Well, I'm back from camp, and we had such a great time, I'm seriously looking forward to doing it again. I must say, I'm a little surprised I'm so ready to say that already, but it was really great!
Things went pretty smoothly, except we had so many things on the schedule that we kept cutting out our crafts since we can do those at activity nights later on. Anyway, one leader suggested that keeping the girls so busy maybe was what helped keep the drama down, because all the girls were so great with each other. I couldn't be prouder of them! I think they are just really great girls and I have yet to see much drama from any of them.
You may not want the play-by-play, but I kind of want to give it, so here goes...we met Monday at 2 to leave for camp, but didn't get out of there till about an hour later than I wanted to leave, so we were already behind schedule before we even started! That was kind of a problem most of the week--I think I grossly underestimated how long it takes 13 teenagers to do anything! :o) The forecast was predicting thundershowers for most of the week, and we drove through plenty on the way down, but it all ended up fading for the most part. Someone was saying there literally were crazy storms all around us for Monday night and Tuesday, and we only got a little rain in that first night, so it was a great miracle. There had been rain before we got there, so it was a little tricky setting up camp--there were some pretty muddy spots and the fire pit was pretty wet, so we had a hard time getting a fire going. Again, it took longer than I thought to get things set up, and I should have had the youth leaders and a few of the adult leaders head down early to get a head start (you were right, Liz). :o) Oh, well, we had a great time, even though we didn't eat till 9 or so. We had the girls bring their own foil dinners, so it was interesting to see the variety, and I think they all had fun.
While the men were getting the dinners going, we took a little hike up to a scenic spot and had a devotional about how Moses and the children of Israel got to look into the promised land, then we went back to camp and got ready for bed. Then early Tuesday (6 am) we woke the girls up and gave them some manna (graham crackers) and went on a wandering hike to then get to the "promised land" with another devotional about Joshua, to give the context for our theme (Joshua 1:9). They then got the rest of their breakfast and we ate in a pretty little spot on a beach. Anyway, that was fun, and it worked out really well. Good idea, Susanne! Then we met with a park ranger, who had a program prepared for us with an intro to the park, some safety procedures, some nature info, etc. It was great, it passed off several certification items, and we really enjoyed watching the girls identifying plants and animals all through the week. We were especially glad she had warned us to stay away from the wild parsnips, which can be like poison ivy, I guess. They look so innocent and are all over, I'm sure we would have some girls getting into them. Whew.
We had lunch and had some certification time with the different years and then had a ball with the zip line that one of the dad's had set up. This dad stayed all week at camp, and was a WEALTH of camping info, so we felt very lucky to have his help. It was very fun to see the girls try the zip line, and I did it, too!
What style!Tuesday after that we had them plan their skits for an hour. One leader had brought prop bags, with a variety of random things from home--costumey things, toy guns, army-ish stuff. They had to use all their props, use the value associated with the color their year had chosen and explain the story of the scripture story they had chosen (before camp they had to choose an army/battle kind of scripture story and they had chosen when Moses was fleeing before Pharoah's army and the parting of the sea, the 2,000 stripling warriors, Zion's Camp, David and Goliath, and Samuel (that is, Samantha) the Lamanite). They got VERY creative, and I was so pleased with the final results. After dinner we went to "perform" at the park's amphitheater and had a ball. The girls were bummed the leaders didn't have a skit planned, so we should have added that into our preparations in our spare time, I guess. :o) We also got to see the bats coming out of the bat houses, which wasn't as dramatic as I had hoped, but we did see some.
Early Wed. AM (6 again), I got my 2nd years up early to go do a two mile hike before breakfast, after which we all did a 3 mile hike together (the 2nd yrs have to do five for some reason). I really had fun with my three girls, and they found a frog and we saw a deer and just had a lot of fun. I taught them a song I had learned to sing while hiking, which they liked I think.
After our hikes and lunch, we went tubing down a part of the river. The girls so loved this, and it was pretty fun! It was kind of not as relaxing as I had hoped, because I was so worried about the girls, and I kept trying to rescue girls that were stuck (the river isn't very deep and is very rocky) and we had some spills, but it was all good.
After the tubing, we loaded up the girls and drove to meet Jared and another man from the ward who had prepared the target shooting activity at a range. That was really awesome, and the girls LOVED this. Thanks, hon! They got to shoot Jared's black powder rifle, a .22, and an M-4, so they had a great time.
Demo-ing how to load the black powder rifle.
If you can't tell, this is my honey shooting a watermelon--he's such a good shot!
This is me (looking stunning) ready to shoot Jared's rifle.
This is me shooting the M-4--very cool!Wed. night everyone was totally exhausted, but we had dinner and a devotional about putting on the whole armor of God, which they liked. We also gave them their dog tags (well, it was actually only one tag--I skimped a little on that one), which were really a hit!
Thurs. AM we again didn't let them sleep long because we had a full schedule again. We had breakfast and then met the ranger at the beach for a service project I had arranged with her. We did a general litter and droppings clean-up, raked the beach to look so nice and smooth and goose-poop free, some were working on digging up some grass that was encroaching the beach area. Anyway, the ranger was very pleased and said most people don't come to the park to work. I think the girls felt good to give back.
Then we took them horseback riding (they're spoiled, right?--we did really well on our fundraiser and this place gave us a great rate). They loved this a lot, of course, and so did I. For some reason, I've been wanting to go for a long time. Got my fix, though, since my behind is still so sore! Again, I was kind of nervous thinking of all the things that could go wrong, but I guess that's the stress when you're in charge. It was funny to see them and they loved hearing the names of the horses--one was Butthead. Mine was Duchess--so appropriate. ;o)
After that we had lunch and then they got to swim in a pool at the place where we rented the horses and the tubing. It was nice to be in a real pool, and the girls played a lot of games that included all of them, and I loved how they were so united. It was awesome!
We cut out the afternoon craft to allow time to finish certification and free time, since we were loving how well they were hanging out. I forgot to tell you about another great thing that they LOVED. I guess it's a tradition here. Instead of email, they get "tree mail" at camp. So, I had prepared small papers and pens by the mail box, so any time they wanted to, they could write notes to each other. Then they read them at the night-time devotionals, so it was really fun. I also had "special" tree mail for them, with letters from their moms. They seemed to really like that, too. They also had secret sisters, so I think those things really helped them get to know each other better and become better friends.
Thurs. night was our dinner with our Bishop and our testimony meeting devotional. I didn't want to pressure them to share testimonies, so I said we'd go around the circle and all share our favorite thing about camp and then share a testimony if they wanted. I was so amazed at what they said were their favorite things. Not the zip line, or the other activities, most of them said their favorite thing was our DEAR time. (drop everything and read--the daily 15 minute required scripture time) They had such beautiful testimonies, and of course there were many tears shed--most by yours truly. Anyone else cry especially easily when you are so tired?
After that we lightened things up and sent them off on their snipe hunt. I'm not even sure what they were doing, but they had fun. Then we did some star gazing and singing, and then they were begging to be able to sleep out of their tents, so we let them, even with the warnings of our nightly camp visitor the raccoon. They loved it, though.
Friday we got them up and they had to pack up their stuff before they got breakfast, so they were pretty motivated to get things going. It still took a long time to get out of there, but we had a fun little "graduation" with a bubble shower to celebrate.
Well, that's about it. Whew. I'm so glad it's done, but seriously in love with all things YW now!! It was the best. We want to head off to a parade now, but I'll add some pictures later...
