Girls Camp - Waterfront, Games, Service, and More

Waterfront was so fun this year. We had a lifeguard named Loraine that came to help out. She was awesome. She made it all so cool. She brought this board with little boats on it. You would put your little person in a boat and then she made stickers to put on the boats and when they called your boat, you went out. They had such fun names like "The Black Pearl" or "Nautilus" or the "Santa Maria."

She also had challenges for the girls to complete if they wanted. There were objects hidden around the lake, or paddling across and back could gain them a cute little wooden canoe pendant that Loraine and her husband had made. 

Plenty of girls earned the wooden canoe, but the challenges were not the main focus. As usual, the waterfront was a war zone. These two were probably the  biggest culprits. They were lethal with their super soakers. Get near them, get wet. (Notice the super cute yellow shirts. They said, Just Keep Paddling and those were the other shirts that Katie and Stephanie made for us. So adorable.)

I had a lot of fun the day I was down at the lake. I was already pretty wet by the time my ward arrived. Daisy told me to join her boat with Sabrina and she said we would go hose down other canoes. (Maren and Becca were in our sights.) But imagine my surprise when the biggest attack came from behind me. Daisy couldn't handle having such an easy target right in front of her, so she kept aiming her gun at me. Naturally, I turned my soaker right back at her and in no time neither of us had a dry inch on us. I would say that most of the ward was excessively damp by the time they reached the shore.

Besides water saturation, the other big draw was the salamanders. The missionaries provided nets and buckets for the girls and lots of people caught little critters. Sabrina was intent on catching one, so when our boat wasn't hunting others, we were hunting salamanders. And she caught one. It was so cute. The girls got to hold it and Sister Mcsweeney even gave it a kiss. :)

Other girls caught some little axolotls with their fringe faces. It was a really fun day. Pretty much anyone who came down to the dock got into the action. Check out our awesome brethren.

Singing Groves was on Thursday evening after a particularly drippy afternoon. (The rain was really random. We seemed to get sun when we needed it, but the rain showed up every day at some point.) We didn't want to hike up to the grove area with the wet trails and wet grass area, so we did it in the amphitheater instead. We had the girls enter under a beautiful arch that Ruth and some other 5th ward girls put together. 

It was really neat to all sing the Stake song together. It always sounds amazing to combine beautiful voices. And then in turn, each ward got up and sang a song.

It actually ended up being kind of short. We planned to sing two extra songs at the end, instead of letting people start singing random songs. That still was only 11 songs. But then Alissa said she felt inspired to teach us a new song. It was Shalom Chaverim. It was so simple and beautiful. We sang it in a round and I thought it was the perfect way to close Singing Groves. We took some pictures after with our awesome arch. In the second picture, notice Alissa in the window. :)

Friday was our last day and there was still plenty to do. It was Daisy's birthday!! She was actually a stinker and had come to camp dressed in my converse (which I didn't bring on purpose so they wouldn't get dirty) but after waterfront and the super wet hike, I was out of dry shoes and I was so happy to remember that Daisy had a pair I could use. I went running down yelling 'Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy..." to make sure everyone remembered it was her birthday. But it didn't matter since we sang to her during flag anyway. We sang Opera style and it was epically amazing!

Then we did games and service. The Stake was split in half and everyone took turns playing games or working on the two service projects. You already saw Pal's trail and how awesome that looked, but we also made plarn balls. (Plarn is plastic yarn) We brought a gazillion plastic bags to camp and the girls cut off the ends and tied them together to make large balls of plastic yard that can later be woven into mats. (That is not very detailed, but I wasn't that involved and I'm not sure how it all worked.) The girls were awesome and went to work with a will.

The other half were playing games. There was stuff all over to do. There was nine square, which happened to be right by our ward campsite, so they had been playing a lot already. There were group games like spoons. There were large sets of connect four. There was a spikeball net, but they were playing street rules which was basically tossing the ball back and forth with your shirt. (Very fun, but June would not approve, since the net was hardly involved.) There was Kubb. (I played with Loraine and then some of the girls from 5th and 8th.) And I ended up in 8th ward playing Double Ditto with them. It was all really fun.

Friday evening is the night when all the Bishops come up to hang out with the girls. They often bring dinner. In our case, they brought Kentucky Fried Chicken and a cake for Daisy. (That was sweet that they remembered.) 

Friday was our last theme, which was connecting with others. It was the day most of us wore our camp shirts, so flag ceremony looked very Hunter Green. Also, for role call, all the brethren got up and went to the front for a large epic roll call that ended in a spontaneous dance party. Can you find Tyler in there? He came up to chop wood on Friday, and it was so nice to have him there for Daisy's birthday dinner. :)

The last night was the Brethren's skit. All three of the new presidency were able to be there. President Moore, Carlson, and Hull. They had such a funny skit about a meeting where they discussed the fall out from camp. They had funny lines about neighbors complaining about Sister Mcsweeny hanging up their chickens and about Sister Lamoreaux having spontaneous dance parties in surgery. (See, it will follow her forever.)

And then camp was winding down. Each of the wards had a testimony meeting. I don't go to mine so that the girls can speak more openly without me. Instead I stayed at our camp, where we burned the epic chain. It was so cool and it made the biggest bonfire ever. I think someone got a picture, but I couldn't find it.

We packed up a lot of stuff that evening so the morning would go smoothly and boy did it ever. The busses came early and everyone was out of there before the planned departure time. Yay!! It was an amazing camp. Just one more shot with some of the SYCLs before we get in the car and head toward showers and warm beds.

Once again, there were sheep all over the road on the way out. Is that always a thing on Saturday morning? Or were we just lucky twice?

That's it folks. I would say it was a roaring success. I only heard great things from the girls and leaders. I loved being up at Shalom with them, and I hope we can do it all again next year!