The Fall Festival was great fun. We all gathered at mid day on Saturday and DH led a short devotional thanking the Lord for His wonderful blessings to us. We then ate and started the games; face painting, the Hay Ride, apple bobbing and the cake walk. Here are some photos. You can see how the Lord blessed us with beautiful sunshine!

Rainy days

Hello...

Even though it has been raining ALLLLLL day, we have had a fun day :-)

This morning we got everyone fed and dressed and then went to the antique store in town. Yesterday we had spotted a small chair with a caned seat. I have been learning how to cane chairs and this will be my 'flying solo' project :) I will need to sand down and finish the wood before I do the caning, but I think it will be a neat little project :-)

Just before lunch some friends come over to help Hannah and I make caramel and candy apples. I have never done this before (I like to try new things ;-)) Everything turned out great and Hannah was happy to sit there munching on a caramel apple.

These apples are for our Fall Festival at church tomorrow. We begin at noon with hamburgers and hot dogs. We will be doing apple bobbing, a sack race, cake walk (kindof like musical chairs), egg and spoon race and Receit a Bible verse to guess-how-much-candy-is-in-the-jar. If it doesn't rain we will also have a hay ride :)

Here's a recent photo of my sweet little man Nate. At last weigh in a week ago he was 13 lbs 4 oz :-)



Also, DH has been hunting this week and shot a 9-point buck which is now neatly processed and packaged in our freezer. What a blessing it is to be able to hunt and fish and when we get our vegetable garden next summer, to grow our own veggies :) We may even keep some chickens. Any of you out there keep chickens?
I'd also like to learn how to keep bees, but I think that will require a little more attention time than what I'm able to give at the moment.

Have a great weekend!

Where did September go?!?!?!

Wow, I don't know about all of you, but September just flew by me!!! and we experienced a few events that were totally unexpected.

Monday the 9th September I went to have some bloodwork drawn at the hospital in the morning, little knowing that I would be back later that evening to be admitted for a 5 day stay with Pancreatitus!!! I got sick around lunchtime thinking it was just a really bad case of acid reflux, but later in the day when I could no longer hold down any water, I knew it was time to go to the ER.

The kind doctor ran his tests (we were thinking maybe food poisoning)and he came back with information that normal pancreas enzyme levels are around 50-100, mine were over 3,000. We were a bit shocked. They quickly had me on a drip as I was very dehydrated and also gave me morphine which took about a minute to take away the excrutiating pain and sent me to sleep!

Over the next few days they ran a whole bunch of tests which required drawing blood and did ct scans. The upshot being my pancreas was extremely inflamed with a gall stone blocking the duct, and my gall bladder was not functioning properly and would need to be removed. But it was too dangerous to do that with my pancreas being in the condition it was. The remedy? Rest and a liquid diet. For three days it was just that drip, and then I was graciously give broth and jell-o!

Family and friends were a great help during this time in looking after Shaun and our sweet kiddies. It was hard being away from them, but the doc finally released me on the Saturday.

Ten days later I had my gall bladder removed and stayed overnight. I was a bit nervous about the surgery as apart from wisdom teeth removal, this was my first major surgery, but the doctors and nurses were really kind and talked with me about the procedures, even joked about interrogation via anaesthesia ;-) They told me I hadn't said anything as they put me under :-) I remember one of the nurses putting the vanilla smelling mask over my face and taking one breath. That's all. Then I wake up seeing Shaun walking into my hospital room :-)

I had lots of help from dear friends at our church after I returned home. Help with meals, household work and taking care of Hannah and Nate. Such help really is a blessing. We take for granted our stomache muscles. When they are impaired it is so difficult to do anything! But i'm thanking the Lord for how all of this turned out for the best. It has been a bit of a trial, but i'm glad to be over the hurdle and on the mend. Oh, and liquid diet + gall bladder removal = weight loss (for me anyways ;-))

Looking forward to what October will bring ;-)

S.