Camping Queens

I work with the best ladies. And the best young women as well. Camp was amazing, but it was so much sweeter because of the people I work with on a regular basis. I adored the SYCLs (stake youth camp leader) last year, but I was so new I was still trying to figure out where I fit in. This year I was feeling more comfortable, so I was able to focus more on the girls. And they were an amazing group. I got some selfies on the first night. Sadly, I missed Danja and Heather because they were out visiting people.

They got camp started on the right foot. Their skit (written by Danja) was super cute. Each of these girls has a generous heart and is beautiful inside and out.

They all brought unique talents to camp. Aydelyn does cheer and she thought to bring glitter. Everyone used it. She used chapstick to put it on our cheeks. Genius.

Thursday at camp was game day. We started out early with the tug-o-war because the volleyball courts were reserved later in the day. In fact, because of our limited time, we almost didn't get to do Stake leaders vs. SYCLs. Everything was a bit abbreviated. Last year we had a loser's bracket and teams could fight back to win it, but this year it was single elimination. But they also did the year battles where they divided up the girls in each year and let them tug against each other. All my girls won their side. The fourth year side that June was on almost lost, but fought back to win their battle. It was awesome.

Everyone was so positive and supportive. They cheered for everyone and surrounded people pulling and encouraged them to give it their all. It was actually a very inspiring morning. The championship came down to 2nd ward vs. 6th ward and 6th ward took the title for this year.

These two are sillies. They had some game going with their noses. It only proves that some girls never grow up and that is just fine.

The brethren got to pull as well, but I have no idea who won.

Our final pull was SYCLs vs. leaders. We had to give them a leader since we weren't even in numbers. We drew randomly and Stephanie joined the girls. Which is too bad for her, because we leaders won this year. It was still a tough pull. The girls don't give an inch easily.

The rest of the morning, we did Star Wards. Stephanie had all the games organized with Star Wars names. I was in charge of Kubb, but it was named 'The Battle of Endor'. It was super fun to play with all the wards as they came through. Some of the girls really loved Kubb. Zoe and Sister Bockholt each knocked down two blocks with one throw. (You don't see that often.) Second ward liked it so much that they borrowed a set for their free time later in the day. I'm only sad that I didn't get to see the other games in action. Many of them were games I organized last year that didn't happen because of rain. It was nice to know that it would have gone well. Here is a group doing the water relay.

The afternoon was ward time, so as a stake we had some free time. It ended up being one of the hardest, most satisfying experiences of my life. As a group of leaders, we got talking about the Spirit of Camp Award. No one could agree on what we should do. Some of the wards didn't really 'earn' it and we couldn't decide whether to give it to them anyway. Some people said no because they didn't earn it, but others said yes because you don't want people to feel like a loser at camp. But then they would learn nothing... It was an intense conversation that went around and around. I could see both sides. I feel like we used a council like I have never done before. Amazingly, we all came to a unanimous conclusion that we all felt good about. We realized the Spirit of Camp wasn't about the nit-picky things, but about the girls doing good and trying hard. So we wrote sentences about what we felt each ward did to embody the Spirit of Camp. We felt they all have earned it, but not in the original way. But working together was the most impressive part. Seriously, these ladies are amazing.

The Spirit of Camp award means a lot to many wards. Like my ward...three girls didn't certify, but June and Hannah helped them certify later and they even came up moments before the award just to tell us they had gotten everything check off. They didn't want to miss out on the Spirit of Camp. Some girls are very serious about it.

I enjoy that Amy has made us so many shirts. At any given time, you can find several of us wearing a shirt from last year.

Before flag we had dinner. President Wynn came and cooked for us and oh. my. goodness. what a feast. There were homemade breadsticks, salad, two types of pasta (Szechuan chicken and Spinach Shrimp) that were both amazing!! The whole dinner was delicious. I should have taken some pictures, but I just basked in the gloriousness of the experience. After dinner we had a meeting where everyone talked about their camp experience. I loved how united it felt this year. There was so much interaction between wards and girls working and playing together. It was beautiful.

It was our final flag in the evening. All the ward skits were fantastic during the week. Check out this picture from 6th ward. Their leaders were hiding in the fire pit. Awesome.

I should mention that all the devotionals were great this year. All the leaders did a good job and everything was so touching. We sang our final roll call, which I was very proud of: "The sun goes down, the stars come out, and all that counts, is here and now. My universe will never be the same. We're glad you came, we're glad you came." I think I even heard some aaahhhhs at the end.

But, let's go back for a minute to the evening before when we had our stake skit. Melinda always comes up with crazy ideas for us and this year was no different. Michelle sewed us costumes, Amy made us shirts, Melinda taught us groovy dance moves and this was the result.

I know right? Did you even recognize me in my awesome wig?? We had so much fun putting it together. I love me some dance moves, so it was really fun. 

