A Week to Forget...

My week really wasn't all that bad. I'm speaking specifically about June 28-July 4th. But if you talk to some of my other family members, it really was a bad week. I'll be selfish and talk about me first, mostly because it is boring! Kind of at the last minute (a few days ahead of time), we, Rob and I, decided to go up to church camp and work for the week. It was Jr. Camp (5th and 6th grade boys and girls). I went as a cabin leader, Rob as a night watchman and riflery (BB gun) instructor. I had 2 of my kids up there along with my nephew, Brenden, and Ethan's friend/ Briyanna's classmate, Cody. Honestly, it was fairly uneventful. My team won the week's competition, I went on a canoe ride (is it pathetic to admit that it was my first time?), and best of all, I didn't have to clean or make dinner. Oh, and a little boy threw a rock at me and then told me I couldn't catch him cuz I was an old lady. Well, I caught him and he never threw another rock at me, or called me an old lady, for that matter, for the rest of the week. Enough about me...

So, this is the fun stuff. My mom had called to ask me if we could come over and help burn the road and hillside. My dad had surgery about 2 years ago on his back and really hasn't been the same. He was out on a job about 4 weeks ago and fell in a corrugated row and tweaked his back up and can hardly walk. He is supposed to be on bed rest (something impossible for him) so he can be back to work soon. Well, we went out of town and I forgot about the burn so my mom asked my brother, who lives pretty much next door, to help with his boys. Randy, my brother, decides to burn next to his place first to keep it from getting out of hand and burning down his place. Long story short... that backfired. After they got done burning, what he had burned to keep his place from burning down flared up and caught the bushes next to the house on fire. The 20 ft high bushes. Randy only had a piddly little garden hose with barely a tickle of water coming out of it. A highway department truck that hauls water to wet down gravel roads happened to be driving by and pulled into the yard, turned on his water and put it out. Another 10 minutes and the house probably would have burned down. Get this... the fire department wouldn't send out a fire truck because my dad didn't know the address number of my brother's. How ridiculous. I told my dad he should have lied and gave them his own address since they're next door. They would have realized which place was up in flames. AND... I didn't hear about this from my parents. I got a voice mail from my friend saying she was driving by a house on Middleton Road and there was a woman outside that looked like my mom fighting a fire with a shovel. And then a second voice mail from her saying, yep, she's pretty sure it's my mom and that there are fire trucks arriving at the house at the bottom of the hill. I get the messages and wait about an hour. I figure if all hell is breaking loose, this isn't the time to bug them. Then I call. She doesn't say anything about it. So I ask, what's this I hear about firetrucks coming out to your place? I'm not sure she was going to tell me!!

My parents have a little history with these hillside fires getting out of hand. This is the 4th time that the firetrucks have had to come out and take care of my dad's little fires. In my dad's defense, they really have not been his fault, except for one. It's just fun to tease him about them.