A scene and a moment in time I shall never forget!

Just as we entered the camp ground from our hike it started to rain and rain hard. We decided to give the storm an hour and see if it would let up. It was about 6:00 p.m. We needed to fix dinner but because of the intensity of the storm we couldn't start a fire. After about 45 minutes and realizing that the storm was there to stay and feeling hail on our heads we decided to take the camp down, load up and head for home.

Jamie stayed in camp while we were on the hike. She tended Boston and Peyton. We didn't want to take Bella and Lilly so we tied them up together and left them under one of the tables. Somehow the two of them got tangled up around the huge dinning fly and literally pulled it down! Lily broke lose and luckily Jamie happened to come out of the tent to check on them and found everything, including the dining fly Topsy-turvy. She rounded up Lily and then did the best she could in the wind and rain to aright the canopy. She recognized that the polls were bent beyond fixing.

As we all were taking the tents down and throwing things in the cars as fast as we could, it was decided that the canopy was not worth saving. The above picture is of Maren, Greg and her dad bending all those poles into small lengths so they could be wrapped up in the canopy, put on top the Jeep to be hauled down the canyon to the nearest dumpster.

You've never seen people take down a camp as fast as the Maxfield family crew did that day. We were all soaked, but still had smiles on our faces. Neal lead us in a family prayer before driving down the canyon. He made some comment in his prayer about fun and happy memories and I started to giggle. Why? 'fun and happy memories' struck me funny as we stood in the pouring rain and it was also a time for comic relief.

We were all looking for a dumpster to get rid of about 10 bags of garbage and the dinning fly on top the Jeep. As we came out of the canyon, Jeff G. said, 'Let's look for a church steeple" and sure enough he spotted one. All five cars went into the parking lot, unloaded their garbage into the church dumpster. It was a funny sight and I got the giggles again. Somebody made the comment that it was OK to use the church dumpster because we paid our tithing! I love my family!!!!!

We stopped at Wendy's for hamburgers and then home to unload, take showers and get a good night's sleep. Even though we had to come back a day early - no one had their spirits dampened. We are a family that can step left and create what we want. Did I say I love my children and grandchildren for their happy and positive attitudes!