Skit night (Wednesday) and the girls were all decked out in gold (our assigned color for the week)
5 girl's camps the last 5 Julys and this was the best so far! Maybe it was the combination of YW who came, maybe the group of leaders who were up there with me, maybe it was the unpredictable rain and the laid back format to compensate, but somehow, in the end, it was an amazing week for all of us.
Started off with these crazy ladies nabbing selfies with my phone just before we got underway.
We drove for about 2.5 hours up into the deep mountains east of Spanish Fork Canyon to a new property the stake was trying out this year. It was lovely up there with a lot of good bathroom facilities and campsites—we liked it except for the long drive up there. Anyway, we set up camp which took up the rest of the morning and then spent some time as a stale learning about the theme and how things would work for the rest of the week. Our theme was "Walk in Royal Footsteps" and the stake ladies had done such a great job decorating camp to make it feel girly and cute tying in princesses and palaces and royal things all over the place. That alone is a big reason girl's camp can be so much fun!
After evening dinner and our evening devotional the first night we had a huge S'mores party followed by a "royal ball" (like a HS stomp but out in the big, dusty open space!) We all brought glow sticks to use during it even though it was hardly dark enough that early in July. Some of us were still in panchos after our first rainfall of camp but it cleared up nicely for the rest of the evening.
The stake had this darling recipe guide and provided all the supplies for the creative s'more flavors.
I opted for the classic kind with a massive marshmallow—yummy!
I love this shot of two of my YW, Alexa and Jasmine, with Kara photo-bombing in the background. Kara was our ward camp director and this shot kind of defines her perfectly! She is so much fun and totally open and outgoing. Plus she is good at being in charge and planned and organized everything for us beautifully. For the record, I am pretty sure she and I were among about 10 people total who were even dancing during our ball! (it's easy for me to channel my inner 16 year old when I am surrounded by 16 year olds! It was soooo fun doing a lot of ugly moves with Kara and it was great exercise too :)
My Laurels were all about embracing the ugly at camp (which I adore about them!) and they made me snap this photo that night. They'd taken the extra fabric from a camp craft earlier in the day and fashioned their own ponchos which they were mighty proud of. After I took this picture they wanted to see how it turned out and when they spotted that blurry passer-by in the back they fell in love with it (and they named the stranger "bigfoot.") It was hilarious to see this show up on all their Instagram feeds the day we got home from camp—gosh I love these girls!
Our leaders' picture at the photo booth that night.
Day 2 of camp we started out with sunshine and lots of blue sky for our first stake rotation which was a team building exercise.
The girls are holding up their huge, long shoelace lifeline that they created to "rescue" 2 of our yw who were way across the way separated by a fake river and had to be reached by something spanning the entire distance. The girls had to figure out what they could create/find/use to breach the distance without ever going into the river. It was really cool to see the girls work this problem out and find a way to get to the others. It wasn't an easy thing to solve and as leaders we were asked to just stay quiet and not get involved at all (which was way harder than I thought!) It's so cool to see how these things bring the girls together and really create a bond of trust and friendship.
More afternoon rain but thank goodness for plastic ponchos
(with my beehive advisor Madison)
Samantha, Kortney, Addie and Kourtney on our 1st year hike
(girls in middle were YCL's and taught some certification to the newest yw along the hiking trail)
Back at camp we did some classic girl stuff like braiding hair and and facials with cucumbers. The girls also brought a little horny toad (?) home from the 3rd year hike and named him Fabio. He was quite a beloved dude :)
Getting all ready for skit night. This group of girls shared a tent and became such good friends during camp. The two on the right in the front had moved into our ward less than 2 weeks before we were heading up and they came with us anyway—made a world of difference in getting to know them and helping them fit in with our young women.
The amazing gold goddess, Anna! It was her last year at camp and she kept saying she might as well go out with a bang. This girl...I just love her spunk and character. She's one of my girls who has been through hell and back in her short teenage life and I just love seeing her being exactly where she's supposed to be, and leading and encouraging the other girls in all the right ways.
Our camp mirror. With 19 young women this thing got a ton of use! It makes me laugh because snapping this picture was the only time I ever even looked at it but those cute girls sure liked checking to see if all was just so :)
On the last morning we had our ward turn at the P.O.W. station (Princesses of War obstacle course). The goal was to maneuver through 5 different obstacles while working as a team but staying completely silent. This group above finished the quickest of any of of the girls but they had the advantage of going last and learning from all the others how to do things best.
My cute leaders were just itching to have a go at it so we took our own turn too:
The spider web
The wall
And the rope swing. This picture is so awesome because I was totally prepared to just swing over to the painted line and make it across no sweat. But, I jumped up instead of out and I just totally slid down that rope and landed on my knees right after those trees! It was really funny. Really, really funny. I made my 1st counselor pee her pants and the girls were all dying over how stupid it looked. It could hardly breathe when I tried to swing again and the tears were streaming down my face but I finally succeeded. I kept telling everyone I just wanted to make sure I didn't do it perfectly since some of the girls had had to try a few times too, but they didn't buy it :)
This last challenge was hilarious too because Madison (out on front) jumped on those ropes just as soon as she felt any tension on them—but she hadn't realized that those of behind her didn't even have a good grip on them yet and she fell flat on the ground! Gosh, we were way more entertaining than any of the girls had been! But we were also crazy fast and had such a great time doing that together.
In the afternoon that day we went to the cool water rocket station and built some pretty cool flyers out of 2 liter bottles which we launched high into the sky with water pressure. Then we had creative time for finger painting and Nicole got way into it:
Some cute pictures I stole from my 2nd counselor (also named Carrie :)
We ended Thursday night with our bishopric who had driven up. We traded between sitting under the canopies when it rained, and then around the campfire when it cleared. Luckily, as it got darker the rain dissipated and we were able to hold our whole testimony meeting out around the campfire. That is such a beautiful part of camp. I love to hear those girls bare their hearts and souls in that setting—for whatever reason it's the most open and tender I ever see them and it fills my heart so fully. I hope so much for them to hold on to those feelings they feel up there and the growth they make in their testimonies and faith because it won't always be that easy and they will be tested and tried for their goodness so many times as they grow up. I'm incredibly proud of them all and how strong they are! I'm just the luckiest to know and love these ladies!
