Lacombe, Corn Maze

I have been seeing advertisements for this corn maze

for two years now, so we finally made the time, and went.

I am soooo excited!

It was any Halloween lovers dream, and that's ME!

I'm going to build one of these when I get home, you'll see why.

This is a huge water tower, that is constantly sending water down the trough.

And flowers, lots and lots of gorgeous flowers, ahhh!

Another cute idea, brightly painted rocking chairs.

On the water tower it reads, Krazy Mining,

and as you can see it is set up for water mining.

The water feeds down the trough and as the water rushes by,

people can buy bags of dirt with rocks hidden in it and there are

wooden blocks with screen on the bottom and you dump the dirt

in the block and sift or wash away the dirt and rocks appear.

Just like panning for gold, so fun.

There are some awesome playgrounds,

 giant game boards,

and rubber ducky races.

This one is brilliant, there are two rain gutters with a water hand-

pump at each end, the person places the rubber duck in the rain

gutter and begins pumping and the race is on.  The first rubber duck 

to the other end, wins.

speaking of ducks, ahhh!  Warm, fuzzy, baby ducks.

Some facts about chickens, could have never prepared me for this. . . 

yes, this is real, it's not fake or pretend, these are real live chickens,

very fluffy, puffy chickens.  Kinda creepy.

They had goats and bunnies too!  They even have a billy goat's gruff

bridge that the goat's walk across, back and forth all day.

These are a must for our yard, back home, so great for parties

and grandkids.

The one above is a checker board,

this one is snakes and ladders, I would make it chutes and ladders,

don't care for the snakes,

and this is a giant chess game.  This is the second time I've seen chess pieces

 this size, there must be a website. (make a note, look for giant chess pieces)

Apparently this corn maze has been around for sometime.  

This board shows the past 10 years and the mazes they've created.

Here's just one example, 2003, the loonie.

This was fun, they had different entrances and exits that you could

try and there were game cards to give you help (hints) along the way.

For instance, this one,

this one,

and this one, very clever.  You could spend all day and have fun with

each of them, unfortunately we didn't have all day, it was kind of warm,

and to be perfectly honest, the maze was not that well done.  There

were large areas of nothing, you didn't feel the entrapment of the ones

back home.  Oh well, we had fun.

Here we are trying to take a picture of ourselves, like the kids do,

not so good, just ok.  Am I really that short?

They had a miniature golf coarse that was included in the entrance 

price, so we tried our hand at that.  I started off kind of shaky

but as you can see, I kicked President's butt.

Loved this, it's a spider web made out of rope for the kids to climb on.

Abby, this would be great in your new back yard.

This is a map of all the attractions available at the corn maze,

pretty amazing.  We didn't even get to the pumpkin blaster, barrel train

or jumping pillow.  There's always next year, oh, no there's not. ;p

They have piggy races too!

Lots of pumpkins, I loved the fun display, the old wagon

 and all the different kinds of pumpkins and gourds.

I took a few more pictures of the "flower barn",

just because it was so beautiful, the flowers are spectacular for as

short of a growing season as they have here.

Definitely worth the time and money.  We had such a fun day

 together, helps to get away for a little breather now and then.  

And, I do love autumn.  Can't get enough, it goes by too fast.

Duck, Duck, Goose

The geese this year have been amazing, they are everywhere

and they are noisy.

They fly over in the morning, then again at night.

Honking the entire time.

They are on every lake and little pond.

Dozens of them.

I was driving to Wal-Mart the other day and passed this pond, there 

were so many geese, very awe inspiring.

I wanted to get better pictures, so I took Chris back there a few nights

later.  There were just a few geese on this pond, but as we were 

driving away I spotted about a dozen flying away across the street.

We pulled into the parking lot across from that lake and what a sight.

I've never seen anything like it.  There were at least 300 geese on that

lake.  We grabbed our camera and video and sat on a bench to watch.

It was fascinating.  It took us a minute to catch on to the process but 

soon, we could see a pattern.  The geese would start honking and it

would get louder and louder, then all of a sudden a group would take off.

We sat and watched this happen, until all of the geese were gone, all

300 of them.  When it was all said and done, there were a few ducks left.

We were amazed, probably one of the neatest things we've seen since

we've been here, as far as nature goes.

After a group would fly off, it would get quiet again, as quiet as

geese can be.  Then the sound would build and build until it

got unbearably loud, afterward,  another group would take off.

Un-be-lievable!

September Zone Conference

So, for September's zone conference, I felt the need to teach 

 the missionaries some of the basics; sewing, ironing, laundering.

I have found in recent months that some of the missionaries have 

forgotten some of these elementary skills.  I'm going to give them

a little assistance and it's not just the elders.  

Just to give you an idea, I have seen some pretty wrinkled shirts,

as have the office staff, hems being held up with duct tape and shoes

that don't look like they've seen a shine since they came out of the box.

And that is just not good enough for the Canada Edmonton Mission.

First I was going to have them do each task, but there is just not enough

time, so I let them choose the one they needed the most help with.

Ironing a shirt, sewing on a button or shining their shoes.

To give them credit, most of them knew how to do these things,

they simply choose not to.  But there were some that I was able to help.

Shining shoes,

see how nice they look?

We interviewed Ed North on Tuesday and had a combined ZC

with Bonnie Doon on Wednesday.

In fishbowl, they pitted zone against zone,

Then two lucky victims, I mean elders, will be demonstrating the

famous, wall sit.

They have to sit in a perfect 90 degree and read from the old

testament, out loud, the first one to finish the read or hold the pose

the longest, wins the point.

And of course, scripture chase, always a crowd favorite.

Lunch was set out and ready for us, it looked really good,

but we were too slow and we didn't get any,

they ran out.  Good day to start a diet.

Don't get me wrong, they are wonderful and we 

appreciate them feeding us, but elders have mighty appetites.

Elder Taylor is shining his shoes, he hasn't shined them for awhile,

can you tell?  They might hold out for another month or two.

The missionaries get treats when their cars are inspected each zone

conference.   A few areas are walking, they don't get treats, because

they don't have a car.  Belmead wasn't going to put up with this

any longer, so they solved it by doing. . . 

this!

They made a city bus, so they could get a treat.  Funny, but very clever!

After my interview, they were treated to milk and cookies,

the perfect after school snack.  I made three different kinds

of cookies, peanut butter, chocolate chip and chocolate rolo's.

They were all very tasty.

There were over 35 buttons sewn on,

two dozen shoes shined,

12 shirts ironed and over 100 instructions given on 

how to properly launder the necks of their white shirts.

They are getting very fancy with the fishbowl board, pictures

of fishes and everything.

The Relief Society sisters served up sweet pork burritos,

with all the fixin's, it was yummy!