plumb tuckered and wore away

It's sort of over. The festival part and all of the visitors (for now). Now we are in clean up mode. God was good to us and we had beautiful weather the whole weekend with sunshine both Friday and Saturday and mild weather on Sunday (partly cloudy though). Of course it started raining Sunday night and finally quit yesterday afternoon. Clean up still had to go on, so I made a big pot of chicken noodle soup, some broccoli, cheese and corn chowder, biscuits and a triple banana bars dessert. We all ate the leftovers and soup and invited everyone working in the village on clean up to join us.

Not too many injuries at the fest, but still enough to keep me busy. When there is an emergency call, any board member that is free goes to check on it and get information and the story. At certain parts of the day, I am about the only board member free.

We sang our numerous times and it was fun. It was really strange without my Uncle Lloyd there. He had always been such a huge part of Cranfest for all of us, whether it was parking cars on Darin's house lawn, talking to the crowd, singing or just being present. We were all feeling his loss a little when we got up to sing. Well, evidently God knew that we needed a little something, so when our group "New Journey" formerly the Dads & Daughters sang, some funny stuff happened. During the one song the words are "In that bright land where we'll never grow OLD" and my Dad leaned over close to Uncle Ken during that time and Ken looked at Dad and said "too late". I guess you had to be there, but at that moment, I lost it and started giggling. I don't know how I made it through the rest of the song, but we did it. Then I explained it to the crowd and they all started laughing. Funny stuff.
Next song I am singing my solo and one of the pieces of music from Dad and Ken's music stand has fallen off and they are trying to deal with it, out of the corner of my eye there is Ken doing this shuffle dance step as the music for some reason sticks to his shoe. Finally with this big kick he sends it sailing through the air behind him and then kind of sighs. I lost it again. You cannot expect me to be serious when I am that tired and funny stuff is happening around me. It's not gonna happen.
Anyway, the reason that I recount these stories is that those types of things were the stuff that always happened to Lloyd. Little comments he made while we were singing, goofy things happening to him (he had that stupid things rule too). We were missing him and God sent that little blessing our way. Poor Ken he was upset because he thought I would be upset because it happened during my solo. I told him that I thought that it was the best moment of the night. Our group has always been known for our humor. We are the lighthearted moment and we were afraid that was over. Now we know it's not. What a blessing. We are really, really enjoying singing with Ken.
Jessalyn was WONDERFUL as she sang first on Friday in show choir. They did great and then came her moment on Saturday and Saturday night for her solos. Boy can that kid sing and she's only just turned 12 this last Thursday. Don't worry I'm not sending her to Americ*n Idol or something, but it really floors me sometimes, just how good she is. Then they did that black light thing with the gloves. I watched it quite a few times on the video clip Will had on here so that I could watch it while the Crantastics did it and not cry. Didn't happen. I started bawling at the beginning and cried to the end. They were great. We'll try to get you a copy of some of this stuff onto the blog.
We sang the National Anthem before the parade and did not mess it up. There's a plus! Who wants to screw up in front of thousands and thousands of people? Not me, but you know that stupid things rule. I'm always wary.
Will spent the weekend being Mr Mom and did a great job. He made sure that everyone got to where they needed to be and then ran courtesy for visitors and also fixed problems. I don't know what I would do without him.
Jacob spent the days running around with his friends. He seems to have had a great time, but now has picked up a bad cough. He cannot seem to quit coughing and now he's in his room in bed sick and home from school. Jessalyn woke up today said she didn't feel good and turned around to look at me and low and behold her face was really red and her eyes were almost swollen shut. Don't know what that's about, but it's a little better now. Still puffy, but going down. She has a fever, so might just be a bug, but probably allergies (they both take after their father, poor things). We'll have to watch her. So here's their first day home from school and it's the same day for both. I'm back to work, so that leaves them here with Will. Poor, poor man.
Life still is busy around here with our first frost due tomorrow night. They are harvesting cranberries and coming in with some HUGE berries. It should be a great harvest for everyone.
Well, I'm still trying to catch up to myself, finish at Cranfest and start on the fall work around the house. I should be about finished with all of it in April.
Have a blessed day.
dea

[side note from Will: I added a different "counter" to the site and decided to start over from one instead of starting with the known numbers from the last counter we had. Come back often and watch the numbers climb! This also adds "java script" to the site. Sometimes that causes problems. If it does I will just take it down like I did last time...(sigh). Enjoy!]