Corn Maze, Hunting, Ministry (Not in that Order!)

Not too long ago, I'm losing track of days, Isaac took Joshua and Aimee with him up to Beardmore, Ontario to help the Mikesh family. Mainly they helped reside the church Mr. Mikesh preaches in.

Okay, these pictures are out of order. While they were up at Beardmore a man took them out on his commercial fishing boat.   Awe, cute aren't they :)  (I bet Aimee smiled when she read that! No, I don't really bet, but you know what I mean!)

Here's Joshua and Isaac putting up siding.

It wasn't just our guys up there, there were a whole group of men that all met up there and they also helped with the siding, putting up new stairs, painted, and did some work inside the church as well.

Joshua measuring siding. Sorry that some of these are blurry.

A certain someone wanted his picture on our blog!

Way up high!  Isaac must be waiting for siding or something?

Joshua and Isaac doing some finish up work.

Aimee helped out with cooking, and other jobs that Mrs. Mikesh had for her.

Mr. Mikesh and some of his kids out on the boat.

And another one of the boat.

Back at home, Arthur and Josh took some time to go goose hunting. Josh has been staying with us for almost three months now.  We're going to miss him when he leaves ;(  We would adopt him but somehow I don't think Arthur's sister and her husband would go along with that!  Thank you for sharing him!!!

At the maze, we just had our largest day ever with over 600 people! That doesn't count family, church people, those we missed because it was just too busy to keep tract, and season pass people. It was crazy but everything went relatively smooth. We used to wonder if we could handle 200 people in a day!  No one seemed like they were in a hurry to go home, so that must be a good sign that they weren't as stressed out as I was!!

It was our special Pumpkin Weekend and one of the things we did was have a pumpkin smash.  Arthur and Josh would throw pumpkin from the top of the bale mountain and the first one who grabbed the stem from the smashed pumpkin got some maze money to spend.  It was probably one of the most fun things we've done as far as extra activities.

Arthur also took Daniel out goose hunting for his birthday.  Daniel was pretty tickled with the geese they got and his canoe ride out on the lake.

Back to the maze.  I thought I'd show you a few things in the store.  I've made a lot of these notekeepers.  They are special DVD type cases without the hub in them .  They have a notebook, sticky notes, and a pen that all match in them.  I love making them and embellishing them and will show you the insides of some of them when I get time.

The girls have been kept busy making jar mixes, and we sell a lot of these.  Favorite kind?  Probably the Cranberry Hootycreek ones!  Someday I'll post the recipe.  You can find it online though if you look.

Hosanna and Priscilla embroider dishtowels to sell.  Hey, if they don't sell, mine are really grungy so I'll buy them off of my girls! :)

And, at the end of this long picture post, is a picture of  Rachel and Hosanna in the concession stand.  We could not do the maze without such fantastic workers!!!!  Hosanna has worked very long days fixing and serving the hot food, in addition to spending hours and hours making popcorn balls at home.  Miriam tirelessly works making water balloons, and running nonstop errands for those at the maze (Miriam, we need more ice, Miriam, we're almost out of water balloons, Miriam, can you make some more popcorn balls for me, Miriam, we need more $1's, Miriam, can you bring more pretzels over, Miriam, run to town and get more pop, quick!, etc), while trying to get our garden processed at the same time.  Priscilla makes the dipped pretzels and those fantastic cookie dough brownies, as well as helps clean and works full time on weeekends. Not to mention all of them spend hours each week cleaning the maze to get it ready for the next weekend or between groups.  I am so grateful for their help as well as the other workers. This is going to be our "group" week with 11 groups during the week and weekend.  Please pray for us that we can finish well, with a smile on our face, for good weather, safety of those that come, and for the tracts that get passed out.

Well, I wanted to get you all caught up on what's going on around here.  It will be a busy week so we'll update you when time is available!  Did I mention there's a lot of fall farm work to get done? :)
 Have a great day and keep giving God the glory for the great things He has done!