The other night, I was coming back from the grocery store and was gathering up the grocery bags out of the car and heard a voice talking to me. The house (outside) was basically dark except for the porch light. It freaked me out, and I couldn't even decipher who was talking or where the voice was coming from. I thought maybe someone was up in the attic (windows from the attic face the front of the house), but there were no lights on up there either. All those thought processes went through my mind in about 2 seconds. Then the voice again -- "Mom, up here!" It was Melanie sitting on the dark roof above the brightly lit porch underneath. What the heck, Mel! She and 3 of her friends were sitting up on the highest part of the roof enjoying the sights? I don't know what they were doing up there actually. But when Mel heard me pull in she walked down to the edge just over my head and decided to mess with me.
We were invited to a going away party of a wonderful family in the ward. This couple is significantly younger than we are, but they have been good friends and neighbors. But because they are much younger, most of the crowd at the party were younger. Dave ended up playing volleyball in the pool with everyone for most of the night. He mentioned later that everyone was being called by their first name except him. He was being called "Brother Hale". Everyone was getting some "trash talk" except Dave. I had to rub it in that he was clearly the old man in the group. He tried to justify the issue - in the bishopric, respect, etc. But no, he was just the "old guy" at the party. (Actually, Kristy and Suzanne and I also had a conversation during dinner about being the old ladies at the party too.) We will miss you Heidi and Jared!
We survived Girl's Camp. (I never know if it is Girls' camp, or Girl's camp. Where does the apostrophe go? Clearly there are girls - plural. But at the same time it is each girl's camp. I always worry someone will call me out on it on the flyers that are passed out each spring) Anyway, I am the Stake Camp Director. I've got a couple of great assistants, and a whole crew of fantastic adults. But there are still a lot of details I worry about. It is a lot of work we have to oversee, sometimes I think it's too much effort for such a short little camp experience, but then after a great week, I realize, no, . . . it was worth it. I should learn to relax a bit more. Dave went up for the week too, as the in-camp toilet plunging, door-fixing, mouse-chasing male. And Melanie went up as an adult with the 4th year girls this year. Although she did amazing, she isn't actually old enough to legally drive the group (she is still under 21) so we had to have an extra adult go also to cover the transportation issue. We should have thought through that more clearly. Anyway, it was fun to be there with Dave and Melanie too. The 16 and 17 year old girls run all the programs at camp and the theme they came up with was "I Can", as in . . . I can do hard things, I can be honest, I can apply for scholarships, I can wait until I'm 16 to date, I can do math, I can bear my testimony. They planned some sub-themes for each level to use the theme also. They decided on "Superheroes", based on characteristics. It turned out real well. For instance, the cute little 12 year old girls were the "Super-Sweets", and the older girls were "Captain Courageous". The adults chose "Basically Brilliant". It was a smooth week. No injuries, no major drama, great programs, hiking, fun classes - archery, crafts, dance, zip line, scripture mastery, music, beauty. For Bishops night, the bishops had to construct a costume using supplied clothes/wigs/ hats etc. and then had to do a fashion walk and perform a lip sinc musical number, and answer some beauty pageant questions. Another night the girls planned "Minute to Win it" games, and we ended the week with a program based on President Hinkley's B's (Be Smart, Be Humble, Be Thankful etc) then a wonderful testimony meeting and a late night star gazing activity.
One of our 17 year olds, Audrey, was in charge of designing the t-shirts. She is a great artist and has an interest in design. She wanted something really cool that the girls would enjoy wearing after camp was over too. She ended up with a simple but cool graphic design. The hard part came in choosing the colors. Dark on light? light on dark? basic colors? funky colors? Then the YCLs were planning on a baseball style shirt which introduces yet another color. Light sleeves and dark shirt? Dark shirt and light sleeves? Same color logo as the other shirts? different color logo? We were working with a woman that does shirts from her home and so we didn't an exact catalog to look through. Audrey kept saying - do you think we could do grey and teal? Does she have grey? How will we know if it will be teal and not just a weird green? We were already past our time deadline and I had to just say "Oh my goodness Audrey , I don't know! Just pick a couple of options, and we'll get it as close as possible! Make a choice -- QUICK!! " Sorry I had to push that decision, Audrey, but they turned out great, all the girls loved them.