Before we had even taken all the costumes off, the SYCLs were stealing them to use. It is kind of tradition for them to make fun of us. And they did such a cute job the next day. I was actually a little jealous. They looked better than we did, and they only practiced for a few minutes. Crazy girls.

This is my favorite picture from camp...hands down.

Some of the girls had names on them. Aydelyn was Michelle, because they both can do the splits!

Danja was me of course, with her crazy wig. She even wrapped herself in saran wrap. She is such a goose.

I can't say enough about all these amazing girls and women. I love them all so much.

Please notice who is photo bombing this picture.

President Murray and Brother Underwood are stellar. They come for the entire time at camp and work so hard. Michelle got this picture and I think it was a miracle she did because I never saw them relaxing.

Also a shout out to all the missionaries at Heber. They keep everything running smoothly and they run the challenge course. Without them, it would not be the same.

The best part is that no one takes herself/himself too seriously. We all have a wacky side and we let it shine at camp. That is super important. 

Friday morning, we cleaned like crazy so we could all get out as fast as possible. Danja said she found a black widow in Aspen's bunk. That is so creepy, but no one was hurt, so I'll just pretend that didn't happen. Here is Elayne setting out our last breakfast. She was so funny. We had too many extra yogurts. She was trying to entice the girls to take one, "If you take a yogurt, you get blessings. If you take two...you get more blessings."

My girls were ready to go. They just had to stick around to clean the pavilion.

Here is cute 8th ward finishing breakfast. 

All these girls are stupendous! Being a stake camp director has been my favorite calling ever. The opportunity to get to know all these girls is the best thing in my life. They inspire me. They make me laugh. I enjoy watching them grow and learn. And I love being a part of it all. I can't wait until next year.

Hiking and Certifying

On the third day of camp I awoke to find that my entire bed was encased in Saran Wrap. I was on a bottom bunk, so it was wrapped all around. My first thought was how did someone do this without waking me up? And my second thought was that I was loved. The SYCLs did breakfast that morning and I do sleepily recall someone saying, "Emma, how are you going to get down?" (She was above me.) It made sense later since the ladder was wrapped up as well. It was pretty funny. Sister Stone was not happy about it. They have worked very hard to quell all pranks at camp. (I guess it used to be pretty bad.) But I thought it was hilarious. And I planned to get Danja back. (Yes...of course I knew it was her.)

I went up to 5th ward campsite to get sunscreen and ran into some leaders who said June had thrown up in the evening on her sleeping bag. They had moved her to a cot since it was three in the morning and they didn't want to wake up the whole cabin. Well, as a good mother, I went to clean it up. I saw her sleeping bag and thought there was only a little on there and then I looked down and saw a huge puddle of vomit. It was so bad. It was inside the wooden bunk and it covered her scriptures, glasses case, lotion, sunglasses and spilled over the edge and went into her shoes down below as well as onto the floor. Wow, so gross. I spent a good half hour cleaning everything up. I rinsed out her sleeping bag and pad in the showers and then I worked on cleaning out the rest. (This is where I'm very thankful they were in a cabin where I could wipe the floors easily, because the yurts had carpet. Yuck.) Amazingly, the cabin did not smell. I think it was a camp miracle. The saddest thing was June's scriptures. They couldn't be saved and all her personal progress stuff was inside. I do believe every leader was happy that I showed up. Who wants to clean up throw up?? June was fine after that. We think it was some cake batter she ate the night before. Abby warned her not to. Maybe she'll listen to wise council in the future.

The morning was the hike. I led the third year hike, which was nice because Robyn was able to hike with me. She does NOT love hiking. She semi complained the whole time, but not in an annoying way. It is all uphill from the lake, but we kept a good pace. When we got to the lookout we all hiked silently to the next stopping point. We all sat down and talked about ways we could build our foundation on Christ. It was very spiritual, but it ended with people finding ticks crawling on them. Yikes! I do not like ticks. Terrie found one on her arm. So we quickly departed. We finished the hike with no injuries, no complaining and in record time. We were the first ones back. It was a spectacular hike. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures. But I will put some of our wildlife photos here. They are from the entire week, but it is fitting to show the lovely outdoors when we talk about hiking.

There was plenty of deer as mentioned before. We saw them everyday.

I did not see these birds, but I love that Michelle caught this mother guarding her nest and feeding her babies.

There were these very interesting moths all over. They held still and didn't move at all because I think they were trying to remain camouflaged. That wasn't very helpful for them when they were on the ground in the pavilion. They were bound to be trampled. I picked up one and Michelle gave me her macro lens so we could get some cool shots.

Aaliyah came over and poked him and he suddenly flared out his red wings for protection. It was very startling. I bet it works well on predators.

