How Great This Feels

August 14 through the 16th my daughter planned and organized a Bake Sale. It took the efforts of many helpful hands in our community but let me tell you Deanna is a baking whiz! And Steve wins the Father of the Year award for volunteering to work at the sale for two days. The Bake Sale was for The Great American Bake Sale so google that if you are a baker or a willing volunteer. It is designed to feed hungry children. Deanna's hopeful goal was to raise $200.00 but instead ended up donating $400.00 to the Great American Bake Sale. People from our church and our community and our family generously donated baked goods, items for an auction, and baking ingredients. Then most of those that purchased baked items did so without accepting change from their purchase. And several threw in very generous donations as they purchased their baked goods. Deanna decorated the tables in our church where the sale was held with table cloths that had my vintage aprons added for a bit of whimsy and color. Steve and I are just so proud of her that she took on such a large project and was the impetus of having it be successful.

It has been a very busy Summer for us. That is a very good thing! We have had lots of time with our family which is so wonderful and rare for us. As a Minister's family we are located far from our families and time spent with them is so dear to us and just does not happen often enough.

This July our daughter had a visitor from Birmingham, England. She has been communicating with him for almost a year through e-harmony. His name is Elvis and he is originally from Cameroon, Africa. He was at our home for almost two weeks which did not seem nearly long enough. This was his first visit to America so we tried to think of ways to introduce him to American culture through our food choices, restaurants, and trips to the mall for his souvenir shopping.

We live in a very small city so there is a limited amount of things to do but we managed and he seemed very content. We also introduced him to our extended family which at the time lived in Grand Forks, ND. They have since moved. Sniff :( but that is one other part of our Summer. Our nieces and nephew participated in the Grand Forks SPA (Summer Performing Arts) and so they provided some very wonderful entertainment for us at the time Elvis was visiting. We were able to enjoy Bye Bye Birdie that our niece Mary performed in. And then an all girls musical performance that our niece Sarah performed in. And to not leave Nathaniel our nephew out I must say that Steve and I thoroughly enjoyed his performance in Damn Yankees!

We also took a trip to Itasca State Park which is where the headwaters of the Mississippi begins. I do have photos of this delightful trip to share. There are a couple of areas in the park that one can walk across the Mississippi and the water is so clean and clear that you can see the bottom of the river bed and there are three areas where you can walk across the Mississippi. It is truly a beautiful place to visit and I would encourage anyone that is going to be in Northern Minnesota to take the time to check this out.

We have also enjoyed two weddings this Summer of our dear nieces Sara and Brooke and we were able to take vacation time to travel to Madison and Illinois for this time to enjoy their weddings and time spent with family.

Summer isn't over yet thank goodness! I am hoping for a few more adventures or at least time around our fire pit toasting S'mores.