During the Ma and Pa training, it was understood that we were supposed to arrive at the Stake Center at 5am on youth conference day. Andrew and I had everything packed and ready to go the night before. I had everything planned to perfection except for being late. That morning we woke up at 5:15 am!! Andrew truly jumped out of bed and shouted: "Aren't we supposed to be there at 5?" and that woke me up. We scrambled out of the door and rushed the 20 min. drive to the stake center.

He drove with great style and pizazz, until at a red light, a cop car pulled up beside us and said in his deep voice: "You might want to slow down". He then drove away!!! I couldn't believe we only got a warning for that and what's more, didn't even get pulled over, otherwise, we would have lost more time. Talk about tender mercies of the Lord! Now I think back that we were able to get up at 5:15am without an alarm is a miracle too! (Our kids were charged with playing the alarm and switching the alarm to CD the night before. )

When we finally made it to the stake center, the parking lot was already busy with people directing traffic and parents dropping kids off. Talk about embarrassing, of all places, Andrew stopped the car right in front of President Talbert (a member of the stake presidency) with him looking straight into my eyes. I could tell that he was startled to see me just arriving and then he had the look of : " YOU ARE REALLY, REALLY LATE!!!!" I hopped out of the car at super human speed and ran right past him without even saying good morning (ha ha ha). I was like a bullet running with my eyes fixed on those front doors of the church building while dodging people everywhere.

I ran to the spot marked "Fisher Family" inside the cultural hall and saw 3 or 4 out of 11 of my kids were already sitting there. There is truly nothing more embarrassing then the moment when I had to face those kids and tell them why their ma and pa were late.

I was slightly relieved to see that they were good natured and seemed to have forgiven me on the spot. However, my face burned with embarrassment for the next 3 hours. ... then it finally stopped burning, so guess I eventually got over it.

A month ago prior to the YC, I had the opportunity to go to Palmyra with some other stake leaders to "scout" the area and to time the route the buses were to travel. Now that YC is over, it's very interesting to see how all the planning came to fruition. I've gained much respect for those who plan youth events year after year in our stake and I feel I have learned a lot about leadership in the process. But as fun as that experience was, being a ma and pa for a group of youth was so much better! I feel very privileged to be with the youth assigned to our family.

During our ride home, at 11 o'clock at night, one of our bus's tires completely blew out. We were basically a sitting duck until a repair truck could get to us. Since we were travelling with 2 other buses, we could also wait for one of the bus to first drop the kids off at the stake center and turn around to pick us up, making total wait time at least 3 hours. I was about to have a panic attack because we thought we might get home at 12:30am, I had asked our friends who were watching our kids to go home before 11 o'clock, leaving Jade to watch the younger kids while they were asleep. The estimation at the time was that we would arrive at the stake center around 4am. There was nothing I could do but to say a prayer asking Heavenly Father to please help my littler ones to sleep through without waking up crying like they sometimes do. A friend on the bus assured me in all her wisdom that God would look out for my children. The good news is all the kids on the bus were just happy to hang out longer with their new friends, everybody got out of the bus to play on that parking lot in the middle of nowhere.

About an hour into our wait, the repair truck pulled up to our great delight and replaced the flat in record time. I didn't think we had to wait too long and the spirits of the youth were still high by the time we were on the road again. I truly felt that God was watching out for us since the morning we woke up.

Due to the sudden (apparent) death of our desktop (sad, sad, sad), all our stored pictures from YC are currently irretrievable inside the belly of the machine. It looks like Andrew's dream of getting a Mac is coming true very, very soon indeed.

He recently wrote this little thing about summer with pictures to match the writing.

"Summer is a perfect season to go swimming at an outdoor pool. Summer is a time to go to the beach. A time to pick berries and a day to go to parties. It is also a good time to play sports, play outside and to go bike riding. Perfect day to buy a pet for the season."

I happened to believe that by the time an idea made its way to the paper, the author would have thought about it several times over already. That getting a pet for the summer made it to Kirin's paper probably means that the idea has never left his mind at all...

Our neighbor who has a daughter and a son is expecting a baby boy in the fall. With that news, he almost cried and muttered that he is the only boy he knows without a brother.

Today, as he was getting into the car after being picked up from a buddy's house, he stated that he did not want to come home.
"I want to stay at Thomas' house for 3 million more hours."

"Oh, you can't. You live at our house."

"But if I stay at Thomas' house, then I would have a brother."

I've heard more experienced parents said that there comes to a time when you realize that you can't do anything for your children. I can't really remember when I have felt that way. This might just be my first.