Ward Campout

Brad joined us in Cascade Friday evening and we left a distraught Johnny at the cabin with our family that was staying there and we took off to our ward campout located 10 minutes from the cabin. Brad and I both made ourselves go for the one reason that we haven't done any camping this summer and Alex couldn't go a summer without sleeping in a tent. Last year Johnny did not prove himself to be a good camper when it came to sleeping through the night so he was not invited back. He was sentenced to a year suspension from camping and we will try again next year. And when I heard everyone else's kids up all night long I was happy that I could just lay in my bag with earplugs in place and fall back to sleep. We had a good time though. Brad piled about a dozen youth in our truck and took them bridge jumping that night, they came back quite cold but smiling. Alex loved running around the campground with her girlfriends and had fun with Mom and Dad's head lamps when it grew dark. My Young Women lead the group in some fun camp songs and near the end of that time Alex asked when we got to get in the tent and go to bed. We put her down and two minutes later she was out with her Ellie snuggled up next to her in her very own mummy bag.

The next morning we woke Alex up at 9:30 for breakfast which has started a little earlier. And after awhile we packed up our truck and headed back to the cabin to pick up Johnny and pack up the rest of our belongings before heading home. On our way back home we passed the bridge the youth were jumping off of (let me clarify that more were out that morning with other adults supervising at the time) and saw an ambulance parked nearby with it's lights flashing. Later that evening we found out it was our dear sweet Heidi who is our #1 babysitter for the kids. Alex absolutely adores her. She shocked everyone when she jumped because she wasn't the type to take such a risk and apparently she was shocked as well when she came up calling for the doctor in our ward that thankfully was there at the campout. She broke her ankle pretty bad and was life-flighted out of there to the nearest hospital.
Today Alex and I were making "Get Well Soon" cards for her. I made mine first while Alex colored her a picture and this is Alex's attempt in copying the block letters I used on my card.

She drew the inside of the card first and then went to the front of the card to write "We Love You" as I had on my card and her "W" was all over the paper and she soon became frustrated. So we turned the "W" into a castle with princess Heidi in it and my sister Anna gave me a great tip on teaching Alex how to draw block letters. So we wrote out the name "Heidi" in pencil and she traced around the letters with a crayon. Then she erased the pencil marks and she ended up with beautiful block letters spelling out Heidi's name. Thanks for the tip Sis!