girl's camp

I think I wrote this before, but this blog is taking over as my journal/scrapbook/family newsletter, so yes, there are a lot of pictures this week because I want to remember it all. As I wrote last week, I was only home for one short night from Bear Lake before leaving to girl's camp. This year was a stake camp and we went to the Heber Valley Girl's Camp. We loaded up Monday morning and off we went...

The last time I went to girl's camp, which was 20+ years ago, we were sleeping in tents and it was pretty rough. Boy how the times have changed!! We got to stay in these really sweet cabins; we had a pavilion with a pantry and a fridge/freezer; and we had bathrooms and showers. We were in Camp Sariah, if that means anything to anyone (several people asked me before we left which camp we were in). Our ward had a pirate theme going, and that was a blast because there is so much to do with it. Morgan ("Hey, that's our babysitter!" Jake said) drew our door poster and our camp flag. She is a great artist (she drew a black-footed penguin for a report Ben did in kindergarten), and she looks just like the main girl in Mama Mia that is in movie theaters right now. We got our eyepatches, sashes, and picked out our pirate names the first day--I was Captain Shipshape:)

Tuesday morning we woke up to chocolate dipped strawberries which Shandra brought up for us-YUM! Ya, we didn't have those back in the day either!! I got to go on the third year hike with Lexi, Mikaela, Mackenzie, and Hailey (not pictured). We got lost right off the bat when our leader took a wrong turn, but we eventually made it to Timberlake Lookout. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful view at the top of the mountain.


I let Mikaela use my camera for most of the hike, and I'm pretty sure she took close to 100 pictures--aren't digital cameras the best?! These are some of the pictures she took along the way. She was so excited to use my camera she said, "I feel like Dora the Explorer!" Then she gave each of us names--Mackenzie was Boots, Lexi was Backpack, and I was Map.

Our view of the mountain areas from the top of the mountain. The lake on the right is the lake we went to on Thursday, which you'll see below. When we finally made it back to camp there were foot baths and also hand and feet waxing going on, as well as making bead bracelets. I have quite the collection of bracelets from camp this year.

In the second Pirates of the Caribbean, Capt. Jack Sparrow had his eyelids painted to look like eyes, so Mikaela thought she would try the same thing--it caught on like wildfire and soon there were 10 or 12 girls getting their eyelids painted. It's kind of freaky looking if you ask me! That afternoon was the pirate photo shoot, and here we are with Jack and all the other camp leaders.

The whole group of scallywags!! There were a few little tiffs during the week, but all in all we had a great group of girls and had the best time--even if there was a fun cabin and a boring cabin, at least in the beginning!

I couldn' resist a picture of all the girls who got eyes painted on their eyelids--crazy, eh?!

At night there were all kinds of things to do: We had the "snap jar," which is from the movie Legally Blonde 2, and so every day you could write something nice about someone in camp and put it in the snap jar to be read that night and then you would snap for them--the girls got more creative with them every day. Also, there were plenty of card games going on, and one night we were jamming to ABBA in the cabin and eventually took it out by the fire. Good times!! There were plenty of late nights this week!

Our big activity on Wednesday was the Challenge Course. There were 6 stations, but I don't really know what the other stations were doing because Lynette and I got to work at the zip-line with Elder Felter, who is one funny old guy! Each girl had to get harnessed in to climb up the pole, walk across the log, and then get hooked on to the zip-line, and finally jump off onto the line. Sounds easy enough, and I thought it was really fun (short, but fun), but there were plenty of girls who were scared to death, but eventually overcame their fears and did it. It was one girl's birthday that day, Rachel, and she was so scared at the top she was crying, but with the help of all the girl's singing Happy Birthday to her, and another girl at the top helping her, she finally made it across and onto the line. We all cheered for her--it was a good day. The second picture is just a very cool picture of Madi R. (not to be confused with Madi E.), one of our newest beehives.

On our hike back to camp I took this picture of Lynette and her two girls, Breanna and Jessica. They were always so cute with each other, at least most of the time:), and I said to Nan, who also has all boys, that it was times like this that made me a bit sad that we didn't have any girls.

After the challenge course I helped the third-year girls get certified. They wanted to boil dirty water to get it clean, and here we are trying the finished product.

Thursday was stake crafts in the morning, and then going to the lake in the afternoon for canoeing and games. Remember the lake in the picture from our hike--this is it. It was beautiful there and the girls had a blast. Technically they weren't supposed to get wet, but what do you do when a water fight breaks out?! Fight back!!

After the lake the leaders got together to come up with awards for each girl, and we had the best time! I haven't laughed that hard in forever!! Here we are: me, Charlie, Lynette, Nan (YW president and one of my running friends), and Megan, our AWESOME camp director, holding the snap treasure chest. Megan did an amazing job with the whole camp, and is so creative and is so much fun. Shhh, don't tell anyone that Megan, Charlie and I left camp one night to "make some phone calls" down in Heber, and happened to get some shakes at Granny's!!
The girls got some arm wrestlings going, and Nan and I ended up pitted against each other. I was able to hold her steady for a while, but Nan is strong and eventually I couldn't hold any longer. We had a great evening with the bishopric there--our bishop did a magic show and then we had testimony meeting, and just like that camp was over the next morning. It was so nice to get to know the girls better and we had so much fun, and believe me, I have plenty of pictures to prove it--I think I took close to 600 pictures!!

In the meantime, Daren was home with the boys all week, and I think for the most part they had a good time. It was so great to be able to go to camp for the whole time, and it was so nice of Daren to take the time off from work. They all took the trailer up to our property in the Uintah's and spent the night up there one night--that was brave! On a sad note, one of Daren's high school friends, Dustin Kitchen, died in a car accident last Sunday night, so when I returned home Friday morning he was gone to the funeral. Everyone: BE SURE TO BUCKLE UP!!