Wow! It feels like I've taken plenty of time off from the blog! But...I've got good reason...I have been plenty busy over the last two weeks! Let's do a brief recap of everything that's been going on here:
Girls Camp (a summer camp for girls at our church ages 12-17): Lasted from Monday, July 9th through Saturday, July 14th. Since I was Assistant Camp Director, I've had my hands full of camp-related materials, ideas, and just plain old stuff since the beginning of April.
I'd never been to Girls Camp before, and it was a great experience! Being Assistant Camp Director, it was my job to help get the girls at church prepared for camp ahead of time. We were in charge of decorating camp shorts, decorating a dividing sheet for the cabin (about 70 girls stayed in the same dorm-style cabin...how hard it is to get to sleep with 70 girls wanting to chit-chat at night is a whole other story!), teaching the girls about flag ceremonies, rounding up camping supplies, working out rides to and from camp, getting camp letters for the girls from parents, getting a skit worked out for skit night, making sure the girls brought what they were supposed to for camp, and, of course, attending camp for moral support for the girls.
My favorite part of camp besides hanging out with the girls from our unit were the camp songs. My favorite one was called "Princess Pat". I wish I would have taken a video on my camera of the girls singing it, but I didn't carry my camera around at camp because I was too busy making bracelets, singing, getting sweaty, swimming, etc. I had a lot of fun singing my camp songs to Kyle as soon as I got home from camp.
Michigan Trip: Kyle's extended family lives smack in the middle of Michigan. They don't do a lot of holidays together, so we don't see them very often. On Saturday, July 14th, Kyle's younger cousin Haley and her parents were hosting her graduation party, so we decided to make the trip up with Kyle's parents to see everyone. I'm pretty sure it's the first time we'd been together with everyone since Christmas 2008 (which was my first visit to a family function). I'd seen all the women at my Michigan bridal shower and some of the family at our wedding reception, but other than that, we'd only seen Kyle's grandparents when they happened to be visiting Indianapolis a handful of times since then (again...should have taken pictures, but....I just didn't. Terrible, I know).
The graduation party was a lot of fun. Haley had a cute Hawaiian theme going on and the food was AMAZING. Besides catching up with other family members, we got to meet Zoey, the newest cousin that Kyle's uncle and aunt are adopting. She's such a cutie pie! So is her older brother Zeke, who Ron and Shannon adopted just the month before my first visit at Christmas. Such sweet kids.
After leaving the party, we went to stay with Kyle's other grandma about 20 minutes away. We definitely hadn't seen her since Kyle's sister's graduation two years ago, so it was nice to be there. Grandma Evans is a hoot. We in particular were glad to be able to see Kyle's grandpa Evans in the nursing home the next morning. We're hoping he gets to come home from rehabilitation this week! He seems to be making some wonderful improvements in his health :)
Power Outage: Our power went out unexpectedly last Saturday. This has happened before. Our house is so stinkin' old that it's got it's little quirks about it, and the electric wiring is one of them. We run the house on 200 amps, and the amps are split in half in the switchbox....100 on one side, 100 on the other. On the side that blew, we have wired our bathroom, our hallway, our hallway closet, our office and all the electronics inside, the kitchen (minus the fridge), the dining room, half of the basement lights and the washer and dryer, the thermostat, and the attic closet, bathroom, and outlets. Mostly, the things we use a lot, right? On the other side (which, by the way, never blows) we have hooked up our bedroom, our living room, our fridge, half of the basement lights, the attic lights, the outside lights, the air conditioning, and the garage lights and deep freeze. A serious imbalance, huh? And the crummy thing is that we can't rewire things around because the wires are too short to do something more than just temporary. Some of the wires were too short to stretch at all!
So in the past, we've just had power surges that have caused the heavy amp side to poop out, so to speak. It just happened when things were overloaded, and it's happened exclusively while my sister lived with us. For example, she would be in her room on her laptop listening to music while watching TV. Meanwhile, I would be drying clothes and Kyle would be doing something like showering. If I would do something small like pop some food in the microwave, the whole half of the house would die. Then we'd have to push all the breakers in, unplug the dryer, and just continue on our merry way. Annoying, but it happened, and it's how the house is, so we dealt with it.
This time, the power just died for no reason. I was drying clothes and we were both watching TV in separate rooms, but no major overload. We found out that the main breaker pretty much just fried. Luckily, my parents were in town and between Kyle and my dad, we were able to hook up the thermostat, bathroom, and microwave to the light amp side (although we didn't want to hook up too much or we'd have the same problem and have NO electricity).
We searched high and low in stores here for a replacement part, but no such luck. Menards and Lowes doesn't carry the brand we need (which apparently is so old that no one sells it anymore) and the brands they DO carry were too small to fit our box. Typical. After some internet research, we found that Home Depot is the only store that carried the brand, but they didn't carry main breakers onsite. So, we resorted to having to order the part online. Kyle ordered the part on Tuesday and it arrived Friday. What a long week without electricity (and I was at Girls Camp for three of the days)! I could never be Amish...I don't know how they do it. I just got so BORED without my Internet. Sad, huh?
The fun wasn't over, though. While trying to take out the old part, Kyle accidentally broke the old main breaker in half. It was just soooo old. In order to get the remaining piece out, he literally had to yank it out with all his might and our remaining power surged and TONS of sparks flew out. I thought for a moment he would surely be electrocuted, but he wasn't. Then it was as simple as his popping the part in, screwing it down, and rewiring everything back around to the appropriate amount of amps. While he did this, I held the flashlight :)
And then lo and behold, POWER! It's been so nice not having to go to the library to use the Internet. I didn't realize how much I depend on it not just to catch up with friends or watch my shows, but to read the news, send emails for my church callings, look up phone numbers, etc. Crazy....
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