Police At Girl's Camp

If I was a baseball hitter they would say I've been in a slump. It's been hard to get motivated to do anything with the temps over 110 degrees. But it is Arizona, so what do I expect? I made it through another Father's Day without my Dad. It was just Rich and I for dinner as all the kids had other plans, so it was a quiet dinner for two. I have been a little bit annoyed that Rich would go up to Boy Scout Camp two weeks ago and then to Girl's Camp this last week. He isn't a great communicator so I didn't really know why they had asked him to go. After not hearing from him from Wednesday to Saturday, I was anxious to hear how it went. He started telling me how they had asked him and another guy in our ward to help build an iron rod with all the other things associated with it. Rich being a builder by trade, stepped up to their expectations. They had the river, the spacious building, mists of darkness and the tree of life, all along the path holding on to the iron rod. They had worked on it for three days and about five hours before they were going to send the girls into the forest to experience it, the police showed up at the house. They told them to get all their stuff out of the forest. I guess the neighbor called 911 to complain about them constructing stuff in the forest. They explained that to do something like that they needed a permit, and they were very angry. At first they told them it could be a $5,000 fine and 6 months in jail, they let them off with a $280 fine for each of them and told them to get it out of the forest the next morning. Whew, that was an answer to many prayers said by the girls, their leaders and Rich and Doug. I'm glad it worked out for them because that would be a shame for them not to be able to do it after six months of planning. Sometimes things work out for the best and other times it doesn't. The older I get to more I realize just how little control we have of some things in our lives. All we can do is try our best and hope our prayers are answered when we need them to be.

Stomach Virus and Memorial Day

I realize that some weeks are just harder than others. Last week our family was dealing with a stomach virus that seemed to run through most of us. It started with some of the grand kids and when they came over, some of us ended up with it. It seems like we are always having one sort of trial in the family, but hopefully the worst is over. Our extended family has a tradition of going to the cemetery the Sunday evening of Memorial Day weekend. This year we had a smaller group decorating graves and then having treats. We start at my grandparents grave and end at sweet Kamber's. It's always interesting to me to see just how many people are there, some set up chairs and stay for a long time. This year we stopped and talked about each person we were honoring. My Uncle Kenneth was killed while serving in the military when his plane crashed into a mountain while on a training mission. It has been a long time, I was only five years old and I can still remember my parents crying. It was a devastating loss for our family. The older I get the more I realize that life isn't fun a lot of the time. We do have times that things to be moving smoothly along, but most of the time we are putting out fires, and trying to stay focused on the eternal plan of life. This week the weather is heating up to over 115 degrees, like I said, sometimes life just isn't that much fun.