Lift with Love

 Are you ready for Girls Camp?? (Do you know that I hesitate every time I write Girls Camp. It is Girl's Camp? Or Girls' Camp? Or just Girls Camp? Does it have an apostrophe? I don't know. So we'll go with the simplest form.)

As you may have guessed, Girls Camp was canceled this year. Too much worry about infection and spread of COVID. June was sad because she was our ward's Stake Youth Camp Leader. She had spent hours preparing and getting things ready. Daisy was sad because it was going to be her first year going to camp. I was sad because I was hoping to go and help out in some way to be with four of my girls at camp.

So it seemed a no brainer for us to have camp anyway. Why not do our own Cazier Camp? After all, we are mostly girls. Tyler would be invited as our priesthood and I would enlist the help of the older girls to plan many of the activities. This seemed like a fantastic idea. We just needed a location.

Well, it just so happened that Tyler had just purchased a house (yes, the rental house we have mentioned many times before) and it seemed like painting said house would be a great service project for camp. It all bloomed from there and everyone was put to work getting things together. We were going to rock this camp.

We had less than two weeks to plan camp. (If any of you have ever planned a camp, you will know this is a very short time to get everything together.) The girls were out of school so they threw themselves into it and even though we were up late the evening before doing food prep, we got it all done.

The only thing that didn't fall into place was the shirts. We bought the shirts but the emulsion we bought was a dud. There was nothing we could do. Even though we had this cute design ready, it didn't end up on the shirts. However, later (in August) our ward ended up doing hoodies for the girls and secret sisters. They ended up choosing Robyn's design, so it went to good use after all.

But enough blathering, let's get to camp!

We woke up Thursday morning and started our schedule. Like any good camp, we had a basic schedule to follow and we kept to it pretty close.

I was first up for devotional. (Dad missed it because he was picking up archery stuff, but that was important.) I think it went well. I read the poem Holes, the dream Kristen had (on my blog) and the end of The Martian. Basically all talking about how we have the choice to lift others. Then I gave them the umbrella necklaces. They all wore them all day. :) The umbrella is a symbol of something you choose to lift. When the rains of life some down, you can sit in the rain and get soaked or you can do something and lift an umbrella to shelter yourself. But more importantly, you can choose to shelter others as well. It is all your choice. (See if you can see see the necklaces in any of the pictures.)

Breakfast was yogurt parfaits and then we did some final rush packing. We left only slightly behind schedule. Here is our crew ready to go to camp! (Yes, even Pearl got to go. She is a little young, but essential in the family.)

The drive was easy and when we arrived, people got to work setting up the tents and hammocks and I got all the food put away. I felt a little spoiled. I really like having a fridge on the premises.

Tyler got out a tow strap and after some fancy rigging, he got it to support several hammocks. I was seriously impressed.

Lunch was grilled cheese. Yep, easy to bring an electric griddle.

Then we got ready for the service project. Quick, grab your weapon of choice.

Around the same time, we realized we were missing some things. One was Tyler’s secret sister gifts. He left them at home. We had a discussion this morning about how to deliver gifts. I told him you could leave the gift somewhere, have someone deliver it, or deliver it yourself and pretend someone asked you to deliver it. He said that was very meta and what June would probably do. So of course I asked June to deliver his first gift. Haha! :)

There was much back and forth of gifts. Ivory was telling me this system that had my brain reeling but it seems to work. I took her gift for Pearl and asked Dad to give it to Pearl for me. Sneaky. And I’m still a little confused.

But that wasn’t until later. First, I drove back home to get Dad’s gifts while everyone stayed and did the service project. Here you can see me leave and then the kids get down to business. They had many jobs. The goal was to paint, but Tyler quickly realized that base boards needed to be pried off and holes needed to be patched. So there was some of everything. There was also a LOT of singing. You may notice Tyler wearing ear protection in one of the pictures. I think that was for the singing. :)

Don't worry, everyone got a break here and there.

