October 8, 2012

October 8th is always a special day at our house, but this year all of Canada celebrated with us as it was also Thanksgiving! 

We were able to celebrate Ken in Buffalo with Katie on Sunday before Ken went out of town for a few days. It is so nice that she is close enough to drive the hour to meet us. It is also so nice that Lisa is here to get in on birthday celebrations too!

    

Because it was Thanksgiving, everything was closed up and folks were, well..........., 

"Celebrating Thanksgiving". 

We have decided to wait and have our celebration in November when Katie is home but, we had a day off and it was so beautiful out, that Lisa and I decided to have a little outing. 

We packed our lunch and drove out to the country to go for a walk.

The trail took us past lots of farm land and across a river and some streams.

 A picture of Lisa, taking a picture 

For more photos of our day, visit Lisa. We are co-blogging!

We thought that since it was "Thanksgiving", we should at least have some pumpkin pie, so we stopped on our way home and picked up a couple of slices from Swiss Chalet.

A perfect ending! The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have Ken and Katie with us.

Now it's October

The end of September brought our "Young at Heart" Conference.

Ken and I had the privilege of hosting it again this year and, once again, found ourselves being blessed by our guests in many ways. It is so neat to realize that some of these folks have been walking with the Lord for 70 and 80 years, (some even longer). On Thursday we enjoyed an outing to a Mennonite Farm. Our guide took us on back roads and we enjoyed the beautiful colors of fall. We also drove by a couple of  Mennonite schools before ending up at the farm for Lunch which, by the way, was wonderful! Homemade everything - right down to the Vanilla pie and 7-day pickles. Vine Ripe Tomatoes "just-picked" that morning. The weather was perfect and the guests had a memorable time as did Ken and I. This Seniors week is always one of our favorites.

The Fall also means more time for some home improvement! I wanted to give some attention to our living room which has been left "undecorated" for 3 years. There may be a few "gasps" as you look at the next two pictures, but trust me, the fireplace mantle looks much better. 

Before

After

I also asked Holly to paint a couple of pictures for us. She does a great job and it added some color to a pretty dull room.

There is still much to be done, but we have a start now.

 New Pillows

October is also "Birthday Month" for most of our staff. We celebrated once again at the "Symposium". The picture is a little blurry, but I wanted to enlarge it so you can get the full effect of the cake! 

Pete - October 1,

Tom - October 1,

Ken - October 8,

and Holly - October 10

Hope you are enjoying the change of season as much as we are. I will try and include some fall "colour" next time.