on the road again doing missionary furniture pickups

Wednesday morning we went to the UHaul place and got a 12 foot trailer so that we could haul a big couch and chair ad airconditioner down to Indiana, Pa. The two sets of young missionaries from Erie followed us to Corry where this was what we ran into--a foot of fresh, unshoveled, snow. Thankfully there were enough shovels to make the job go fairly quick. This is Elder Evans shoveling out the parking area at the apartment

As you now can see, there is a snow plow here, but no one to operate it. The apartment is on the right up those, unshoveled stairs

Here is Elder Dad, Elder Mitchel and Elder Evans!!

Here is Elder Riley start at the top of the stairs to push the snow down. Then he swept them clean so make them usable to bring down the furniture. We finally got everything packed up and were on our way. We had hoped to be in Indiana by 1:30, but instead we were just leaving Corry at that time We prayed that the roads were better than this the rest of the way, and most of the way they were.

We saw various amounts of snow on trees and roads, as you will see in the following pictures At some points there was really deep snow, the almost none, then we saw the grass!!

Just about every ten miles or so the roads changed from this

To this postcard beauty (one of my favorites)

to this!! Nice, huh

Almost no snow at all

a lot of the towns had these snowflake type decorations

AGAIN

I know, what is this?? The star decorations in Punxsutawey They really looked nice

I took this so you could see the extra blankets we had to put on in that cold cold room!!

The Blue Jays were my favorite and the hardest to get pictures of

I love to stand and watch the birds at Joe's house

more birds just outside the kitchen door

here it is that rascally old blue jay on the ground picking up seeds do you see the deer tracks in the snow to the left they came to feed during the night while we all slept

Here he is again!!

more outside near the kitchen door

Rose and Joe in the computer room--office

Bryan came up on Thursday morning and visited for an hour or so. He was to go to Lori's families for dinner in the afternoon and we were going to Sprankles at 2 so it was a nice, but short visit

Dad reading the adds on Friday morning. We opted not to go to Black Friday events

The things that Joe and Rose do!!

Our Thanksgivig at the Sprankles--dinner at 2

Okey, this was Thanksgiving with the Sprankles (Aunt Zenie's son Ronnie, his wife, Teeny, Dot and Everett Gaul). You can see Uncle Joe o farthest right, Jane Sprankle (don'r remember last name) Alice and Roy's son and daughter in law At head of table is their grandmother who is 94 years old and acts like a 70 year old

This is me, Alice, Dot, Teeny, Rose, Ronnie

Everett, Jane's husband, and Bill Neville (Dot's sister Pat's husband)

Dad eating while Rudolph looks on--cute, huh??

more of the same--check it out, we used real plates and silverware

The one pouring coffee is Pam and this is her house. The table we used has 7 sections to put in. It sits 16 people. An amazing table!! When you take it all apart it is the size of a card table.

I took this so you could see the wall paper

These were the dessert plates and napkins In the little cup was cranberry juice--we toasted Thanksgiving and family

Now, this is a neat tradition. Dot got up to put her gifts on the table. Everyone brings a gift for each other. Like Dot brought 18 little dishes with homemade candy, dipped pretzels, etc. and covered with pretty celephane and bows. Each person brought the same thing (15 or more) Then they put them all on the table and each person went around the table and took one of every kind on the table. That way you would end up with 15-18 gifts. They let me go around last, making sure everyone else had theirs--they always brought extras.

these were some of the things

Rose brought these beautiful wall hanging and they were beautiful, but inexpensive

more pictures of the things. I thought maybe this would be a great thing in our family for just the ladies to do??? If we start now, the younger generation will soon be able to participate as these mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers, do.

On the missionary road again

I took this of Abbie's Christmas tree. Isn't that a cute head on the tree?? I took this picture of us as I got out of the car, but you can see, with his extra height, and my inexperience in taking self pictures ( I am not as good as Julia, who does this all of the time) I missed part of me!! It was so good to see him and I did not realize just how much he looks like Jerry!!

This is Dick "Who?" that we met at the freeway cutoff in Brookville. I hadn't seen him for about 6 years so it was good to sit down and talk for about an hour, while we ate home fried potatoes and an omelet with mushrooms, onions, cheese!! He has had so much trouble with his arthritis, and he was the unfortunate one in the family to get that nasty thing!!

This is the last "Phil, the Groundhog" waving goodbye as we make our way to Brookville on Saturday morning

When we got to Franklin, we asked the Elders if there was another way back to Erie except going to Corry, and he said just follow the signs when we took the first right from their apartment, so we did!! It leaded us toward Jamestown, but did not take us directly there, there was a cut off stating that was the way to Erie. So we went and we saw this body of water, knowing it couldn't be Lake Erie, yet. It was just beautiful!!

Look at the Lake out there!! It is not Lake Erie but I think Conneaut Lake

See the marker stating that we are 34 miles from our little "home away from home"

Here are the lady missionarys pulling into their parking spot at their apartment

Here is Elder Dad unloading the box springs for Sister Wolfgramm

This is Sister Thompson looking at the mattress

Here is one happy Sister Wolfgram to have a box springs that does not have things sticking out of it.

Well,since it is beginning to look like christmas outside, I thought that I would talk Elder Dad into buying some colored lights and decorations for the tree here in our apartment. It is not big, but it does bring the spirit into our room and you all know how much I love Christmas decorations!!! I bought this little nativity scene at a yard sale last summer, knowing we were going to be somewhere on a mission this year, so here it is displayed on our little table and we love it!! WE will probably add more to our apartment as time goes on, but for now, this is helping our Christmas "feeling"

Oh, by the way, our icecicle melted and is gone--we will no doubt have more to watch. We have had snowing all afternoon, but because it is being troubled with rain, the streets are not too bad!! Hopefully we can get out of Erie in the morning to go to Big Run for thanksgiving.