Friday June 16: We left
right after Rick’s inservice to go camping at a campground near Manti for our
“Father’s Day Flee."
This year our theme was:
"Establish a house of learning.....even a house of God." (D&C 109)
For Father's Day Flee this year we chose to go camping. Rick recently purchased a large new tent and
sleeping bags that he was excited to get some use out of. The campground had facilities such as
showers, bathrooms, swimming, pool, and a playground.
We invited Curtis and Steph Healey and their kids to come
along with us on our adventure this year.
During our two day stay, we had four different lessons geared toward the
ages of the children.
Rick gave the "Welcome lesson." He talked about
the importance of being prepared and the importance of families. He told a different version of the
"Three Little Pigs," in which nature happened to be "The big bad
wolf."
In the end, even the little pig who built his house with
bricks lost his house to an earth quake.
But that didn't matter, because he still had his brothers with him, and as
long as they were together, they could rebuild.
It was an interesting analogy as the children came up with the principle that family can be a strong force
- even stronger than an earthquake!
Afterwards we had s’mores and sang around the camp fire. We then put the kids to bed and Rick and I
stayed up late with Curtis and Steph just gabbing around the camp-fire. It was so nice and we didn’t want to go to
bed! Finally we were too tired to stay
awake any longer and headed to our tent.
Curtis and Steph had it a little easier because they brought up their
camper and so they had better sleeping conditions. The first night was really cold and I had
Josh snuggled right next to me in the sleeping bag. I didn’t sleep well at all!
The next morning Steph gave a small lesson. She handed each child a plastic booklet that
had plastic sleeves on it. They called
this their learning book. She had a
little art project for them to do and encouraged them to put things inside
the plastic sleeves of their learning book whenever they learned about
something. Jared (age 6) couldn't wait
to fill up his learning book. He
included things such as grass, leaves, a few pictures, and even some feathers
from the local turkeys that were wandering around the camp-site.
The next day, I presented my lesson on work. Later on that day Curtis gave his lesson on
Prayer and Faith. He had the wonderful idea to share a story from one of his ancestors, who through prayer, fasting, and faith migrated to America. It was a heartfelt story and each of the
children enjoyed learning about his ancestor. He even got quite emotional while
telling the story (and so did I)!
Throughout the day we all went swimming at the camp-ground
pool and all of the kids had fun exploring the camp-ground and chasing the
turkeys around. Later on we all headed
over to the Manti Pageant and secured a place on the ground with blankets. We all went and ate some of Ephraim’s famous
turkey that they have at various churches around the community. Unfortunately I was so tired from my poor
night’s sleep that I fell asleep during the pageant!
Sun. 18: We had our
own church services and sacrament meeting right there in the campground. It was really neat and the spirit
was there. We all cleaned up camp and
then went our separate ways. Our family
headed up to SLC to go to a big Father’s Day party at Scott and Amy’s. It was so fun to see everyone – I was really
glad that we went. It worked out because
Rick had a faculty retreat up in SLC Monday and Tuesday and so I brought him to his retreat and then I stayed at my mom’s with the kids. We were able to have a nice visit and go
swimming with the kids!
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