A little bit of Summer

 When your Daddy works with Child Evangelism Fellowship Ontario your summer might look a little different than other kids that are 2 years old or 3 months. But, first of all your Daddy might look a little different than most other kid's Dads.

David demonstrated many things including Inventor Fuzzywig at Summer Ministry Training 

When your Daddy goes away to Summer Training for 2 weeks, it might mean that your Grandparents come from Minnesota to visit for a few weeks! That was sure a lot of fun!

We even got to celebrate Canada Day & 4th of July together

It also means that you might get to visit some 5 Day Clubs and see "big kids" learning about Jesus.

Watching Big Kids play games is pretty entertaining

Nathan enjoyed hearing the Summer Missionaries sharing with the kids about how God can make you into a New Creation

It certainly means that you'll get to ride in the van a lot and eat lots of snacks and food.

 If you're the baby brother life isn't a whole lot different than other babies. You spend most of your time in the shade while everyone else has fun.

You might however, get to see unusual things when your family drives Summer Missionaries on 10 hour road trips to their next ministry location and a speaking engagement for Daddy.

Luke caused to take a few extra stops, one of which resulted in the discovery of a little museum in Iron Bridge where "Paul Bunyan's ax" was tried out by Isaac & Tristan...Nathan was in shock I guess.

 You just might get to enjoy the hospitality of other believers. Ones that bless you so much by letting you stay in their house while they're away, so you're screaming baby brother won't bother other people.

Nathan's initiation into the Nydam Family "Ravioli & Green Beans while traveling meal"

 And if you're the lucky baby tagging along, you just might get to sleep on a chair while you're away.

Just think, there's still 1 1/2 more weeks of excitement left of Summer Ministry. Next week is a really neat time where all of the Summer Missionaries and Staff will be teaching at outreaches in the city of London, Ontario with a large event on Friday to connect with the kids and parents that have attended.

• Please pray for the kids that have heard about Jesus and are going to, that God will do a miraculous work in their lives.
• Please pray that the kids will get connected to churches and that their parents will come to know Christ too!

Baby Luke!!!

On April 22, Luke Joseph Guyatt was born into our family! He took his sweet time arriving but we are enjoying this Little Guy. Time is speeding by so it's about time that he gets properly introduced to you!

 Mommy Moments

Daddy Snuggles

 Nathan has been a fabulous Big Brother and is proud to make sure everyone notices "Baby". He's just started calling him "Uke" in the past few weeks instead of only "Baby".

 Luke means "Bearer of Light" which is our prayer - that he will grow up bearing the light of Jesus.

Joseph means "God will Increase" which He certainly has! We weren't sure if we could ever have 1 child and now we have 2!! Joseph is also the name of David's Grandpa who is his hero and been a great mentor to him.

We have a lot of great moments with our Little Guy, he's becoming a smiley dude who laughs, talks to his hanging cow, and loves to be talked to. However, he is also a real baby who brings lots of moments like this. 

Catching Up

It dawned on me that I haven't even posted that Luke was born...oops. So now that he's 3 months old already (yikes!) I should at least post some maternity pictures our fabulous friend Ashley took 1 1/2 weeks before Luke arrived.

 Bye Bye Family of 3

 What a Little Cutie he is!

 Thankfully he's been just as excited about the actual baby!

March: Snow Fun & Anticipating Camp

Although it's March it doesn't mean that spring has arrived. We still have plenty of snow!

This is how Canadian babies arrive...
they grow out of the snow. =]

Snow Cave

David dug to see how deep the snow still is,
and put Nathan in the hole. That's the
top of his hat!

The Guyatt Men

Pulling Nathan back out of the hole.

Even though the weather is still holding onto winter...March Break Camp starts on Monday! We are expecting 14 Jr Campers (ages 7-9) and 25 Sr Campers (ages 10-12). We look forward to what God is going to do in the lives of these precious kids that are joining us. Many are a part of regular CEF programmes but quite a few are not. Please pray for God to work in an incredible way during camp!

This is a strange year for me since I'll be 35 weeks pregnant (really hoping NOT to go into labour during camp!!) and have a toddler, aside from doing the registrations beforehand, I don't have any real responsibilities at camp...which is really strange! I'm really interested to see how Nathan handles all these "big kids". Please ask God to keep sickness & injuries away from camp and opportunities for Nathan and I to be used by God as we hang around.

Ice Skating a few weeks ago at the "Fire & Ice Trail" in Arrowhead Park.

Snow is fun to play in as long as you have a stick!

