Home Alone - Well not really

Elaine and Dallas have been gone all week to the A. C. E. International Student Convention. They left early Friday morning. That left Edith and I here at home alone. We haven't been bored though. For one thing, we have been keeping Marcia Schrock's dog for her while she is with the students at convention. Our dog and her dog are great friends. They love being together and miss each other when one of them goes back home.

Then on Wednesday evening we picked up two children that we will be taking care of until Monday. So, we are back to four people at the table and lots of activity around the house. The children are four and three. They play well together and enjoy being outside. Last evening they were playing in the playhouse. MacKensie packed a picnic basket with some toy plates and cups. She spread out a blanket outside the play house for a picnic. However, whenever she would get all her plates and cups arranged on the blanket, then her brother Jacob would say, "uh oh, it is starting to rain, we need to get everything in the house!". Then they would pack everything up and take it back to the play house. They went back and forth through this routine quite a few times.

I also got the garden ready today and planted some of the early things. I do a small garden. it is about 16 feet by 32 feet. We do all the weeding with a hoe, so things can be planted quite close together. We are still having frost every week, so I haven't planted anything that would be hurt by frost.

Elaine and Dallas will be home Sunday evening. Dallas fractured a bone in his arm the first evening at convention. He doesn't have any pain, so that is good. He will see the doctor here next week and we will see what they plan to do about it. The emergency room in Missouri put a soft cast on it and put his arm in a sling.

Here is Edith walking with the dogs and the children. I skipped out of my responsibilities so I could take the picture.

This is my minature garden after I planted a few things. Now if we get some warmer weather and a little rain we should get some things growing.

A few nature things

Spring has finally come to Northwestern Ontario! Today it was nice enough to take our canoe to the lake and go for a canoe ride. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and actually quite warm. It is wonderful to have nice enough weather to do more things outside again. Here are a few pictures from the past few days.

The goldfinches are back at our bird feeder. I put out Niger seed for them. They come quite regularly until the thistles go into seed. Then they nest and we don't see them at the feeder.

This is what the lake looked like this afternoon. We were kind of hoping to see a moose, but none showed up while we were there.

We did see a lot of turtles. The turtles were out in the sun on the edge of the water. We must have seen over a dozen.

Then we found this nest too. We think it is a loon nest with one egg in it. We saw a pair of loons nearby. Hopefully, they will lay another egg and hatch them out.

A. C. E. International Student Convention

Yesterday Elaine and Dallas left with the senior learning centre students from Cornerstone Christian School for the A. C. E. International Student Convention. The convention is being held again this year in Warrensburg, Missouri. They should have arrived there this afternoon. Looking at the weather forecast for Warrensburg, shows that it should be 80 degrees F there this afternoon. That will be quite a change for them since it was below freezing yesterday morning at 6:00 AM when they left.

They are each entering in a variety of events. Both of them are entering archery. Elaine has a piano solo and some photography. Dallas is playing on the fellows basketball team and running in a relay race.

The convention has students attending from North America, Africa, Asia and Central America. They always enjoy meeting some of the other international students at the convention. This is the first year for Dallas to attend, but Elaine has been there before.

You can watch the rallies online here. The first rally is Sunday morning at 10:00. Most evenings the rallies are at 6:15. They archive the rallies so you can watch them later too. The Cornerstone Christian School students are wearing red jackets. So, if you watch, you may even catch a glimpse of them in the audience.

Woodshed Repair

Did you ever start a project and then become amazed at how what you thought would be a minor project kept getting more and more complicated? That is how my woodshed repair has been. At the one end of the woodshed there were three upright railroad ties, with several sheets of roofing tin nailed horizontally to them. The roofing tin sheets had been spray painted blue and red, so they looked kind of shabby. This Spring the wood rolled out and knocked them down, so I knew it was a good time to do something.

I went to the building supply dump and like a good scavenger I found some skids that had both ten and twelve foot two by fours in them. I brought them home and knocked the skids apart. I started screwing the two by fours to the railroad ties and then discovered that the middle railroad tie wasn't even supporting the roof of the woodshed any more. This is not good, with the snow load we get here. So, I realized that I needed to get the railroad tie back under the roof.

In order to get it back in I needed to move some firewood. More firewood kept falling down and so, I moved a lot of firewood. Then I jacked up the roof, but couldn't get the railroad tie to move. I moved more firewood, got a bigger hammer. Nothing worked. Then I realized that the ground was still frozen around the railroad tie and it wasn't going to move until the ground thawed. At that point we left for the States.

