Sunday, June 30, 2013

Wow, so much--this is LONG!

It's been two months since I wrote last, so it might just be easier to post photos and tell stories about them rather than try to recap.

A few weeks ago, I drove a dog named Mary Sue and her nine (!) puppies to Louisville to meet up with a transport going to Wisconsin. Or Minnesota. Somewhere North. They were so cute!

They all looked so different!
That little white one was conked out and didn't seem to mind that its siblings were climbing all over it!

Right now I'm fostering a cat named Lilly and a little feist mix named Butterscotch.

Lilly is a quiet little thing. We thought we'd found her a home today at the cat adoption drive, a little boy had ignored all the kittens and was snuggling up with her, and when he wasn't holding her, he had his arm on top of her crate. But he never came back with his mom, so I guess she said no. Bummer.

Butterscotch is cute and VERY smart, but kind of a chewer. Between her and Zen, there are times when I wonder what I'm going to find chewed up on the living room floor when I come home from work. Usually it's things Zen has stolen off the counter and it's VERY aggrivating! But she's a fast learner--I've never had a dog pick up lie down or sit so quickly and I've never had a foster dog learn to lie down and wait for me to say "okay go ahead" before eating just by watching Zen do it.


The county fair was this past week. I entered a shawl in the knitting category and won first place and best in show! It would be a more glorious honor if there had been other entries in the category, but blue and purple ribbons still stroke my ego. I'll post a better photo of the shawl when I get it back tomorrow.

I stopped in a thrift store this week and found this beauty for $55! I'm pretty excited. It only came with the wire whisk, so I'll need to order the beater blade so I can use it for more than just whipping up things. What a great find!

We had Girls' Camp for church this week. I wasn't able to go up all week, but the plan was for me to come up on Wednesday night with a coworker. He's REALLY into astronomy and had agreed to show the 2nd year girls how to find the North Star and two constellations for one of their level requirements. I would also go up on Thursday night to help out with another activity.
I had to stop and take a photo of this sign on the way up to the campsite. It cracked me up because it reminded me of our family joke when I was a kid. When backing out of the driveway on our very quiet town street, Dad would ask "All clear?" and we'd answer "Yep, 'cept for that [imaginary] logging truck!"

Patrick and I went up on Wednesday evening as planned, but it was too cloudy to see any stars, and we could see lightning in the distance. There was bad weather in the forecast and the radar on my phone showed a line of storms headed that way. It wasn't much fun to drive through on my way home. There were points where I had to stop because I couldn't see more than a foot or two beyond the hood of my car. Scary!
For the girls, it was terrifying. Thankfully, a park ranger followed his gut and came by and told the leaders to have everyone take shelter in the bathrooms. 80 people crammed into the showers and bathrooms for 3 hours as two waves of storms passed through (there'd only been one line of storms on the radar). When they came out, the camp was a mess. Tents tossed around like playthings, with their poles bent and broken. The canopies covering the dining area were gone. At least two full-grown trees had been uprooted. One narrowly missed a leader's car and another landed right on top of a tent where five or six of our girls would have been sleeping.


Everything was soaked. The girls all spent the night on the bare cement floor of the crafts cabin. I got a text message at 6 the next morning that they were cancelling the rest of camp. Thankfully, I'd taken the entire day off work and I headed up to help clean up and pack up.

The first thing we did after breakfast was have a testimony meeting, because that's the one thing that the Camp Director didn't want the girls to miss out on by having camp curtailed. As the girls talked about how thankful they felt that no one had been hurt, and how they had prayed together and comforted one another, and how grateful they were to have followed their leaders' counsel, and knew the Lord was with them, I was reminded of the account of the stripling warriors in the Book of Mormon. They were an army unit composed of youth whose parents had renounced all weapons of war. It was a time of civil war and their fathers were about to break their oath to defend themselves when these youths (who had been babies when the covenant was made) stepped up in their place. They were known for their faith in God and for being valiant and as men who obeyed their leaders with exactness. And in the end, to everyone's surprise and joy, not a soul was lost. In our case, the Lord's tender mercies were everywhere--obviously in the big thing: no one was hurt or killed in the storm. But also in the little things, like putting their scriptures and journals in plastic buckets and finding them safe and dry the next morning. One girl had a brand-new swimsuit hanging on a hanger on a clothesline to dry and she felt so blessed that even though her tent had been smashed by the tree with her things inside, her swimsuit was still there on the line.

We have a great group of faithful girls in our stake. I'm so proud that not one of them complained about the storm, but they all pitched in to clean up and help one another. They grew closer together those three hours crammed in bathrooms like sardines, and closer to the Lord as he comforted them and kept them safe from harm.

Whew! It's been an EVENTFUL two months. Congratulations on making it through!