HE Lifts

I woke up in the middle of the night and found the lights on in the hotel room, so I turned them off and checked the clock. It was only 11 pm. (So maybe not the middle of the night.) We did get cold later on and pulled up covers. I’m glad Robyn could share the bed, but it did make it a little smooshed. I didn't sleep the best, but hey...it's camp.

Tyler came in the morning and we slowly slugged out of bed. For the breakfast, you walked down to the window and ordered your food. They had a menu there and sadly no waffles.

We took all our food back to the room to eat. We also did morning devotional. We sang Lift Your Eyes since Dad missed it and June gave a nice devotional about He lifts. She read from a conference talk and I hate to say it was forgettable, but I already forgot it. Oops.

We sat around and played Zoo for a long time in the hotel. With Dad joining in, it was even more fun. We had the peacock, flying squirrel, spider, rhino, shark, elephant, cow, and some others. It is fun to think of new ones, but sometimes we have to modify them if they are too close to another symbol. 

After we played that awhile, it was time to pack up and get back to the house. The weather was supposed to be bad, so we weren’t sure about our plans for archery. It was planned for the afternoon, but we thought it best if we did it sooner than later. The morning was supposed to be windy, but the afternoon was supposed to be rainy. Also, Tyler found black mold in the downstairs bathroom the night before. There wasn't a lot but when we got back to the house, everyone needed to stay out of the bathroom for sure and out of the basement in general. Saturday was our "camp shirt" day. If you recall we didn't have designs on our shirts, but we all matched.

Back at the house, there was a flurry of gift giving, since it was the last day. I got chapstick from Daisy. It is mint and smells just like Mint chocolate chip ice cream to me. I got the pens to Dad, by way of June and Robyn. It seems like everyone has guesses about who has them and others, but I’m not sure anyone knows exactly who has who. Except for me of course. :)

Tyler left to go scout out and set up archery. The day didn’t seem to be bringing rain yet and the gusting seemed to have gone down. We did a little study and waited to hear from Dad. Eventually he called. I think we might have been playing Mafia by then. 

We packed up in the car and headed out to find him. He sent me map coordinates, so we were able to find him easily and he wasn’t too far away...maybe ten minutes.

Dad found a place out of the way. It was by a roadside with a large shoulder. The targets were set up by the brush and there was a large hill behind so that if any arrows went astray, they wouldn’t hit anything important. There was enough of a shoulder that we stood at the edge of the road to shoot. We weren’t in the way of cars but we still watched for them anyway. 

Tyler tried to show us the re-curve bow first. He showed us how to string it, but he was having trouble getting an arrow to stay on it. (There was still a bit of wind and it was against us.) We did a couple shots with that and then we moved on to the compound bow.

The compound bow is a bit harder to pull. There was a smaller one that Daisy and Pearl used. I haven’t used a lot of compound bows. They have a hole for the arrow and then sights to help you shoot. I’m not sure exactly how to use the sights, but I was doing okay with the bow. I got some awesome shots. June, Robyn, and Ivory were all doing great as well. We did lose some arrows. If you missed the target, it went into the brush and the arrows were super hard to find. We found many, but probably lost at least five. 

Some of our shots were bullseyes. Others just barely hit the bags. One even knocked one over, but that wasn't as hard as you may think. We had trouble keeping the bags standing.

Pearl struggled to shoot by herself. It made her frustrated and she went to sit in the car for a while. Daisy was nice to go with her. The rest of us lined up over and over to shoot. Pearl finally decided she really wanted to hit the target so she came back out and tried again. She couldn’t pull back by herself, so Dad tried to help her. But two people trying to let go of a wire doesn’t always go well and in this case, it ended up with it snapping Pearl on her arm. Wow, she did not like that. She started to wail and Tyler scooped her up and took her back to the car. Poor Pearl. Later Pearl had an impressive welt to show for her archery experience. Once the initial pain wore off, she was happy to show her war wound.

I realized that the string was causing a small blister on my finger, but not before it popped. Then I needed to be done. It doesn’t take much. But we got a lot of good shooting in and I’m really happy Tyler was able to borrow the archery stuff. Very cool.

We headed back and I made tacos for lunch. We played more Mafia including Dad. Games are always so fun with Dad. I wish he could play with us more often. It has been so nice to have him around and on our schedule.

After lunch, we started the craft. June prepared String art projects for us. There were lots of fun designs that had to do with the theme of LIFT. I choose balloons. This project was fun because everyone did their own thing. We all painted the wood before and then started working on the nails. We didn’t have quite enough hammers but it seemed to work out with not too much issues.

