I had quite the summer this year! I was out of town for most of it and the days that I was in town, we seemed to fill with either work or house projects! I started the summer off by going to our church's ever so anticipated Young Women's Camp! I was called to be the assistant camp director and was a little hesitant at first. I loved YW camp when I was growing up and have a lot of great memories (and many photos!) from it. I also love the mountains and camping is one of my favorite pastimes, so those were not a problem. But.....teenage girls? Performing a skit? Sharing a tent with strangers? A bad theme for the camp? How was I to get through it? Well, it turned out so much better than expected and I had such a great time! I learned to love these girls and leaders so much and they made me laugh and laugh and laugh some more! We didn't have any problems with cliques or cattiness, I got to sleep soundly in the back of a Durango - all by myself, we twisted the theme quite a bit to make it a lot less "jockish" (If that is even a word?) and the leaders were not required to participate in skit night! Ahhhhh!
We started the camp off with a hike right when we drove in. It was a 3 mile hike and it was really beautiful. I loved the smell of the pine trees and breathing in the fresh crisp air. Our camp site was at 9,700 feet!
The girls sang songs and cheers at they went down the trail. It was really cool to hear their distant voices echo through the woods.
We went back and set up our tents and decorated the campsite.
The girls were given backpacks, fabric lunch sacks and large stars to decorate and put their name on. They used the lunch sacks for their secret sister bags.
The theme for camp this year was: All S.T.A.Rs Which meant "ALways Stand for Truth And Righteousness. Our ward's color was green. The stake leaders wanted each ward to pick a professional athletic team that had the same colors as we did. We chose the Green Bay Packers. Ugh. Since I thought it was ridiculous to have our GIRL'S camp decked out in a football theme, we chose to take just the word "Packer" and center our theme around the verse, "Pack Light, Choose the Right" and based it off of a talk given by John Bytheway in which he said, "We can't change the trail we have in life, but we can make the hike easier if we change what's in our pack."
We really did have the best decorated campsite! I was in charge of crafts for the girl's and had them make these and these. They were both a success!
The girl's wrote and performed their own skit while us leaders just got to sit back and laugh!
We also did a service project for all the missionaries in the stake. We made them scarves, wrote them letters, made them cards to hand out to people on their mission who have helped them along the way, and we made them pillowcases. If/When I have a son in the mission field, I would want to know that people all over are thinking of him and doing nice things for him!
4 days later we packed it all up (no pun intended!) and were ready to come back home to our families. We had almost just as many leaders as we did girl's! Note to self: Take a group picture on the first day of camp and not the last! I was a little sad it was over and to see it all taken down and come to an end. I am actually looking forward to next year!