When we came back from the States, I was sure the ground was thawed enough now and so I jacked the roof up again. Sure enough, when I wrapped a chain around the railroad tie and used the hand winch it pulled it under the roof. I screwed it in place. Then I put some boards from the railroad tie to the rafters of the shed. Now it is secure and shouldn't move again, unless it pulls the whole roof with it.

At last I think I can finish putting the two by fours the rest of the way up the side of the woodshed. It is probably almost a month since I started working on it. What I thought was going to be a simple job, became more and more complex.

Sometimes that happens in other areas of life too. It seems like I am always surprised when things get complicated. Maybe one of the downsides of being an optimist is that I expect things to work out. Maybe if I was a pessimist I would be surprised when things were easier than I thought they would be. I still enjoy being an optimist, so I don't plan to change any time soon. I like the feeling of absolute confidence that what I am looking for is just around the next bend! Ask Edith and my children, they know the feeling all too well.

Wedding

Last week Edith and I traveled to Northern Indiana for the IGo board meeting. We were actually able to finish all our IGo business on Thursday. Friday we traveled to Pennsylvania for the wedding of Edith's Sister Siobohn on Saturday.

Saturday afternoon we attended the wedding of Siobohn and Justin Martin. They had been planning to have an outdoor wedding at his home, but then the weather did not look good at all. Actually, it did rain in the afternoon, so it was good they decided to have the wedding indoors.

All of Edith's siblings, except one, were there for the wedding. It was good to see everyone. Sunday we had a picnic together with those who were able to stay for Sunday.

This is the church fellowship hall where the reception was going to be held. The wedding also has held here then because of the weather.

This was the moment when they exchanged their vows.

This is all the Stoltzfus siblings that attended the wedding.


It started raining just as we finished the outdoor pictures of the Stoltzfus siblings. We quickly headed back inside.

Here are Siobohn and Justin after the wedding at the reception.

Caveman Cove

We had our annual Mother's Day service and fellowship meal at church today. The men prepared the food for the fellowship meal. As usual there were a lot of meat dishes. One of the men dubbed the kitchen "Caveman Cove". In the more primitive times we could have told our families, "you eat this, we can go kill more!".

We had ham, chicken, and meatballs. We actually had a few salads too. The desserts were pretty plentiful, so that was good.

It turned out very well. The mothers seemed to enjoy not having to prepare the food and take care of the meal.

Clement prepared a ham and sliced it all for the meal.

The dessert table had a good variety of items.

The mothers went through the food line first. We placed the few salads we did have at the front of the table for visual effect.

ACE Regional Student Convention

Elaine and Dallas left Wednesday for Portage-la-Prairie, Manitoba for the ACE Regional Student Convention. Elaine had some photography to enter, a piano piece she was playing, she was competing in archery, and she was entered in a few other events. Dallas was on the basketball team, archery, and a few other events. Both of them were singing in the ensemble. They will be back home this evening, hopefully with some awards!

Edith and I went to Kenora yesterday. We had a nice time visiting with Gerald and Marian Yoder. Then we went shopping for supplies for the church at the great Canadian Wholesale store. When we were leaving a lady came up and asked us for some change. Edith said, "Merle, do you have any change?" I gave her some change. Then she said, "Merle? Merle who?". She looked more closely at Edith and asked, "Are you Edith?" It was a young lady that Edith used to meet with many years ago.

It is snowing outside again today. Sometimes, this year, it seems like Spring will never come. We have had a few nice warm days. We are grateful for every one of those we get.

The students practiced their platform events at Believers Fellowship Church in the Sunday morning service and then at New Life Pentecostal Church in the evening service. This is the ensemble singing their song.

Watching Over Angel

Elaine and Dallas' niece Angel stayed with us for 3 days this week while her Mom was in Thunder Bay. She's a busy one at 16 months old! I was reminded how efficient one needs to be to get things done and keep after a little one. She's quite pleasant most of the time. One morning she and our dog were looking out our window side by side. I tried to take a photo, but she wouldn't stay in one spot very long!

Schnappsie, the dog, seemed quite excited about something outside. I eventually saw what it was!


That's the closest we've seen deer come to our house. Our garden spot is right close to where it is. I hope it doesn't check back till next fall after we've had what WE want from the garden!

Angel is usually confident and self assured. There is one monster that frightens her however-our noisy vacuum cleaner. It blessed me that even though she'd be crying hard about the scary noise it made, if I called her to come take my hand, she would. As long as I was holding her hand, even though I was still vacuuming with the other, she'd be comforted. She just needed to hold my hand. That was a good reminder to me to me about scary situations in life and my relationship with God. I want to keep holding on to His hand! That was my lesson from an Angel this week.~Edith