I found a pair of hiking style shoes I love, so I bought a couple pairs of them. The top and the insides have been long-lasting and real comfortable. The treads on the bottom, however, wore down much faster than expected. So I keep the worn down ones for around the neighborhood, and the good-tread ones for hiking in the hills. Unfortunately, I packed the wrong pair of shoes to camp. I was slipping and sliding down the hills while hiking, and I felt every rock through the bottom of my shoes all week.
At camp, we have a very strict "No Pranks" rule. Camp is a time to have fun together, but not a time for girls to get their feelings hurt. Usually that rule applies to adults too, but there was a bit of pranking going on in the kitchen. The kitchen staff came back from a trip to town to find a bloody knife on the counter, a bloody handprint on the freezer door, and an ice chest with a body wrapped in plastic (a CPR dummy that happened to get on the camp trailer the week before . . . for just in case it was needed in the kitchen freezer on a hot Wednesday afternoon). They cleaned up the (jelly) handprint and began plotting a joke back on Melanie, because who else would have done such a thing? Little did they know that Erica and Myrenda were behind the pranking. A lot of shenanigans ensued after that, (including, but not limited to someone almost climbing into the dumpster) but ended with a dummy falling out of a storage closet on ME the next day. I almost needed CPR myself.
It is a HUNDRED and TWENTY freaking degrees this week !!!! Our irrigation water for our yard comes 2 times a month. Three weeks ago, our turn for irrigation came at 3:30 a.m. I was out of town, Brady was going to take care of it. He was up until 2, but passed out with sleep and missed it. Last week, it was a Friday night at 10:30. I was home, I had remembered it earlier that morning, then I totally forgot it. The neighbors yards got our extra water and their yards are looking nice and green. Our yard is sadly dry and yellow, because Brady and I can't remember to water it and because it is a HUNDRED and TWENTY freaking degrees !!
On a related topic . . . with the horribly high temperatures there is no possible way to keep our dumpsters odor-free. The kitchen trash thrown in there bakes and melts into a horrible stinky mess. I tried pouring some bleach in there once (I saw a restaurant control their dumpster smells that way once). It smelled like toxic fried Chlorox for days. I wasn't sure what was worse.
Now a more pleasant topic -- Dave and I have been married 28 years today. That is a very long time. I have been with Dave much longer than I was without him in my life. I love that. To celebrate, we went out to dinner, then we got tickets to a show out in Gilbert at the Hale Center Theater (Coincidental same name). It is a fun little theater. The seats are on all 4 sides of the stage with the action in the center. We saw the musical "Damn Yankees". I had heard of the title, but was unfamiliar with the story. It ran on Broadway in the 1950's.
Synopsis: Disheartened by another loss , Joe mutters that he would sell his soul to the devil for "one long ball hitter" on the Senators. As soon as the words come out of his mouth, he is greeted by Satan himself in the form of conman Mr. Applegate. Applegate claims he can make not only Joe's wish come true but he can also make Joe that ballplayer to fulfill his one lifelong dream. Joe is magically transformed into 22-year-old Joe Hardy, the greatest ballplayer in history. Later in the story, he realizes there are more important things to him than being a baseball star.
There were a couple musical numbers that I was familiar with that I didn't realize came from this "You've gotta have Heart" and "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets" (Diet Pepsi commercial, Sofia Vergara)
If you haven't been to a production at the Hale Center Theater, you should look it up. They've got a different production going just about every month. It's located in Heritage District of downtown Gilbert. Lots of cool restaurants around there too.
Didn't I marry such a cutie?
