Thursday, July 22, 2010

Family Visits



About three weeks ago we had some families stop by from out of town. The Anderson family (above) live in Missouri where we met them at a concert we did down there. They were coming up here to spend the Fourth of July weekend with relatives so it was fun to see them again; in a different state!








Isaac usually jumps so high that he hits his head on the tree branches!




Mom and Mrs. Anderson preparing the food










We had fun playing ping pong, around the world ping pong, Foosball, ultimate Frisbee, catch phrase, jamming, and an interesting game of volley ball. :)

My mom knew both of these moms through college and they have a lot of good memories together. It just so happened that they both called our home in the same week and asked if they could stop by while in the area. We don't see either of them very often because they live in two different states so of course we were happy to have them over. The funny thing was neither of them knew the other one was coming and they both planned for the same day! Mom told Mrs. McCormick who was coming so she could get there early to open the door and surprise them. It was pretty funny.

Mr.and Mrs. Shaw, Mrs. McCormick (her husband was at home,) and Mom and Dad.

All of the children in order of age. From left to right: Isaac, Lucas Jonathan, Me, Nathan, Emma, Abby, Tessa, Max and Caleb.

Max and Emma are sibs from the McCormick family and Jonathan, Nathan, Abby and Caleb are from the Shaw family.



Taco salad

We had fun playing catch and throw, bachee ball, trampoline games, ladder ball and Fooseball.

If you can't tell, there's someone in there!


Monday, July 12, 2010

Canada Music Festival

This was our second Canada music experience and also a very interesting one. This festival was like the other one, (see other post about Canada,) in that it was run by Mennonites, but different from the other one in that the people that they were ministering to were Canadian people from their community and any one who wanted to come, instead of Native Americans and Ojibwa and Cree tribes. My Dad did the captions on this post because I am cleaning rooms getting ready for Nickolai our Ukrainian orphan who is coming THIS SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Enjoy!


















Here we are standing beside a beautiful blooming field of Canola preparing for a set up music at the Thousand Oaks Gospel Camp near Morden, Manitoba, which is southwest of Winnipeg. We had never seen Canola in a field, but it has gorgeous yellow blossoms cover fields hundreds of acres across. The Gospel Camp is run by Mennonites in the area, who mostly are immigrants to Canada from eastern Europe and South America who speak low German as their first language. They were wonderful hosts and very friendly and welcoming. The festival was very nice.


We had to play four sets of music, so we had to brush up on some old dusty songs!





It is not hard to sing to the Lord in such a beautiful setting as this.















We stayed in a little motel in town each evening. Here I am firing up the engine one morning to head to the festival, which was out in the country in a nice park area with lots of shade trees (and next to the beautiful field of Canola).




Doesn't Lucas look "spiffy" in his suit and tie? This was Sunday morning before we sang our last set of music.



My two crazy girls!





A brook near our motel in Morden, Manitoba.



Glorious Canola field. Unfortunately, the yellow doesn't show up very well in this photo.




Festival goers in their seats. There were easily more than 1000 in attendance.



The sound man is preparing for the next group of musicians.



Another view of the festival seating area under the trees.




Sisters forever!