Curtis, had just achieved the Standard of Excellence set by the mission president several months ago.  We heard every detail about every miracle, and we were so happy.  It was obvious to all of us that Ethan is a missionary, through and through.  It's all he thinks about, it's all he talks about, it's all he does.  He could have stretched our conversation longer, but he didn't--it would be disobedient.  When I asked him if he could go back to Katowice to see one of his investigators baptized, it wasn't even a point to ask for permission--he doesn't want to lose the time contacting and proselyting.  In his words, "we would lose a whole day".  He wasn't craving any worldly news, or wanting to know about anything--his mind is clearly and 100% focused where it should be.

I couldn't ask for a better gift for Mother's Day.  An obedient and hard-working missionary.

Although not a highlight, Anna had to leave after that.  There were too many tears to count, and we weren't ready for her to head back to school.  I think the kids may have hoped that she would stay longer if they made an "Anna Sandwich" :-)  Unfortunately, she still got back on the bus, and we waved goodbye.

What a perfect Mother's Day weekend.