Riverside Blooms: February 2009

Our niece is born!

On February 8, 2009 our little niece Abigail Ruth Witmer arrived. She weighed 7lbs 1oz and has a lot of hair. My sister Dawn and her husband Jeff are proud parents for the first time. Everyone is healthy and doing well. I was able to hold her on Monday before she was even 24 hours old. She was awake almost the whole time I was there. She will be a bundle of joy to our whole family...Congratulations Dawn and Jeff!!

Farm Show 2009

Since I haven't been working a lot over the last month or so, I was able to go to the PA Farm Show for part of the day. I always get somewhat lost when I go there because there are so many people and things have changed over the last couple of years. Here's a little story to let you know just how out of it I can be...I was looking for the butter sculpture and I thought I remembered where it was in the past. So Monica and I get to where I thought it should be and instead there is Turkey Hill stand where they are giving out free samples of Duetto ice cream. So we each had some and continued our search for the butter sculpture while looking at other displays. After a while we ended up going back past the TH stand looking for the butter sculpture. We came upon a gentlemen who asked if we needed any help, so we told him what we were looking for. He told us that if we went back toward the TH stand we would see it. I chuckled and looked at Monica...cause we had already been by there at least twice. Yeah so if we had just turned around from getting our free ice cream we would have seen the butter sculpture. Oh well!
This year as in other years, Neil and some of his students did a large display at the farm show. This year's displays focused on the "green" benefits of agriculture. Penn Manor did a display on using methane to create energy. Below you will see some pictures of the display. I think the kids learned some things but I also think that they (and their teacher) had a lot of fun "playing". Oh and Dawn the longhorn pics are for you...enjoy!

Dawn's Shower

On January 11, 2009 we had a small shower for my sister Dawn. Her good friend Robin almost didn't make it to the shower because of a large snowstorm in Western PA, unfortunately she was also bringing the cake with her. She did make it for the shower and the cake did too...it was very cute and her mom did an excellent job at personalizing it for Dawn.

Frozen Luminaries (very fun to make)

Proud Mama with our luminaries

New Year's Eve 2008 at the Hess's

How are your wings Neil?

Neil proudly sharing tractor pull movies

"I'm tired, can we go home yet?"

Me with our wonderful hostess (and my faithful running partner)

Long Ago...Time to catch up!

So...it has been about a month and a half since I last blogged. You might ask...where have you been? Well, I have been spending lots of time in my dining room and doing lots of running. My friend Monica and I are training for a marathon in April, so we spend many hours running these days. My dining room is getting a makeover and I am almost finished. After I am completely done I will post some pics, so you can see how improved it is. Other than that I work a little bit, watch my niece a little, and enjoy being around the house some. Here are some snapshots from Christmas.