Family Day Weekend

We had our first Emergency Room experience with Nathan due to a mug coming back to bite him after he put it on the counter. We were very thankful it was a very minor injury and they were able to glue him back together (without stitches even!! YAY!) and we were in and out of the hospital in 1 hour! We'd never experienced the ER during the day but were very thankful for their efficiency. =]

 Nathan has now beat both of his parents to be the first in the family to lay claim to having a black eye. 2 days later the little guy ran into the arm of the rocking chair resulting in a gash on the other side of his head. However, this time we were all prepared with steri-strips and could patch him up at home (it wasn't as big either). So in one weekend he went from never ever having a cut to looking like a bruised warrior.

The weekend wasn't lost however, we were still able to go ice skating (when it wasn't -20*C)!

 First a sled ride on the ice.

 Then a skate! We fully expected to just put Nathan's skates on for the mere photo opportunity like last year...but he actually held himself up and was trying to skate while David skated with him.

He doesn't seem quite so certain in this picture. 

"It sure didn't look this hard when everyone else was doing it!"

We are now looking to the countdown for baby #2...only 10 more weeks to go!!!

Only Child Set to Expire

 Nathan is being booted out of the Only Child Club as of late April 2015!!! We are praising God for this amazing blessing of expecting a baby! We had no idea if we would be able to have a second child, let alone how long it would be. 

So, since we've learned of the coming baby Nathan seems to have realized he needs to step it up around the house:

 He's gotten quite good at pushing the lawn mower around...now we just need to add a blade onto it!

He also figured out that he can drink coffee to keep him going, if he put his sippy-cup in the empty cup. I'm not sure if that's creativity or desperation.

 He's decided that pushing around Swiffers and mops and vacuum cleaners and brooms is great fun! He's certainly welcome to take over the house cleaning at any time.

Teaching Children Effectively Level 2 Students work away

     He's learning that eating Cheerios is a good distraction when Mommy is trying to prepare Teacher Training classes.

However, Nathan also realized that sometimes you're just not ready to grow too big yet because Mommy & Daddy make a good shelter when you get caught outside in a hailstorm.

Library Contest and Excavator

 Over the summer David acquired a lot of overtime so he was able to take some days off. The thing he was most excited about was renting an excavator to do a bunch of projects around the yard and in the woods.

Nathan had the chance to "drive" an excavator for the first time...lucky boy!

 David's dad came for the two days and they worked together on the projects. One of the projects included cutting down cedar trees in our forest so that David can mill them to make our deck. Yay for having a cost efficient solution to making a deck. 

Nathan loved watching the men at work!

 "I'm ready to go!"

I've always loved the library! My mom teases me about how I checked out library books for our baby even before he was born. (It was the only thing to do when I was overdue!) I now like our Huntsville library even more. Over the summer they held a reading contest for all different age categories. For every book read you could fill out a slip and be entered in the weekly and grand prize drawing. Since I check out books for Nathan and read to him all the time it was a fun little activity. The best part was that he won his first contest! He won a weekly drawing for the 0-Grade 1 category which entitled him to a free "kiddie" ice cream at The Nutty Chocolatier in Huntsville. 

 Nathan enjoyed his first ice cream - Smartie flavoured (the Canadian chocolate Smarties that is). 

 He also had some help from Mommy and Daddy eating the ice cream. 

And in case anyone doubts that the child reads...here's proof. =] Ok, so he might only sit for 3 seconds but he still LOVES books. 

Empty Suitcases

Why is this a big deal you might wonder? The emptying of the suitcases and chance to put them away for more than a few days means that the "CEF Summer" is over. I knew it had been a while since a blog update but until today I didn't realize quite how long...yikes March and now it's August!  Where does the time go?!

Over the last few months of summer we've had some wonderful experiences...most of which have taken us away from home or else meant someone else was away from home.

 June: My brother's family came from Minnesota to visit and Nathan got to celebrate his first birthday with them!

 June: More birthday celebration with David's side of the family!

July: David went to Summer Training for 2 weeks and Grandma Sharilyn came to visit and then took Nathan and I back with her to Minnesota!

 Our time included a Family Reunion!

And visits with the family.

July-August: Visits to the Bible Clubs throughout Central/Northern Ontario. David went to most by himself but we tagged along for a few.

August: A week at Monarch Bible Camp!

 Hanging out with our Summer Missionaries Nathan thinks "All these beautiful girls just come to hang out with me!!!"

August: The joy of being apart of Ashley & Josh's wedding. Ashley is our "daughter" who has called us Mom & Dad since her first year as a Summer Missionary in our area 5 years ago! She and Josh are veteran CEFers and were even married at the CEF facility in Brantford. =]

 August: More trips to places like the Welcome Home Celebration concluding the CEF Summer.

 August: Nathan supervises our Summer Missionaries as they practice.

I don't think we really anticipated what a different beast the summer packed with ministry and traveling would be...yet so many good things. If my count is correct I packed and unpacked suitcases at least 21 times in 9 weeks! We now have a few days to have some family time before David transitions into fall ministry.