There's Something About Spring Crop-Day Three

Day three! What a day! This is the day that all the rest of the Florida girls arrived! First up was Sisterdear and Julie. They flew in on an earlier flight than the rest so Stacey and I headed up to Elmira to pick them up first. The four of us headed to downtown Corning and went to lunch and did some power shopping while waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive around 3pm. We ate at a favorite deli and had the best tomato & Swiss soup. We found a great vintage textile shop that had tons of great "finds". I'm gonna have to go back there when I have more time to browse. Stacey discovered this shop that only sold black & white cookies. They were in all different flavors like peanut butter & jelly and lemon & raspberry. Very yummy!
I got a text from Dianne while in one store telling us that their plane had to return to the gate for some maintenance. Didn't sound good, so we thought we had a bit more time to shop. Nope! Their plane landed just as we were leaving the knit shop Stacey had been hunting for. Thankfully the airport is just a couple of minutes away and they were not waiting for us too long.

Dianne had found out that we have a Hobby Lobby right near the airport and asked if we could make a stop off before heading back to PA. Being the obliging host that I am, I said "yes" and into the van and my car we hopped! Big thanks to the company Charles works for, Woodhouse for letting us borrow the van for the weekend. We descended upon Hobby Lobby like locust on a crop. We all headed straight to the scrapbooking section, which is many, many aisles of fun stuff. We had buggies and coupons and there was no stopping us! We managed to make the employee's eyes roll a few times at our goofiness and I even helped some women out with a stamping emergency. Kim scolded me for not handing out a business card to them. What business would that be? Lurking in craft stores and offering free customer service?! The funniest moment in the store happened when I asked the cashier where the nearest liquor store was. Her reaction was priceless... Stunned expression followed by, "I've never been asked that question before!" It took the stock guy to get us there!
For the ride home I had created these PA BINGO cards for the girls to play. There were things on there like, "Police Car" (a rare sight), "Red Barn", "Deer", "Road Kill", "Big Blue Factory"...but there were rules! Like if your card said both "Deer" and "Road Kill" and what you spotted was a dead deer, you could only stamp one spot! It was too funny. Of course there were those who even though they picked their own card from a stack swore that the game was rigged OR my favorite (Miss Barbara!) who said she was cheated at the game because my car windows were dirty! Geesh! (Side note: Turns out later it was her glasses that were dirty!!)

We arrived at my house just a little before dusk and I had a party all waiting. I took everyone on the 25 cent tour of the house while Stacey heated everything up and got the food ready. I just loved that everyone said that the house "looked like Jen". Also it was funny when they started taking photos of my scrap area! Yeah....it's big and pretty organized! My only defense is...it's my JOB!
We sat around the table eating yummies and getting to know the one and only PA scrapper that could come-Julie (N). She was such a trooper sitting through all our craziness, in fact, I think she was enjoying herself. Some of the yummy appetizers included this tomato & mozzarella topped bread and the very popular sticky BBQ wings with blue cheese dip. Dianne said that the wings were good, but mostly a vehicle for the dip. Funny lady! Julie (W) really loved hanging out with my critters!

There were a number of cocktails served and after feasting on appetizers the girls were too full to think about supper, so I suggested pie at Eddie's, the diner by our house. How can I describe Eddie's? This is a local diner that when you go there everyone knows everybody. It is like an extended family dinner when you go there. Its about an hour 'till closing and in walks a large group of semi-rowdy women with their eyes on pie! There were two other couples in the diner at the time and I just wonder what they thought of us! After we ordered one of the wives came over to the table to say "hi" and to ask us if we were from a TOPS meeting. In fact, she told us that it was her husband who wondered that! What a nerd! In case you are wondering "TOPS" means "Take Off Pounds Sensibly". Here we are, everyone of us with a piece of pie in front of us and over half of the table is skinny girls, so TOPS?! Dude, really?!! Dianne and Miss Barbara cracking up at something.

After the diner everyone was looking mighty tuckered so we got them over to the Canyon Motel to check in while Stacey and I headed over to the Fire Annex to set up the room. I had Rent A Center deliver a set of living room furniture so that there would be a cozy spot to relax in and Sisterdear set up that area for us complete with trees and reading material. It was so cute! The hall also had these room dividers that allowed us to partition off the lounge/bar area and the dining area from the crop zone. It really made the room cozy. The tables were round and maybe not a croppers favorite table shape, but oh, boy were those easy to move around! No heavy lifting, only rolling! I was a fan of the round table!
Back home around midnight and it took no time for us all to fall asleep. Except Sisterdear who kept hearing mysterious noises in her room and around the house. Hummm...