Girls camp started bright and early on Tuesday, June 12th. I drove up this year instead of taking the bus, which was fabulous! Most of the leaders went up on Monday, but I went up Tuesday morning after I took the girls to the buses. It was Tayla's birthday that day so I took Courtney, Tayla and Caitlyn to McDonalds before they had to be at the church. I must love them because I picked them up at 6 AM! I didn't sleep much the night before so I started the week out really tired! After breakfast I dropped the girls off at the church and then I drove up to camp.
Most of the leaders and the YCL's went up on Monday and got things set up. They were waiting to greet everyone when the buses arrived. We had awesome leaders and YCL's this year. I had a blast talking and laughing with them. One night Kristy and I stayed up really late talking and laughing, it made camp so fun!
I beat the buses by almost an hour. It was nice to have time to get my stuff set up before the girls got there. Our value was Good Works this year, we were decked out in yellow!
The stake had sweatshirts for everyone and our ward did long sleeve t-shirts. I always like to get a picture with Caitlyn on the first day when I still look decent. We stayed by the lake this year. It was nice not to have to hike down from the wilderness side for lake front, planting trees and confidence course. It is beautiful up there!
Kristy did a great job as camp director. She is so fun and crafty and the girls loved her. She had cute welcome bags for the girls, that helped them all get excited.
Caitlyn got such cute things from her secret sister. Alisha had her and she went all out. Caitlyn loved it!
None of us knew that Kristy used to cut hair. She had tinsel and stuff for jedi braids, the girls loved it. They were all doing each others hair all week.
The best part was when she cut my hair! I didn't like how my hair was thinned the last time I went in so she fixed it for me and took a few inches off and did some more thinning for me, it felt great!
I took a shower after we planted trees and I had to let it dry a bit before my haircut so I did this so I could dry all of my hair, the girls thought it was pretty funny.
Nadia was with the stake this year, which was a bummer! She ate dinner with us every night though. The girls think she is the funniest thing ever. They all couldn't wait to listen to all of her funny stories every night at dinner, she had us all laughing hysterically.
I had so much fun with all of the girls. There are a couple that are a little shy, but most of them will run right up to me and talk to me and joke around with me. I love having Chloee in beehives, she is so much fun. It was her first year at camp and she got homesick at night. She was embarrassed about it but I was glad she would talk to me. I had her come sleep downstairs next to me one night while Angie was on the 4th year hike. Luckily, she was fine during the day, but she got pretty anxious at night. Alisha has been one of my favorites since I started in Young Women. She is so sweet, she was a big help for Chloee.
Caitlyn and Leata had fun together. I love that Caitlyn will interact with all of the girls and that she will do things on her own if no one is doing what she wants to do.
Tasha Peterson was our cook and she was awesome. All of the meals were so good and we had plenty of treats and snacks. Every day we had an hour of FEAST (Find, explain, apply, share, testify). Lisa, Angie and I each took one day and then the bishop took the last day. We each had one of the YCL's help us. The YCL's picked "Lord I would follow thee" for our camp song so we each took a verse and taught about it for FEAST time. Emma and I taught about the second verse. It talks about not judging because "everyone has sorrow that the eye can't see." I was really happy with how our lesson went. Emma did a great job and we had lots of participation. I had a hard time preparing it. I had been studying my topic and listening to conference talks and scriptures for weeks, but I couldn't pull it together. I finally put together an outline the day before camp. I used some of the outline, but I ended up having different ideas come to me and it all came together really well. I love when that happens.
I enjoyed camp so much more this year than I did last year. I think part of it was because I knew what to expect. I didn't get anxious and feel like time was crawling like I did last year. Caitlyn enjoyed it a lot more this year too, she had fun last year, but this year was just great!
I feel like the ward was so much more unified this year. All of the girls had fun together and all of us leaders meshed really well together.
We had a lot more free time this year, which was great. I loved that the girls usually spent their free time outside of the cabin doing crafts or just visiting together. At night they would all gather around the fire and sing songs. Caitlyn loved that!
Singing by the Lake was great. I loved this last year (it was singing in the trees because we weren't by the lake) and I loved it again this year. I love hearing the girls from each ward sing powerful songs. One ward sang "Glorious" I love that song!
I also love the scripture tent. It is cool to read the Book of Mormon out loud surrounded by nature. Nadia and I had fun messing around for some pictures.
Nadia needed to escape and talk to me every day because she said no one in the stake understood her jokes!!
One night me, Holly, Rachel and Lauren went to the scripture tent to read. It was getting late so we were all a little tired. There was a girl from another ward there reading so she read first. We were reading in Alma about Ammoron. This cute girl pronounced it "a moron." We all couldn't stop laughing when she read about Ammoron sending Moroni an epistle and she said, "I am a moron." After the girl left I started reading and I read Alma 55:32 where it says, "And they were thus cautious that no poison should be administered among them; for if their wine would poison a Lamanite it would also poison a Nephite; and thus they did try all their liquors." I said the last part really funny and we could not stop laughing. The rest of the time at camp I kept saying "and they did try all the liquors" to make people laugh. They YCL's gave me the "try all the liquors" award. Ha!
Oh man, I love these girls. They are all so funny. It was great to get to know Kim better. She wasn't in our ward last year. She is amazing.
Caitlyn loved making fires. She made this one all on her own. She was always helping out. She would always volunteer when someone asked for help.