After the hike, everyone was a tad tired, but it was time for certification. We did a big fair. This was my baby so I was very excited about it. We had the SYCLs and YCLs come first and gave them instructions and sent them in all directions. I had designated locations where everyone would go and they had prepared their instruction boards before camp. (That was what I was bugging them about before school ended.)

Then a short while later, the girls arrived and I gave them instructions. Their cards had stations that they had to visit and extra spots for optional stations. They could choose to attend any of the other stations. They would receive stamps at each station and then they could cash in their cards at the prize table. Here are the cards they used, colored coded for each year.

It went so well. It was not too long and the girls all did a great job, choosing their optional stations and going to the assigned ones. They all seemed to have a great time learning their respective lessons and participating. It was so smooth that it basically ran itself. I walked around and got a couple pictures, but that wasn't until the end. Many of the girls were finished by the time I got pictures. But most of these girls worked really hard to organize their station.

I admit that I spent a little of certification time plotting my revenge on Danja. I wanted it to be appropriate but lighthearted. I had an accomplice, but I won't reveal who since I want to protect her identity. We packed up all of Danja's stuff. Everything. Her bedding, and clothes and extra things. Basically everything in her bunk area. We put everything in four separate bags and them hid them in different spots. We left her a note that said she needed to perform an act of service in order to get clues to find her stuff. Naturally, I didn't sign the note, although I think she figured out who it was. :)

It was funny because while she was finding her stuff later, she borrowed my phone and took selfies. She is such a goof, but she found all her stuff eventually, even the stuff in the refrigerator.

She is such a sweetie. Pranks are not allowed at camp, but I wanted her to feel loved in return. And we left it at that, so it wouldn't get out of hand. I also left the saran wrap up the rest of the time. It was actually quite cozy. I had crawled out of a hole, so it was mostly in tact. Danja insisted we get a picture with me inside. Robyn is in there too.

Meanwhile, I did get to visit some of certification. The girls had done very well and almost everyone got a prize. Here are my people at the prize table. They did a great job distributing. I'm trying to remember what went first. I think people liked the water bottles with mix-ins, the chapstick, and small notebooks. Oh and the nail polish.

Technically, there is no more certification. We went ahead with what we had already planned, but next year has the potential to be very different. However we do things, this was a fun year and I think the fair idea went very well. Certification is usually not anyone's favorite thing from camp, but everyone agreed it was the best it has ever been!

We did our epic stake skit that night, but I'll include pictures of that in the next post, but know that it was over the top as usual.

In the evening, we had our night with the stars. It was spectacular. So many people worked so hard, but no one as hard as Michelle. All the wards had done a service project beforehand and taken video as well as recording some of the girls personal experiences. Michelle compiled all the videos into one movie that we watched all together. Also, she took pictures and put one of each girl into the video as well. That meant she was editing and compiling up at camp as well. It was amazing.

We filled 200 bags of popcorn and let the girls bask in the evening where they were the stars of the show.

Right after that, we went down to the lake for Singing Stars. We sang the Stake song first, Like the Stars, and I started it and luckily it wasn't too low or too high. It sounded really good with everyone singing. Then we sang our individual song first and the wards followed. I tried to start it at an okay note, but it was still too high for our altos. It was a pretty song, called Someone Needs Your Star. Each ward sang in turn and there were some really beautiful songs. It was a nice night. It is awkward at the end when two sides start a song at the same time, so next time we might have a list of songs so we can all sing together.

The Stake cabin was the hip spot. We had visitors all the time. My girls came down often to say Hi and grab some snacks. Here are some visitors.

Bella is wearing my wig and it matches her hair color almost exactly. (Wig in the next post.) Because we had so many people come down, I didn't get up to do stargazing with June. Last year we had a small competition and Terrie was in on it as well. But this year, I stayed in my cabin most nights. This particular evening, some of us stayed up late with the girls and it was so fun. We played Mafia and Spoons and laughed so hard. Aspen has the quirkiest mannerisms. When we were both Mafia and she stuck her tongue out and wiggled it, I thought I would die laughing and give myself away.

Unfortunately, our room is directly connected to the next room with no door. None of the leaders could sleep. Melinda was pretty bugged by us, which I felt badly about. (Although I heard through the grapevine that there have been other years that she stayed up late with the girls keeping others up. We each have our own moment I guess.) We went to bed around 2:30, and the worst part was that Elayne woke Melinda up in the morning to help with breakfast because she thought the girls would be too tired from staying up late. (Ouch...not one of our better moments. Note to self: Don't do this next year.)

However, the time with the girls was precious. They are really amazing young women. In fact, just last night, we had an 'after camp' get together. (Way after camp.) We got almost all the girls there and half the leaders. We played games and just laughed together. I will miss these girls. The next post will highlight all the great SYCLs we had.