A Taste of Louisiana
It all started back around April..... Noah (my son-in-law) had a thought, a dream. To have a fundraiser dinner. He tossed around menu ideas and plans on how he wanted it to play out. He's quite a planner. Time went on we tried setting a date so we could really move with it, nothing really solid was taking hold, the chef being a couple of months prego (in the morning sickness stage) was not to keen on the food planning end and was also worried about setting the date to far out in the later stages of motherhood. Noah got a new job and that kind of took him out of the picture... Yet we did not want to give up. The Lord just kept pushing us along. Once we got the date set for September 7th things began to move. We started putting fliers up all over the area towns and selling tickets. We were collecting donations from various business's, friends, and relatives. It was amazing seeing Gods hand at work, leading us everystep of the way.
Donated by Kitty Mitchell
Donated by Cloudwalkers 4-H
Donated by Jack Zuppan
Donated by John Ducommun
We found another cook to help Mary, Keith Velie. We found a donator for most of the food, Golden Harvest from Rhinelander. Things were really coming together. As we walked the streets of Ladysmith promoting this event we realized we needed more advertising. We went to the news paper and they decided to interview and share our adoption story.
Everything in the Lords timing, I am learning so much that the Lord has things all planned and prepared. Really no sense in trying to figure it out or fret to much about it.
Ticket sales moving along and donations still flowing in, we are down to the last week and can barely get a breath in. On On Thursday morning Mary tells me Noah is able to come and help see how God makes his dream become a reality.
We are ready for our big day tomorrow.
(Noah Brainard menu design)
It took alot of hard work, alot of planning, alot of giving in many ways, alot of preparing, and most of all alot of PRAYER!
A number one food taster!
Top Chef (Mary Brainard)
Everyone doing their part.
Jimmy packing the ever famous home made candy bars.
Alot of prep goes into making a dinner (dad)
Garlic chopper (Uncle Keith)
an official Ecuadoran Waitress (Erma)
Don't forget the many guests and supporters
Tired out waitresses (Hope & Erma)
Candy Bar display
Hostess table
Busy at work
Serving up dessert
Waiting for an order
another waitress (Harmony) waiting on her brothers family
Enjoying visiting with all our guests was very enjoyable, sharing all that God has done thus far.
We were pretty busy the whole time.
Now the moment everyone is waiting for, the winners of the auctions and raffles (caleb) the picker.
Austin helped too.
Almost done.
Everyone took there turn holding and watching Austin, it was a very long day.
But oh so rewarding, we brought in $1,620.00. Thank you everyone for all your help and support.
When the rain let up, we headed for the building and decided to look at the conservatory first since it was still a little wet outside.
One of the first things we seen was some huge tarantulas. And lots of smaller ones.
Harmony loves to take pictures, this makes up for when we came in August for our Ann, and had no camera with.
Harmony was having the most fun taking pictures...
Hope was.... I am not sure what Hope was.
Aaron loved all the huge ferns.
Harmony loved all the beautiful flowers ....
She did not want to miss a single one... 
There were so many varieties... 
Each one special just the way God created them.
Aaron was so glad to go, first thing he said was " What could I wear to annoy Brianna" (he missed her while she was gone) 
We were all glad to be back together again.
watching sea lions get fed
Getting ready to head home, it has been a long day! 
One last look!
