For Home Evening, we took the kids and joined the YSA ward for Box Boating at First Dam. I'd never heard of it, but each ward was given a huge box (that tread mills are packaged in) and a roll of duct tape. We had a gazillion hamburgers cooked on the grill and tons of chips. The young adults all worked on creating a "boat" from the box while the burgers cooked and they took turns eating and creating their boats. OH MY WORD! We had a blast! We laughed so hard!
One instruction that we have all been given is to let the kids have a good time doing their thing. We are there as observers as much as possible. It was a riot to watch these kids coming up with their ideas. Our team had the worst idea for a boat of all, which was proven within fifteen feet of the shore! But, they had a blast building it! Our boat was a huge box, much too large, and not at all stable. The idea was to build a box/raft instead of a boat. Oh well, it was fun trying. It got into the water and literally toppled over forward, dumping the cute gal who was supposed to navigate it across the water and back within feet of the shore. One guy in our group was sort of the "Chief". He is so darn cute and fun, but his ideas weren't all that wonderful for floating a boat. Everyone just rolled with it and followed his lead. They had a blast doing it. No one cared about anything but the fun!
My favorite thing was watching Doug and our own kids interacting and getting involved. This is going to be a fun experience! I can see that clearly already! What a gift to work with all these super sharp college kids who are attending church by their own choice, building their own testimonies because they want to, being involved because they want to and not because Mom and Dad are making them be there every week. I'm talking sharp kids! I'm loving them already! Learning their names will be a task, but I'm determined to know them all by name ASAP!
One of the teams made us laugh so hard. They'd cut out a dragon like image on the front of the ship and used ketchup and stuck fritos in the ketchup to decorate it. This boat made it all the way across the dam and back! AWESOME! One boat floated the race with two people in it and then continued to be rowed around the dam after the race was over. They had build a good ship!
Such a fun evening, visiting with other leaders, getting to spend some time with Norm and Tamara, who are our neighbors and were called the same Sunday as Doug to serve as Bishop of another YSA ward in our stake. We meet in the same building and will see each other a lot. Norm and Tamara are two of my favorite people in our home ward, and I predict a close friendship with them over the next few years!
It took over an hour to build the boats, but less than five minutes for them to race across and back!
You can't see much of him, but our cute Seth, who'd been our chief, left our sunken ship only seconds into the race, swam across and then pushed this cute gal from another ward, back in her boat. It was sea-worthy, but her rowing was lacking some experience. How fun to see him helping another girl from another ward. That's the spirit!
It was an awesome evening! Life is so dang good! Live it joyfully!!!
This looked like a super fun day!
Posted by: Nicole Dirickx | Friday, August 21, 2015 at 08:55 PM