Busy Days!

I'm sure you are all getting tired of the Coronovirus shutdown like we are. One thing we have enjoyed is doing a drive in service at our church. It's not like being in person, but sure better than sitting home watching it!

We were looking through some old pictures and found this one of Arthur, far left, from back in our college days at Northland. Those of you that know us, should know who is standing beside him as well! This was taken in our apartment when they were getting ready for a nightime campus event.

Another oldie picture we found was this one from the April Morning drama. It hardly looks like Arthur! 

The guys have been out sucker fishing a couple of times and one thing I did with them was make some pickled fish. Okay, as a girl I loved pickled fish. Ate it whenever I got a chance. But then one day I made some and realized that its really just raw, pickled fish. Haven't been able to eat it since!

Today my project is to take some old beans I had, both black beans and garbanzo beans and cook them up. They've been soaking all night, and after draining, rinsing, and putting in fresh water, they are on the stove as I speak. I love both of these beans in salads, in chili, in omelets, you name it! This time of year I always get into "empty the freezer and pantry" mode for the new garden season coming up. 

Arthur enjoyed taking Daniel sucker fishing and teaching him how to filet a fish. He loved it! Suckers are a great fish to learn on because if you mangle the filet all up, who cares! There's more!

Backing up to Easter Sunday, the girls took time to dress up and fix their hair to celebrate our Lord and Savior's death and resurrection!

They couldn't resist a Coronovirus facemask photo!

Arthur and I went for a drive last night, which we very seldom have time for, and looked at the fields. This is last years flax crop that never got harvest because of the fall rains. The field is still too wet to harvest. Such is farming.

Meanwhile, we are having calves born every day and its so fun to see the mama and baby pairs in the field!

Meanwhile, Priscilla works hard to finish up the rough draft of a new book.

Meanwhile, Miriam got her plane tickets for this summer. We will sure miss her!

So that's it for now. Continue to pray for our country and its leaders. Pray too for church leaders around the country that they would have wisdom in when to reopen and how. Have a wonderful day, everyone!

Snow, Cold, Snow, Cold

January through March are my "house" months and I have a few projects that we're tackling. One is organizing the office a little better, which includes a new coat of paint. Thank you, Miriam!!!

 Daniel has been over to enjoy a game of Clue with the Aunties and he enjoys holding Heidi while playing! I love these grandchildren so much!!

We've had a lot of snow, and really cold weather so I have just been enjoying home days with gratefulness that I don't have to go out! Someone needs to go out of this door though and unplug the Christmas lights on the left side.  I think I'll get Eli to do it ;)

I got a beautiful journaling Bible for Christmas. I'm using it as my "Heirloom Bible" and intend to write my testimony, answers to prayer, how verses have helped me, etc, as a gift to a future granddaughter, someday.  It makes me look at things a little different as I read it, and I'm enjoying the different perspective of "what can I learn and share about this with whoever gets this". How can I encourage future generations in their walk with God? What can I do to encourage them to get saved if they're not? I was encouraged listening to the Bible Bee this year to pray for future generations, so that has been an interesting focus for me in my prayer life as well.

Otherwise, there isn't a whole lot of anything newsworthy to write about. Arthur and Eli work hard to keep the animals warm. Priscilla works hard on her book. The other girls work hard either here or the other places they routinely go.  Life isn't easy here in the northland, but I so love the long evenings and cool, crisp air to breathe. I love the crunch of the snow and the promise that summer will come.  Did you know when it gets really cold you can see mirages on the lake?

Meanwhile, you all stay warm, and enjoy these precious days that God has given us.

Raspberry Pickin'

I thought Daniel and David might enjoy picking raspberries this morning, and they did!

You can't see it on the picture but there is a smile on that face whenever he found a berry to pick!

"My container's almost full!"

Of course, picking berries wouldn't be nearly so much fun if Grandpa wasn't out there!

And Josh too!

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!

Hosanna

Its been a couple of really rollercoaster weeks! 

Less than two weeks ago the maze finished. Its a relief because we finally can get some sleep, and yet there is so much clean up, bills to pay, things to put away, etc.  I think we've almost wrapped it up! Arthur's chopping the corn and I feel sorry for those that call about bringing a group to the maze.  Too late. Then we lost a son and gained a daughter.  Silas was my "baby boy" and it wasn't easy to see him get married, but what a joy to know he has a godly wife to stand by him!  I can't wait to see what God has in store for them! Naomi and Aaron moved to their church house.  We'll miss having them so close but how fun to see them make a church their home! Then Hosanna came home after almost seven months of being gone.  We finally had time this week to sit down and visit and then she left again yesterday.  Sigh.  I guess we can finish the garden now. She left some pictures for me to post.

This isn't the greatest photo but it shows Hosanna working in the warehouse packing up Bible Bee boxes. Maybe one of these boxes went to your house!

Hosanna's church in Ohio did the same VBS we did this year so we enjoyed comparing things.

Hosanna stays with a wonderful older couple and they enjoy taking her places.  I'm not even sure where this is but it sure is pretty. I think they had a family get-together at this park.

Hosanna also was in a cornfest parade. (Just can't get away from that corn no matter how far you travel!)  She was dressed up as an Operation Christmas Child gift box and walked in the parade.

Some of Hosanna's friends going on a hayride at a cornmaze!  

GraceAnn and Hosanna playing the maze game.  It was actually a large dairy operation that had a cornmaze with it.

Arthur and his dad took Hosanna to the Fargo airport yesterday.  She made it back to Ohio before they got home!  What a blessing planes can be! Today she left for Florida for the National Bible Bee to help get things set up. Being down there, I don't think she'll be missing us like we miss her!  A few more weeks and she'll be home again.

And back at home, Isaac took some of Rebekah's relatives out fishing this last week. They were up for the wedding.  Anyway, Daniel loves fishing and enjoyed catching some big ones! In fact, they got a lot of nice fish! 
Isaac also got his deer, a nice large doe, with a bow. (That was a few weeks ago but I think I forgot to mention it.) He also bought two pickup trucks to use or fix and sell. One might be made into his trapping truck.
 Arthur is getting the cattle closer to home to vaccinate next week.
 Silas and Karen are on their honeymoon and we've been cleaning up and working on their home-sweet-home along with J. family members. Yes, we've heard from them. Even got a text picture of Silas at none other than, a corn maze!
I must be getting rested up because I'm starting to plan my next project - the kitchen!  It needs help so bad!  Well, you all have a wonderful day enjoying the beautiful fall weather God is sending us!

Family, Bible Bee, Maze

A four generation picture of farmers on our farm. What a lot of hard work these four do! Well, Daniel works hard for his age :)

The local Bible Bee was this Saturday!  Priscilla did really good and we are happy for all of God's Word she has hidden in her heart.  These are the winners in the senior age division.

Over at the maze, Arthur built a huge bale mountain that the kids absolutely love!!  

This is a Giant Kerplunk game in the fort.  Fun to play, but not so fun to pick back up!  In the background you can see the snake eye game with the dice.  We were very happy to have the H. & H.  relatives come up for opening weekend.

The workers should know better than to get in the corn!  I thought it was a cute pose :)

Both Friday and Saturday night we had smore buffets set up.  I think everyone really enjoyed it, at least we did and will put it on our list to do again, and maybe a hot chocolate buffet if it gets cold out.  

Back to the Bible Bee.  One boy made the Bible Bee logo out of legos.  We thought it was pretty neat.

And our whole local group of Bible Bee contestants.  Thank you so, so much Mitton family for all the hard work you did to host this!!!  We look forward to it next year :)