17 June 2008

The Best Laid Plans of Mice & Marin

About a month ago, I had the perfect Father's Day Weekend planned. We were going to go camping Thurs-Sat. and then have a relaxing Sunday together. I scheduled a camp site, Doug got the Friday off, and about a week ago we went and bought a new tent, coleman stove, etc. Things were going our way. Then the weekend before our scheduled trip it rained, and I'm talking buckets. Towns flooded, rivers swelled, laked burst their barriers and people evacuated. Then came the Thursday of our camping trip, and what happened? More rain. Buckets full. What was bad over the weekend, was worse on Thursday. Yet we persisted. We figured since the rain would stop by Friday early morning, we'd just get up and go then.

So Sariah and I headed to the store Thursday during a lull in the rain. Or we tried to, except for one pesky problem. Our automatic garage door would not open. So it wasn't a huge problem in the moment, I just disconnected the garage door from the opener and left. When Doug came home that night, he spent several hours (and had wonderful help, thanks Dad Croft! :) ) trying to fix it and discovered that one of the sensors had burned out. Meanwhile I was trying (unsucessfully) to pack for our camping trip, and the rain kept coming down, harder and harder. At about 10pm we decided to scrap the trip all together and make the most of it at home.

About that time I got an email saying that the church was sending aid to the area and they would be using the stake center as a loading/unloading zone and needed help unloading 3 semi-trucks full of cleaning solution, hygine kits and shovels. So Friday morning, instead of heading to the state park (which I found out later was kinda washed out around the camp sites) we left early to go to the church and help. Sariah was pretty good during all of this. She spent part of the time on my back in the sling as I helped pass buckets down the line, and the other part she spent playing in the nursery (when they had someone to help watch the kids.)

It was good work and it felt good to help. We spent most of the morning there and then went to lunch after at Olive Garden. The afternoon we spent relaxing, and then in the evening Doug used our little hibatchi grill and built a fire and we roasted hot dogs and marshmellows. There are no pictures though, because one of us (Doug) had to keep fueling the fire and the other one of us (me) had to make sure Sariah was safe. It was a little easier after she was straped into her booster seat and couldn't move from our outdoor table. We all enjoyed the food, Sariah had her first taste of smore, which she mostly just poked at the marshmellow with her finger and then ate the chocolate. After Doug ran out of wood to put on the fire (he had a really, REALLY good time with the fire) we put Sariah to bed and sat outside in our new camp chairs and read books until we couldn't see anymore.

Saturday was more of the same, since the weather turned sunny for Fri/Sat. we spent it relaxing together and eating leftovers. Sunday, poor Doug still had his meetings before and after church, and then at 3pm we were invited to a special baptism of a friend in the ward, which was really great. After we spent the day relaxing and the evening watching The Incredibles that we got Doug on dvd, since he's so incredible! :)

So it wasn't the weekend I had envisioned, but it turned out pretty good. Sorry that there are no pictures. I plan on posting some of Sariah doing some new random things soon though. We hope everyone else had a great Father's Day Weekend!

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Yup. Not what you planned, but still sounds good. And he still had a day off work--who can beat that?