Training

This week was intense. It pretty much all started last Saturday night, when Holly and Mike left for Colorado and left me in charge of Noah, Danny, Oak and Mercy. They were gone until Wednesday night. I guess that should have been the first red flag. I figured they are well-behaved enough; I could handle it.

The week actually went very well, with only one major hiccup. I took the days off work so that I could concentrate on taking care of the kids. Sunday was complicated, but I got help. The kids did so well in church and the whole ward loved them (I took them to my student ward). Noah and Danny even made comments in Sunday School. I was glad I could trust them enough to leave them with a friend while I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting. Then, after church, I told some of the girls in the ward to play with them for an hour while I helped the bishop with his interviews. They ended up playing games with about ten other people from the ward, and loved it. In fact, the ward members loved the kids so much that they invited us back for dinner that night.

Monday went just like planned. I took the kids to school and gymnastics (and got to know pleasant grove pretty well because of it), and then after school picked them up again. We went to the nickelcade for family home evening.

Tuesday was the exciting day. It started out like normal, except that Dan said that he wouldn’t be able to come put the kids to bed because he already had made plans. (I had to go help the bishop with interviews again.) The kids were doing well enough that I thought they would just put themselves to bed, so I didn’t make any other plans.

When I got Mercy home from preschool, Oak was home, and we went over to the neighbor’s to play. I was getting to know the neighbors as well, all the while learning how to ride Oak’s ripstick. All of a sudden, the ripstick slid out from under me, and I landed front down on the driveway. I saw a little blood, and I thought, “oh, no. Not another nose bleed.” But then I checked my nose and nothing was wrong.

It was my chin that was bleeding. It didn’t really hurt. It had just bounced off the pavement, and I thought that it would have just bruised, but no. Some skin was broken.

After washing off with the hose, I thought to myself, “I’m taking care of these kids. I can be tough and show them that you don’t have to cry when you see your own blood.” Then I saw it in the mirror. I had about a three-quarter inch gash in my chin. I decided to ask the neighbor lady for her motherly advice, because I really don’t make that good of a mom. With her help I decided to call a babysitter and went to the ER and got stitched up (six big ones!) I realized I was learning more about taking care of kids than I could teach them in that time.

The next time I was trained, it was a little more formal. Friday and Saturday I had Wildland Firefighting training from eight in the morning to five at night. Friday was all just classwork, but Saturday we went on a field trip. In the morning we were issued all of our gear, and got to work the fire hose. In the afternoon we went out to a fire zone that was burning earlier that day, and dug fireline like we would on a real fire.

We were all in a line along the trail and the task was to widen it about six inches. That means to clear out everything that could burn so that the fire couldn’t jump the line. For the first little while, I had a shovel, so I was behind the guys with hoes and in front of the guys with rakes. I was supposed to scrape out the stuff that was dug up by the hoes. My back hurt so bad from it! After a while we switched and I took a Pulaski, which is a hoe on one side of the head and an ax on the other. That was so much easier, but I still hurt so bad now!

I guess what I learned best this week was kind of obvious: Training hurts! But, hey—what won’t kill me just makes me stronger!