Girls Camp

So about 6 months ago, Candice and I were called to be the camp leaders for the ward this year. I thought ..."ok. I can do this. It will be fun to work with Candice and Judy always seemed to pull it off without a hitch." I've gone to girls camp with our YW and as a stake leader lots of times. Easy Peasy. Not so much.
We were preparing along the way...having certification clinics, talking about the food, and activities we wanted to do. Then these last 2 months happened, and I was totally preoccupied with getting K.C. ready to leave. Right after he left, we went to Newport for10 days. We got home Saturday night and had to pull girls camp together by the next wednesday night. Before we went to Newport, I was really freaking out, so I made a bunch of calls and delegated a LOT! All the YW leaders were so great and willing to help. Candice was also a great help. She helped me plan all the food, make shopping lists, and went on her lunch hour to buy groceries with me. I know this was such a big sacrifice for her. Not only was she stepping way out of her comfort zone by accepting this call, but she had to choose between spending a few days at newport or going to girls camp because she couldn't have any more time off work. She chose to honor her commitment and go to girls camp. She was amazing up there...I couldn't have done it without her.

We all met at my house about 7, had some bagels and juice loaded up the coolers and last minute things and were on our way. It was overcast when we left, and the closer we got to the canyon, the stormier it got. By the time we got up by Kamas it was coming down pretty good. Lots of thunder and lightning! We finally reached the cabin about 9:30. It was raining so hard you didn't want to get out of your car. So we made a mad dash for it to their cabin. I was so grateful that we had a nice dry place to go to. Their cabin was really cute. Very comfortable and homey.

Mark had volunteered to pull the trailer up there for us. What a peach he is. That man is going straight to heaven. He brought Taylor with him and they helped us get all the coolers up the stairs to the cabin. After a while the rain stopped and we went out and put up tents. The girls did a pretty good job of putting them up theirselves. I was impressed that they knew how to do it on their own. After everyone was settled, we introduced the theme and talked to them about "Beeing your own kind of Beautiful" It was kind of rainy off and on all day so we did some things inside the cabin. Emily had brought all of this yarn and knew how to put it in the girls hair like extensions. They loved it and spent a lot of time doing that and making cute bracelets for each other with the yarn.

Leslie had a cute little teddy bear with a bee on it's nose for each of the girls. Also a cute blanket that Judy had embroidered their names on.

Emily and Nate brought over this cutestest puppy. Their uncle had found a batch of 8 of these puppies that had been deserted in the woods. He was really adorable. All the girls fell in love with him and carried him around like a baby. Faith wanted to take him home so bad, but dad said "no more pets!"

Leslie was given the crown and septer by her secret sister. You really shouldn't encourage her. She had all the girls bowing to her every time they entered the room.

Can I just say that I love Candice.

Shawna and her mom came up to represent the stake. As soon as Shawna saw the puppy, she wanted to have it. She said she had been looking for this kind of dog for a long time but they were so expensive to buy. When she found out they were selling the puppies for 100.00, and she could go over to Emily's Uncle's place and get one she was so excited.

Jody and Kathy couldn't come up so Shawna and I did the presentation on the new Value "Virtue" for our ward. It went pretty well except that I can't talk without bawling. I gotta work on that. After we all waved gold ribbons and sang the song "High on a mountain top" and asked the girls if they would make a commitment to try to live a virtuous life. If they would, they signed this big gold banner that we are going to hang in the YW room. It was a pretty cool thing to see.

Kelley seriously saved girls camp. We were planning on having dutch oven dinner that night. It had been drizzeling most of the afternoon so I didn't know how we would get the coals going. Kelley comes to the rescue and rigs up a cover under a big tree and gets the coals going there. We had a fabulous dinner of dutch oven potatos and barbecue chicken and pork, green salad and rolls.



This old guy really does rule.

Abbi and Marcie trying to certify on making different kinds of fires. Kelley and Larry taught them how to do it.


When Candice and I went out to get in our tent, we found our sleeping bags had gotten wet from the rain. We blew up our air matresses and tried to get comfy but that was one long cold night.

We woke up to clear blue skies friday! How grateful we all were!






After breakfast, Bishop Burns and Diane took the girls on a hike. Kelley, Carol and were a little bit behind and didn't see where they had made a turn off. So we walked around and met them at the end of their hike.

Bishop Burns had it mapped out down to the last centimeter! I love him! Him and Diane drove clear up there late Thursday night after his flight came in so they could do this hike with the girls.

After, he talked with them about how easy it is to get lost if you loose sight of your goal. He used the mountains to represent the Savior . He said if if you keep focused on trying to be like him, you won't ever go too far off the path. He said it way better, but it was really good analogy.

The girls wanted to stick their feet in the river on the way back from the hike but it was COLD!

Probably the funnest thing we did at camp was go fishing. Larry and Nate piled all of us in the back of their trucks and took us to this most perfect fishing spot. It was big and grassy and the fish were jumping all over the place.

What made it so fun was that the girls were really catching fish!

Then Nate was going to teach them how to gut the fish. His girls were the only ones that wanted to participate in that.

We made these little bees out of paper and had the girls write on them when they saw someone doing a good deed and hand it in this tree. They really got into it and before long the tree was
full of good deed bees!

Candice and I had decided to move to Lori and Carol's tent cause ours wasn't very warm. We were in the cabin fixing lunch and when we came outside, Lori had taken down the tent, packed it all away. gathered up all of our stuff and moved us into their tent. She even laid out our sleeping bags and got us all situated. She is seriously an angel.

Candice was such a good sport. Handling raw meat is not her favorite thing, but she did it without complaining and made the tin foil dinners a great success!

Friday night after dinner, the leaders got into our costumes and went out in the trees for our little presentation. Susan brought all of the girls around to each one of us and we each told our story and talked about the virtue we were representing. It was pretty powerful. Emily was Eve, Carol was the mother of a strippling warrior, Candice was Queen Ester, I was Mary, Lori was Emma and Leslie was herself...a Young Women's President. We ended up by the campfire and had our testimony meeting after that. The spirit was really strong. I hope the girls could feel it too.

I'm so glad camp is over! I don't mean to sound whiney, but that was seriously one of the hardest most stressful things I have ever done. It was real rewarding though to get hugs from all the girls and know that they had a good experience there.