Church Cleaning, High Tide, and Songwriting

When we went to clean the church this morning we accidentally stumbled upon another ward's "Dads and Doughnuts" activity...so the church was filled with dads and doughnuts and children. They invited us to join them (and we did, from the sidelines). My kids weren't terribly upset about getting "second breakfast" before pitching in to clean.

The church has been filled with strange messes, some of which we've known about and some of which took us by surprise. One surprise was that someone had spilled a carton of chocolate milk in the chapel...and then just...left it...fermenting in the carpet. Super awesome. 

Some of the messes we knew about were: a urn/flower arrangement delivery box left over from a funeral that happened months ago that has been sitting in the chapel. Some banker boxes that someone left in the hallway (again, months ago). I made the unilateral decision that these were destined for Rachel to pack her college stuff in.

I threw away some things that our co-op left behind (again, months ago now). 

And I finally put a poster up in the YM room that had been put behind the piano in the YW room (again months and months ago).

It can be difficult to keep the church uncluttered when so many units are in there because no one wants to throw away anything that belongs to anyone else. But...given the unclaimed nature of these things...I don't think they were going to be claimed any time soon. 

So, it took us a while to get through with our cleaning, but it was a pretty good morning.

*****

When I got Phoebe dressed this morning she was still in a bit of an early-morning daze so I was helping her pick out her clothes (which she ordinarily does on her own).

"Do you want pants or shorts?" I asked.

"Shorts," she said.

"Okay, here you go," I said, handing her a pair of blue and white striped shorts. 

"Thanks," she said, "But I want to wear my high tide shorts."

"Your high tide shorts?" 

"Yeah! They're right there!"

She meant her tie-dyed shorts. And then, of course, we had to find her "high tide" Grogu shirt to go with it. Here she is in her "high tide" outfit:

She was delighted to see Rachel and Miriam (she hasn't seen them since Sunday night because they've been at camp...and then even when they were sleeping at our house they were coming home after Phoebe went to bed and leaving the house before she woke up so she didn't even realize they were "home"). We were happy they were home to help us clean the church!

She delighted us on the drive to the church by singing "Once There Was a Thunderstorm" (to the tune of "The Wheels On the Bus"). She had sung the first verse last night at dinner and you should have seen us all lean in as she got closer and closer to the last line of the song because no one was sure what she was going to do to resolve her song. She simply fell back on the traditional ending for "The Wheels On the Bus." 

Here's her song:

Once there was a thunderstorm,
A thunderstorm, a thunderstorm.

Once there was a thunderstorm...
All through the town!

So she sang that in the car for us and then went seamlessly into a secret second verse:

The thunderstorm made the power went out,

The power went out, the power went out!

The thunderstorm made the power went out...

All through the town!

Did she past-tensify too many of her verbs? Absolutely. But that's okay. 

I recorded her singing it later and she corrected her over-past-tensification to say "the thunderstorm made the power go out." 

It was fun to listen to her improvise this little autoethnographic ditty about her experience last night.