When I got back, half a room was painted grey and kids were working hard. I asked what I could do and Tyler sent me to Home Depot to buy light fixtures and miscellaneous items. Daisy was my good helper. She was great at finding exactly what we needed.

Then it was time for dinner, but no one was hungry so we sent Robyn over to prepare the Faith Walk. We studied and June sat with Pearl and explained scripture stories to her. It was really cute.

Finally Tyler called and said they were ready. The park they went to was not very far away. Maybe a two minute drive. We pulled into the parking lot and watched squirrels for a few minutes. There were tons of squirrels. It was so fun. I never see squirrels in our neighborhood.

Then Robyn blindfolded us and led us to a spot where we all sat and waited and she took us one by one through the course. I thought she would leave me until last, but I was third, after Daisy and Ivory. 

I went across a parking lot and was put on the rope. Robyn gave me whispered instructions to help make my journey easier. It was nice, but there was this lady talking really loudly nearby. I was wondering why she couldn’t see what we were doing. Her car was running and she talked the whole time. But it was okay. I still made it to the end, where my blindfold was taken off and there was a picture of the Savior waiting for me. Dad was also there to welcome me with the other girls who completed the course. Then, he left and went over and apparently HE was the person the lady was talking to. I honestly was a little annoyed. I thought he was chatting real estate and thought that it always comes before family. I was so wrong.

Turns out this lady was a passive aggressive anti Mormon. She thought Robyn was doing some cult ritual and she was saying she was going to record it all and put it on youtube. So Tyler went to distract her and talk to her. They talked the whole time and then we all went to meet her at the end. She seemed nice and genuine at the beginning, but then she started to throw doubt on stuff we were doing. She told the kids that Jesus was Middle Eastern, so none of our pictures of him were right. She said her husband used to be LDS, like she saved him somehow, and told us how she sees God. She believes crosses are good and I tried to tell her that we also believe the atonement was essential, but we just don’t use crosses in our worship. It wasn’t too confrontational, but I found out later from Tyler that she was very against our beliefs and was trying to show him how he is brainwashing his kids. I’m glad Tyler distracted her. I thought the faith walk went really well and I have him to thank for it. We have exactly one picture of Robyn setting up. Other than that, I think Tyler was going to take pictures, but he had his hands full. Still good for the kids to know that everyone gets an opinion.

Back at home, we worked on making dinner. It was supposed to be lasagna in the dutch oven. I cooked all the stuff and we layered it in the dutch oven. We didn’t have any coals going yet and I realized it was going to take forever to get the coals to the right temperature and then cook the lasagna for 40 minutes, so we cheated and used the oven.

We forgot the stick to hold the lid, but that was minor. We also forgot hot pads, which was remedied by using leather gloves, but the gloves that Tyler grabbed had a hole in the thumb and he burned himself. Ouch!

The lasagna was pretty good. The younger kids didn’t love it, but that is fine. We forgot the Parmesan at home. Oops. But I thought it tasted really good. I think we did devotional and skit while dinner was cooking. June and I did our awesome skit about trying to pick up the magnet suitcase. It was pretty funny. Then Pearl gave a devotional about Lifting with Love. She asked everyone beforehand what they thought that phrase means and then she had us guess whose definition was whose. It was fun. This wasn't part of our skit, but here I am wearing one of the balls that Nova popped. (Stinker.)

Then after dinner we roasted s’mores and starbursts. Ivory made me a nice marshmallow, but I remember I don’t love them very much. Don’t even like melted starbursts much either. Give me a pastry anyday. But it seems to be an essential part of camping and fires.

Then it was time for bed. June, Robyn, and Ivory slept in hammocks. Daisy, Pearl, and Dad were in the tent. And I slept in the cot in the house. I’m not a ground kind of girl.

It was a good first day to camp.

In case you are wondering, Nova had a good first day at camp as well. She spent a lot of time running back and forth along the fence chasing Sonny, the neighbor dog. He seemed like a really nice dog. He was trying to play with her and Nova just wanted to eat him. She may never learn.