Encounter with the Popo

A few years ago, we took our "city friends" on vaca with us to Bear Lake. 

(TBH, I think they only went because they didn't believe me that there was a place called Dingle,Idaho)

We wanted to give them the full experience of what it was like growing up in such a fun place, so...

We did Bear Lake (via Dingle, of course)

The Ream Mansion

Paris Springs

 Minnetonka Cave & Bloomington Lake (in the dark, which was a whole other story!)

Some of my funnest memories of growing up there were playing "night games" with the neighbor boys (there were LOTS of boys in our 'hood) !!

One night I told the kids (my 4 kids plus a cousin and our friends' 3 older kids) that they should go play "night games".... they thought I was crazy... NIGHT GAMES????

What the heck are "night games"???

I tried to tell them of some of the fun things the kids in the "hood" did back when and how much fun we had running wild in the hood under the cover of darkness.

After a little coaxing, they decided to go to the church across from my mom's house and play Sardines. It is kind of like hide and seek, but with teenagers, 

they are a little more creative about where they can hide!

It was about 10:30 pm and my friend and I decided to go over there and join them, but we didn't want them to know that we were joining in their fun... so we decided to be "stealth".

The church isn't exactly across the street, it is more like 2 houses down and THEN across the street.... and it has LOTS of parking lot lights!

So we put on dark clothing, and turned off the porch light, and tiptoe'd out the front door, around the back of the camper, and THROUGH the lilac bushes, behind the neighbor's son's big 4WD truck and then.... nothing..... not even the cover of darkness to hide us due to the lights around the church

.... so what's a girl to do?

Belly crawl!!!

We DASH across the street and belly crawl across the lawn of the church and into some bushes by the side of the building. Whew!!!!! We made it undetected.

We are sitting in the bushes, trying to catch our breath...

(when you play commando, it gets your adrenalin going and that makes your heart race and for a couple of "old ladies", that was a lot of excitement for one night!)

...we were laughing until we are ready to pee our pants, but trying to suppress the noise of our laughter, which only made us laugh harder.

(you know how things are funnier when you aren't supposed to laugh?)

Keep in mind we have no idea where any of these 8 kids are hiding...

As we are trying to compose ourselves, a white SUV pulls into the parking lot, so we hunker down to remain undetected, but still curious, we are watching through the bushes to see what happens.

All of a sudden two girls run across the parking lot and red and blue lights start flashing on top of the SUV..... BUSTED!!!

I decide I better come out of hiding and investigate to see what our kids have done now...LOL!

The "moms" walk out of the bushes, across the parking lot and approach the SUV, only to find my daughter and her cousin standing off to the side of the SUV. The cop (we'll call him Joe Friday), is trying to get them to come over to the passenger window to talk to him and they are standing, frozen...

 like deer in the headlights...literally!

We get there just as he is coaxing their names out of them.... when he hears the names Gunn and Peterson... he is smirking and nodding his head, like 

"I should have known"....hahaha...

 apparently my brothers and my husband have a reputation with this particular Popo!

I approach the SUV....and say hi to him. He laughs when he sees me because I haven't "lived" there since high school. I explain what the kids are doing and he proceeds to tell me the neighbors called the Popo when they saw a bunch of teenagers running around in the dark, because apparently the church had been vandalized the weekend prior.

He decides to release the delinquents into the custody of their mom/aunt and he leaves.

Only AFTER he is long gone do the rest of the kids come out of hiding....cowards....hahaha!

Well, actually, since some of then were laying on the roof of the church at the time of the incident, it's probably best they remained in hiding...lol... 

The next morning, as I am walking into the church, Joe Friday is walking out of the church... he grins and nods and then chuckles as he walks by. Gotta love living in a small town!