Irony.

Sometimes it's just ironic. Situations are passed our way and how we respond does matter. I was laughing over irony yesterday because an all-too-familiar situation happened again! Last Tuesday the honor roll students were supposed to take a field trip to the Cheesecake Factory at the King of Prussia Mall, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the students couldn't go so it was rescheduled for yesterday. I was supposed to go along, but once I found out that over half the girls were staying behind, I chose to stay behind too and do our regular Girls gym class in the afternoon. While slightly disappointed at missing the Cheesecake Factory (I could do without the mall though:D), I continued through my day.

After lunch we got the call: "the school bus broke down on the way...". That's happened lots of times before. I have fond memories of sitting at a rest stop outside of Scranton after a camp with several of us singing at the top of our lungs as men from church drove vans to pick us up. Our bus breaking down happens often enough to make memories, but not too often that we don't step on the bus each time! But the worst part of the whole thing this time was that it was just fixed. I'm not sure what was fixed, but apparently they overlooked the back brakes!

I did feel bad for the girls who went on the trip because I think the girls who stayed behind had more fun in gym:o). Since I had a smaller group, I decided to play Sardines outside. Sardines is played by one person going to hide and then one or two people being dismissed minute by minute to go find the person hiding. Once you find the person hiding, you're supposed to hide with them, hence the name "Sardines" because you can get squished sometimes! We've played Sardines in the building before which is loads of fun!

The first girl who hid wasn't too creative; she stood behind the church bus and then when one of the girls spotted her feet, she ran inside the bus and hid while the other girl watched her do that;). The second girl was a tad more creative, for she chose a shed between the assistant pastor's house and Pastor's house to hide behind. She was soon found as well. The third girl I sent out took us a 1/2 hour to find because she didn't hear me say, "don't hide in trees" so that's where she was! The nice thing for me was I walked the perimeter of the church property twice looking for her so I didn't need to go walking in the afternoon;).

The last two girls (they hid at the same time) probably chose the most dangerous spot to hide. Since there was an unequal number of girls, I partnered up with #2 girl and thought to look near the woods since Eliza loves the woods. But as we were walking past Pastor's house, I noticed Kristen trying to walk over to this cement-covered stairway. I couldn't figure out why she was trying to go that way because all she had to do was go around the bramble pile to peer in. Plus I couldn't figure out why she thought Eliza and Jessica would hide in there. When the girls finally came out (I had given them a time limit and my watch so they would know when the game was "over") I asked them where they hid and they said "in the Hammett's basement stairway!"

I overheard one of the girls talking later about snakes but I pushed that off as just a bunch of teenage boys trying to scare the girls. Later on I asked my pastor's wife if there were snakes in there. Her answer was "probably" and said it was dangerous because the cement was crumbling. She then asked me why I asked. I told her, "I guess next time I have to be a little more clear in what's off-limits. I mean, you would have to be pretty dumb to hide in there!" Mrs. Hammett started laughing as she agreed with me, for she knew the two girls pretty well:D.