My shoes are a nice shade of orange

We are almost finished marking where the 1500 booths go for Cranfest. We have gone through cases and cases of bright fluorescent orange paint. I think that at least one can of it must be on my shoes. Some of the paint was from last year and the cans got too cold in the store room. It spits little blobs of paint all over. Last year we had rain to deal with on the wrong days and ended up not finishing until the day before set up. We were all a little frantic. This year is going much better, thank you God, and we are all more relaxed.
The display boards (except for a final coat of paint) are all ready to be set up. Tuesday we will load it all in a trailer to be ready to go take it up to set up in the school gym on Thursday. The porta-potties are all starting to come in. We spend over $15,000 on porta-potties alone. We are going to set up the balloon signs today too, I hope. The list goes on. I at least did get to spend some time with my family yesterday. That was nice. Will calls himself a Cranfest widower.
I keep telling myself it will all be over in 8 days and then you can rest........fat chance. We still have clean up.
Today was my one chance this week to sleep in....I wish someone had told my body. There I was awake at 5:00 and the first Cranfest thought came into my poor overworked brain and there was no sleeping after that. Might as well be up getting my things to do list going. I have this added blessing though, our friend Amanda is staying with us to help set up Cranfest for the festival and for the church. She is a very hard worker and a joy to be around. I asked her to help last year and she caught the Cranfest bug and now she enjoys it as much as I do. By the way, her shoes are orange too. There seems to be a rash of that around lately.
I will buy a new pair as soon as Cranfest is over. You never know what you will get on them during clean up ect. It's always safest just to wait.
Our church services switch back to 10:00 am this morning instead of 8:00 am. We switch them every year because of the summer heat. Our church is well over 100 years old and has no air conditioning. Stained glass windows don't work well with window a/c units and we would rather spend our money on missions than on a/c. Besides with church so early it gives you a whole day to enjoy the summer.
Monday I work at the Post Office and Will goes into Cardinal. That makes for a long day for both of us. Then he has practice on Monday night with Country Revival. They are one of the feature groups on the Cranfest stage. Tuesday is more set up with finishing touches. Will is going to be working at Cardinal again. I told the Post Office that I am unavailable until next week. There are 100's of picnic tables to set up, 100's of garbage barrels to put out, information booths to set up and so forth. All of that will happen by Wednesday. Booths are already setting up this last week. Wednesday and Thursday is set up for the majority of the booths.
On Thursday is one of our favorite parts of the festival. We all make sure we are at the church ready to watch the spectacle. Almost 80 booths are set up on the elementary school lawn BUT they cannot step one foot on the lawn until 4:00 pm on Thursday. Do you remember that Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidmann movie where they all had a race for the homesteading land? Well, that's just what it looks like. They all line up all over around the perimeter fence and stand there with their racks, wagon, push carts, boxes and tents. As soon as the Sheriff yells they all run like crazy to get to their booths and start set up. It is a riot and we all just watch, grinning like loons.
They cannot get onto the lawn because of the school, but Cranfest is large enough that they close the schools county wide for it(possibly 2 or 3 counties).
The weather is absolutely beautiful right now. We are in the 70's during the day and the 50's at night. The trees are just starting to turn colors. There is still even fresh sweet corn to be eaten. Still fresh green beans and fresh tomatoes. My Aunt Marj pulled her green bean plants as she picked the last time. She has given us 2 grocery bags full and other people got beans too. She said she had canned as many as she was going to and was tired of picking. We are planning a large garden next year. Hopefully, it will come to fruition. This year my canning is going to be going to Aldi's and picking up cases of veggies. I might still find time to do homemade apple butter though. We have an apple farm here that grows the best apples in the world.
Well, time to get going. I need to bake something for fellowship time.
I just remembered that tonight is "Cranberry Queen and Princess Coronation". Jessalyn and I have girls night out every year for it. She is just thrilled with it and I like to have something special to do with her, that is just us girls. Jacob does not want to come, but he appreciates the royalty. Last year Miss Wisconsin USA and a couple other visiting royalty were down in our church basement eating lunch and Jake was there. He came out and told me that he really, really thought that she was pretty. I think sitting near them was a little too much for a 12 year old. He was pretty overwhelmed. It was cute. As he gets older though there are definite times when I send him to his father for advice. Having never been a growing boy myself, I feel inadequate for some questions. I let Will deal with them. It surely makes me feel for single mothers. I suppose they just have to punt and hope that they deal with it correctly. Makes me very glad that I have my hubby.
Have a blessed day!
dea
Ephesians 3:14-21