And the wind blew...

If I have the opportunity to feed my children without actually preparing the meal myself, I’ll take it. So when our ward campout came last Friday night I was as excited as the kids. We have a wonderful new stake campground only four blocks from our home, so the temptation to sleep in my own bed was tremendous. But it was a beautiful day for a campout and my husband even convinced me to sleep outdoors with the rest of the family.

The food was great as always. The young women did a short program and the primary had games for the children. We sat around the campfire and were entertained by the scouts. My favorite part of the program was my Somalian neighbor telling us a story in Somali. Of course none of us understood a word he was saying, so three other men in the ward (including my husband) interpreted the story for us. It was something about pink elephants in tutus chasing a Zebra. I wished I could understand the story because the storyteller used such expressive body language and inflections in his speech, I knew I must be missing something.

By the time I put my two girls to bed it was after eleven, and it took a few more minutes to locate my son and convince him it was time to turn in. The kids fell asleep quickly, while I tried to get comfortable on the hard ground. Yes, we were in a tent and there was only one air mattress to be had. We weren’t doing too badly until 3:00 a.m. That is when the wind started.

If you are familiar with Southern Alberta, you know how quickly the wind can pick up and how fiercely it can blow. I woke up to the noise of the tent flapping in the gale. My son was wide awake listening to the clamor. I turned over and realized my husband’s sleeping bag was empty. This was understandable since the tent was being pushed over so far he would have been breathing tent fabric rather than fresh air. I went outside to find him standing guard over the family, trying to figure out the next move. The stake president wandered over from his campsite next to us and said his children were crying because they were scared by the noise. Several other families headed for home.

Everything was still staked solidly, but we knew we wouldn’t get any sleep staying there. We woke the girls, collapsed the tent and put some weight on it so it wouldn’t continue to flap around, then went home. We got everyone tucked in for the second time around 3:45 a.m. And even though none of us had much sleep, we were up the next morning, bright and early, to go back to the campground and get breakfast. Like I said, if I don’t have to cook…