The first of those was a 25th wedding anniversary celebration on Saturday afternoon, Aug. 25th. The husband, Johnny, threw a surprise party for his wife at their house. He had her upstairs getting ready "to go out," while all the guests came quietly into the house. We all waited in the kitchen, and amazingly, she was totally and completely surprised. That was fun. Then the party commenced with lots of good food and fellowship.
The next day, we hosted a game night with our FOCUS group. This is a group of older singles (30, 40 & 50 year olds), some divorced, some never married from church. We felt a desire to help these lonely people to build relationships and connect with others who are in the same life situations. We meet during the year every other Sunday evening at our house where we eat a dinner together, then have a Bible study and discussion, with hanging out time till they leave. During the summer, though, we haven't met quite as often because of vacations and a less structured schedule for people. But on Sunday, Aug. 26th, we had a fun evening planned at our house. Everyone brought a snack and I made a carrot cake to celebrate 2 girls' birthdays. We were able to eat out on the deck and play some games out there until the mosquitoes drove us inside. It was an enjoyable evening with lots of laughter and camaraderie, especially laughing at ourselves because it took us longer to read the directions than it did to play the games. Then when we finally got to playing the game, we quickly lost interest and voted to play the next game...when we had to read the new rules again, etc.
We finally gave up on the games we brought and let Lizette take over. She had been in charge of kids' games at a camp all summer and had all kinds of creative activities for us to do. Now little kids' games we were able to do without a lot of long and difficult instructions! And fortunately, no one minded looking silly.
This past weekend was Labor Day. Usually with a long weekend, Andy and I are working on a project around the house. But at this time, believe it or not, we are not working on anything. So we decided to go to the Franklin Institute to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. C & C and kids were planning to explore the Academy of Natural Sciences, also in Philadelphia, close to the Franklin Institute, so we talked about going back to their house after our respective field trips and spending the rest of the day together. Christy would make dinner. Christy had called to ask if the Academy was normally crowded on Labor Day, and was assured that it wasn't. However, I think everyone must have been at the Franklin Institute, because there were lines of people there. Maybe because the weather was nasty and people couldn't go to the shore or be in their yards picnicking, the museum was a good alternative. We waited in line for 20 minutes, at least, before we could get in to the exhibit. Then when we did get in, there were so many people in there, that it was next to impossible to see anything. There were interesting displays of pottery, evidently taken from Israel, as well as scraps of scrolls in displays. But it was hard to read any of the explanations because of the crowd. Well, chalk it up to a learning experience, although I'm not sure what we learned!
Playing games after dinner
Look who's crawling - and what a face!
On Tuesday, I cleaned house and did laundry. Then Andy and I took his mom and dad out to eat for dinner. That was our thank you for dad helping Andy with the plumbing issues we had a couple of weeks earlier.
Then after work yesterday, Wednesday, we were invited out to a couple's house for dinner, a nice evening out with friends.
I think after all this partying, the next couple of days are going to seem pretty humdrum and dull. Yawn!
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