Lisa had a hard time figuring out cabin assignments. At the last minute twin almost 12-year-old girls moved into our ward and that made it even trickier. Caitlyn said she would be okay if she wasn't in the same cabin with me, so we ended up in different cabins. Caitlyn had an air mattress and I had a cot. Apparently Caitlyn's air mattress was out of air in the middle of the night so she went ahead and turned on her pump and pumped it up. The girls in her cabin were telling me about it and I felt so bad. They were all really nice about it and are still laughing about it. I wasn't very smart and didn't bring a pad for my cot. I did not sleep well the first night. Lisa being the amazing person that she is had an extra pad and let me use it. I slept so much better after that. I never got a lot of sleep though. I told Chloee I would stay up late to make sure she was not the last one to sleep at night, I think that helped her. Lisa had all of the girls fill out a paper and name two girls and one leader that they wanted to share a cabin with. She told me later that almost every single girl requested me, that sure made me feel good.
Caitlyn also loved chopping wood and carving soap. She would go down by herself and chop would and start fires because the other girls didn't want to do it. I didn't take my camera up when we planted trees. It went a lot better than last year. We knew what we were doing and we didn't have to hike a mile to get there.
It was really windy this year. Huge gusts of wind would come and blow our tarps over. The last night it broke the legs on the tarp so we took turns holding up the legs. Grace volunteered to be tied to the tarp to make sure it didn't blow over. She is such a tough girl.
I brought her some dinner so she could eat! After that dinner we took the tarp down.
Friday was hike day. Lisa said we should stay back and work on the camp awards and I was all for that! I woke up Friday morning with a migraine. I had headaches through out the week, but they would usually go away with some medicine. This headache did not go away and got progressively worse through out the day. By lunch time it hurt to have my eyes open. I finally decided to go lay down. I was able to fall asleep and I slept for a couple of hours. I was disappointed that I missed the Bishop and Ceciley's FEAST time. When I woke up I felt awful. I had to get out of the cabin and get some fresh air and I felt like I was going to throw up. I knew if I went to the biffy I would throw up and I really didn't want to. I was in so much pain that I was trying not to cry. Tasha Peterson saw me and asked how I was doing and she could tell I was not doing well. She grabbed her husband (he was there with the stake presidency and our bishopric was there). Bishop Beesley and Jared gave me a blessing. I'm glad she initiated it because I probably wouldn't have. When the bishop put his hands on my head he asked if I had a fever, I'm sure I did because I was burning up and was cold, which was very strange. Bishop gave me a nice blessing and blessed that the illness would pass quickly and I would feel better. After that I went and took some more migraine medicine and within 30 minutes my headache was gone and I was feeling so much better. It was such a relief. Caitlyn was worried about me so she came to check on me after the blessing. She got a bandanna wet for me and put it on my head while I laid back in my car for a while. She was so sweet, I know she didn't want to miss out on the day, but she said we could go home if we needed to. We were planning on driving home after testimony meeting that night, I was worried about being able to drive, so I was very grateful when I felt better. It was a great reminder for me that Heavenly Father is always there and cares about us.
The girls loved having the bishopric there. They let the girls put stuff in their hair and bishop let Emma paint his nails. Our bishopric is so fun, the youth love them.
The girls were so excited that the bishopric would be there for waterfront. Last year they told me that they purposely planned it so our bishopric wouldn't be there, I guess it got a little crazy the year before.
The bishopric got in a canoe and immediately started chasing down everyone. They would get close to someone and bishop would pull out a bucket and throw it on the girls. They also had fun getting Kristy, Tasha and Erica.
I still wasn't feeling a hundred percent and I didn't want my headache to come back so I just watched and took pictures. It was hilarious to watch. One of the stake YCL's said, "I've heard about your ward, I"m so excited that I get to see it this year."
This was near the end. The rule is no tipping canoes and no getting in the lake, whoops! The poor stake leader had this little, quiet whistle that no one could hear. She tried to keep some order, but she also helped the girls try and soak the bishop. It was hilarious to watch everyone fall in the water. At one point the bishop jumped into a canoe to get away, but it was full of water so only the top half was sticking out of the water. At this point they told they all had to get out. The girls had a blast.
The girls waited for bishop to get out of the water and they chased him down to soak him again.
After waterfront we did the confidence course. It was pretty chilly and windy by this point and most of the girls were soaked so they didn't do it for very long. I was feeling worn out again so I went back up and sat down and Angie took some pictures for me.
Caitlyn had a great time at camp. I love that she isn't afraid to try new things and she just gets right in there and makes sure she has a good time. That night we had our closing celebration and then our testimony meeting. The testimony meeting was a little anticlimactic for me. Last year the bishop gave a great talk to the girls and said a lot of things because he thought it would be his last year as the bishop. We also thought we would have a new Young Women's president by this year, so it wasn't quite as powerful as last year, it was still great though. After testimony meeting Caitlyn, Nadia and I headed home. We left early Saturday morning for Arizona. Caitlyn and I packed for AZ before we left and I was able to get Hallee packed, but Keith packed up the rest and had the van loaded up and ready to go. We didn't get home until 1 AM. Caitlyn got in the shower and I started cleaning up and getting the laundry going. By the time I showered and cleaned up it was almost 4 AM. Keith's alarm went off at 4:30 AM so I never made it to sleep. It was nice to have some time to talk to Keith before we woke the other kids up. I slept some in the car, but not as much as I thought I would. We stayed up late that night too, it took me a few days to catch up after that. I'm really glad I went to camp and had such a great experience this year!