Only three of us finished eventually. (Actually, there may be a fourth somewhere, but I don't know where it is.) Look how different they all are.

There was one other problem going on. Tyler started to work on the house a bit, since he didn’t want to craft. He started some project with the dishwasher and the water, but found out quickly that the dishwasher had a leak. He went to turn off the water, but both the main water valves didn’t work to shut it off. He had to turn off the water by the street. That is a lot of broken and he couldn’t turn the water back on. We suddenly were in a house where the water wasn’t going to work anymore.

With that and the bad weather report, we decided to go home and finish girls camp in our own house. Not the ending everyone wanted, but necessary under the circumstances. 

We packed up as much stuff as we could. It took a little while. Some girls are more helpful than others. We packed up all the food that we needed for the evening. We packed all our bags and bins, stored them in the cars. The tent was taken down. Tyler got the hammocks the night before. Pretty soon we were all set. Then, it started to rain. Just sprinkling, but we finished up just in time. I sent the girls to the mailbox because we stashed the letters from the young women leaders in there. It was the last thing they got as they got into the car. I think they liked them.

Then we drove home and man….it poured! It was crazy raining. All day it had saved up the rain and now was the time. Luckily Dad had a tarp over the truck and we were nice and dry. I’m glad we did archery earlier. Nova sure likes driving in the car.

The drive was pretty quick and then we unloaded stuff as quickly as possible. We got the ovens going and in went our tinfoil dinners. Also, I dumped all the cobbler stuff in a glass casserole dish. (Sure, it wasn’t the dutch oven, but that thing is heavy and hard to clean.) We played some more Mafia while it cooked. It took a little longer for the dinners to cook than we thought, since they had the extra layers, but they were so tasty. I was really happy how they turned out. We played more Mafia and had some great narrator stories. Tyler was thrown out an airlock earlier. June was gunned down but saved by an amazing doctor. We went to Paris, but I selfishly saved myself while Robyn threw Tyler off the Eiffel Tower. Good times.

After dinner we had our spa night. We did nails and got a lot of use out of the Snailax, the strange massager that Tyler bought. We took turns and did nails and massaging, like I just said basically. Nothing too exciting. 

We wrapped up the evening with our campfire going on the television and our devotional, skit and  testimony meeting and Secret sister reveal. It was fun to have people tell who they had. Almost everyone was fooled. And I was definitely the only one who knew everyone. Not that it matters. I was so impressed with stuff everyone got for each other. Everyone put a lot of thought into their gifts. (Robyn got Daisy safety pins. Daisy pins everything since she is so skinny, but I would never have thought of that for a gift. Perfect.)

Robyn’s devotional was really good. She had all these great quotes and we had to guess who said them. It was good that we did it together because I would have missed plenty. My favorite quote was about taking others burdens to make your own lighter. I think everyone thinks about themselves too much. We also had our final skit by Daisy, Pearl, and Ivory. They did a cute one with an old lady and Ivory being a dog. It was a little strange but that is perfect for skits. (I left myself a note in my journal that this was out of order. Apparently skit and devotional was BEFORE dinner. I'm going to use poetic license and leave it the way it is, but know that all these things did happen, just maybe not in the order described.)

The testimony meeting was good but sparse. Daisy and Pearl basically fell asleep. Well, Pearl for sure. Daisy maybe pretended so she didn’t have to bear testimony. I liked what everyone had to say, especially Robyn’s testimony. Then we slugged off to bed and it was nice to sleep in our own space.

p.s. When we got home, we found all the mail. I got my Mother’s Day necklace finally. Pearl got her new glasses. I found earrings from my mom that I thought I ordered myself by accident for a while. Took me a while to figure out she sent them :) 

The following morning was the last official day of camp, even though we were already home. We let the girls sleep in a little. Then we got up and did our last roll call and devotional for camp. Ivory did a nice devotional where she brought up everyone’s previous devotional. She reminded us about all the things we had talked about and how they tied together. She said she was inspired by Pearl and Daisy’s devotionals. That is sweet. 

Then we had our breakfast muffins finally. We carted those things all over. :) And we played some more Mafia over breakfast. When I was narrator, I told a story about being at the symphony. When I was talking about the angel I got confused. I said the angel came running down the aisle in a light pink ballgown. Then I remembered that Tyler was the angel. Hahaha. Lots of great imagery there. That was a great joke. We talked a lot about his lovely dress. Then camp was officially over and we had to jump back into real life.

It was so amazing to have this camp experience with our family. Not everything went as planned, but that is pretty much every camp, as far as I know. We still had good spiritual experiences and spent time together as a family. What more could you ask for? Part of me hopes that camp is canceled again next year...but not really.