Great Weekend!

We had company over this past weekend and it was a lot of fun for Mandy and I to have a chance to have Amie and her little boy, Payton, here Sunday and until early this afternoon. This seems to becoming an annual tradition now -her visiting here, usually in late February or early March.

Amie and her son live just outside of Gettysburg, PA and she and my son had a long relationship -like seven years worth -that ended seven years ago this spring but they have remained very good friends since their break-up.

What's great about that is that way my girls and I can still easily maintain our relationship too with Amie!

Here's Amie and Payton as they were getting ready to leave to return home and there's Mandy, thoroughly enjoying the new coating of snow we received last night too!

Payton is one little cutie! He will be three in April and is small for his age -but then again, his mother is very small built too.

But he is so comical to listen to as he can chatter away, a mile a minute and uses big people words too in his speech! Quite the little conversationalist, he is.

What was really fun though was to watch him interact with Maya and Kurtis. The kids, overall, got along together quite well. However, at one point this morning, there was a little bit of a ruckus upstairs and Mandy and Amie went up to investigate to see which boy was having issues. (How did we know it was one of the boys? Easy! They were up there with Maya and rarely does she allow younger children to get the upper hand, ya know.)

When the Moms got upstairs, Payton informed them that "The girl hit the boy!"

Yep, ya see what I mean there? I knew it was Maya doing something not so nice and most likely it was to her brother too. Right on both counts!

Tonight, after supper, Kurtis was running through the dining room and tripped over one of his toys on the floor. (He is definitely his Grandma's offspring in that he doesn't watch out for obstacles that might be laying about, in his way so trips quite easily on things like that. Just like me!)

Anyway, he landed with a bit of a thud and Mandy and I both asked him the standard question - "Are you okay?" To which he let out a bit of a scream -short one though -and then, two short "WAH WAH" sounds. And that was it. But the way he did those "WAH WAHs" was just so comical to see and hear.

Later, he was having issues over something -who knows what -and again, the question was posed to him "Are you okay?" This time he gave us a very matter-of-fact response of "No." We asked him what was wrong and his answer to that was so revealing -"I don't know!"

Really gives a person a lot of information to go on, doesn't he?

Maya is going to have a very busy week ahead this week as she has play practice Tuesday and Wednesday evenings then, Thursday, it will be their dress rehearsal. The performances will be Friday and Saturday night at the elementary school up in Philipsburg of the play, "Cinderella."

I'm really looking forward to seeing how she does in this, her stage debut! She knows all the music and dances for her scenes as well as every other scene in the play and we think she knows 100% of the dialogue too now! Quite the little trooper she is, for sure!

Some of you may be aware that in addition to my blog, I am also on Facebook. If you want to friend me, just look for Jeni Hill Ertmer and if I know who you are, I'll be happy to friend you back.

One of the pages on Facebook that I am on is one called "Grassflat Grown" which, theoretically is for anyone who lived here in Grassflat or who has roots to this little village or has any interest in the place or the township too for that matter.

The girl who set up this page is from here originally but now lives around Chicago some place but since I am really interested in stuff like this page (photos and articles about the place, etc.) she gave me "administrator" privileges to it and as such, I've set up a couple discussion sites there for people to share memories or other things about Grassflat and/or Cooper Township.

One of the most recent things I started on the Discussions Page is to post obituaries there for people who lived here at the time of their passing or perhaps many years ago too.

Today, I had a very lengthy obituary to post there for a lady named Lydia (Lapps) Soder Anderson who died last week at the age of 99.

I knew Lydia back when I was junior/senior high age as she, along with Mrs. Louise Janke -from Winburne and Mrs. Betty Raymond, from Grassflat, were the advisors for the girls 4-H Group from this region. We girls had so much fun with those three ladies as we tried to learn bits and pieces about cooking and crafts, sewing and such. Lydia was one great leader of our group and such fun to spend time at our meetings with her because though she could dish out good stable advice, she also had a great sense of humor that gave us the freedom to feel we could talk to her about most anything.

She had moved away from this area back around 1986-87 or so and I had lost contact with her then so it had been many, many years since I last saw her. I wish I'd known where she was living as I would have loved to have been able to visit with her from time to time and remember all those fun times with the 4-H group and the hi-jinx we girls would often get into at them as well.

Rest in peace, Lydia. I will remember you and will try to tell my grandchildren about you and what a great friend you were to young girls like my friends and I were back in those days.