Girl's Camp!

Let me start of by saying that our Internet was down for TEN days! Luckily, I was gone for a lot of those days to Girl's Camp. But it's been a heck of a time getting caught up on work, emails, and checking everyone's blogs! :-) So, time for quite a few updates of my own. I'm going to start from most recent and work my way backwards.

Last week was Girl's Camp. This was a completely new experience for me. I had never, ever been to Girl's Camp. I do believe that every year when I was in Young Women, Girl's Camp fell on the same week that I was at BYU Ballet Camp. Even though I was working in YW last year, I couldn't go to camp because Maren was nursing. I really wanted to go this year so I could bond with the girls in my ward on a different level, outside of church and our normal activities. I wanted them to see that I was fun, interesting, and we could enjoy time together (though I'm not completely sure that that came across. Ha!)

Also of note is that I'm a lousy camper. I don't really enjoy it. I'd much prefer a fancy hotel. Happily, camp had cabins and we ate in the lodge and there were flushing toilets and showers. And I didn't even see one mouse, which I was delighted about since I was informed by the youth leaders in my cabin that it would be my job to "take care" of the mice. Eek! So, I don't know if you can count it because of all of the luxuries, but if you count this as a true "camping" experience, my five days at Girl's Camp would be, by far, the longest I have ever camped. Wow!

All things considered, I had a really great time at camp. The girls were a lot of fun and there was a lot less drama than I had anticipated with 160 girls! There was so much energy, so many silly songs, hooting and hollering, love notes being delivered to one another. I enjoyed meeting other women from the stake. We made a human pyramid, did fun crafts, had a StarWar (Starburst throwing "fight"), made up crazy flag calls, and enjoyed some good cries together. I felt the Spirit strongly quite a few times, including the night when the prophets of old came to visit and share their stories, when the Stake President, President Dalton (one of the most amazing men ever!) came and spoke, when we met with our individual bishops and they spoke to us, and when we were given Destiny lessons by the Stake YW Presidency. I saw deer, a baby raccoon and a baby rabbit. I only got three mosquito bites (truly miraculous) and not quite sunburned.

The only bad thing about camp was that my allergies were terrible! I had pink eye (or allergies or something) the entire time and I couldn't breathe very well (part of the reason why I don't enjoy camping...Mother Nature and I just don't get along so well!). That led to snoring which led to anxiety over keeping everyone in my cabin up, which led to me moving out. But it was fine. I would check on my cabin and make sure everyone was asleep and then go sleep in the lodge where there was heat and toilets just a couple of steps away. And I didn't worry about waking anyone up. I think those are all the highlights (a lot for you to read, if you weren't interested in the first place!). Here are some photos of the wonderful week (for anonymity sake, I will refrain from using names:

Me and an awesome woman from the ward. It was great spending time with her. She is one of the most smiley, laughing, wonderful people I know. Great fun!

The theme was "The Will to Win" and we used the Olympics to go with that. Each cabin was a country. The girl on the left is in my ward, our wonderful Beehive President. She's so awesome. She was in the Japan cabin. All the girls were so cute dressed up like people from their country.

This is some of our girls playing Red Rover. My niece is the third from the left. It was fun getting to spend some good time with her at camp.

Girls hanging from the monkey bridge. That thing was crazy. I tried it for all of about 20 seconds before it bested me and threw me off. It was fun while it lasted.

The YCLs (youth camp leaders) assigned to my cabin. They were so awesome. Every time I went to them with a potential issue, they cleared it up right away. They loved the girls and the girls loved them. Who needs an adult there when you have such amazing YCLs?!?! Just kidding!

I know this picture is not great, but it was such an awesome moment. After President Dalton had ended his talk, he said he felt prompted to do something he had never done before and he didn't know how it would go. He said he was just supposed to say two words. He then yelled, "GROUP HUG!" All the girls completely swarmed around him. I jumped up to do the same but then realized I was the only leader who was about to run up there so I pretended I was just jumping up to take a picture. Ha! It probably lasted a good five minutes because all the girls wanted their chance to hug him one-on-one. Can't blame them. That man is amazing, does amazing things for our Stake, and loves the youth so fiercely that nothing was going to hold them back. If you look closely, you may be able to see his head sticking out. I was standing on a bench...on my tippy toes...holding the camera over my head to get this good of a shot.

Last but not least, a huge THANK YOU to Danica, Chris, Rachel and Shanon for taking care of my kids during the week. And thank you to Michael for taking care of the kids in the evenings and getting them to where they needed to be in the mornings. It was his first week of work in his real office (done with training and working in Hillsboro now) so he definitely had a lot going on. Then Saturday morning he had his national certification, 300 question, 4 hour test. And I wasn't even there. He took on a lot for me to be able to go to camp and I'm so grateful. How could I successfully raise these kids without my "tribe"? I just don't have a clue. Hopefully Michael will forget about all the hard parts of the week by next year and I'll be able to do this Girl's Camp thing again. That is if we don't have to cook with Dutch ovens again. That was terrible!