TNT: Girls Camp 2015

I am the second councilor in our Young Women's program. We chose to not have a camp director this year, and instead take the task on ourselves. Unfortunately, our first councilor had conflicts the week of girls camp. And our President, who was the ring leader for camp, ended up with a family conflict that caused her to miss camp at the last minute. So I became the main leader at camp. Although, I have to admit, all the leaders that came pulled their own weight and I couldn't have done it without them.

Before camp, we got together and made bucket seats. The girls were able to take these to camp and use to sit on or to put stuff in.

We left Monday morning around 9:30am.

We were lucky enough to stay at a cabin this year, which was so helpful!

Lily and three of her BFF's at camp in the loft.

Here's all the girls and most of the leaders who were at camp. We had 15 girls, 6 of which were there for their first time, 7 leaders and 2 priesthood leaders.

After we settled in, we did some camp certification. Then we broke the girls up into three groups for crafts, fire making and free time.

Lily loved making little puff ball animals at the crafts station.

The girls also made this craft to go along with our princess theme.

Even though our priesthood leaders were not from our ward, they were the owners of the cabin and were amazing men! (They are the father-in-law and uncle to one of our YW advisers).

They taught each of the girls how to start a fire using flint and steel. I even too a go at it!

Pretending to be on Survivor. ☺

Here's our Princess Post. Each girl was a princess and the leaders were fairies. We'd give each other mail throughout the day. We also had secret sisters that we made fun things for.

There was a lot of neat wild-life around. Lily spent most of her free time taking pictures.

That night we played the candy bar game. One of my favorites, that I taught to the girls.

It was so fun having Lily at camp with me! Although she doesn't turn 12 until August, we let all the girls who'd be 12 by this summer come. She was such an amazing, strong girl at camp! I was so proud of her and the way she fit in with the other girls and was so brave, even when things were hard.

That night, the brethren told the girls a story about a scary hermit that lived near the cabin. We all went on a walk to explore "Hiram's" cabin. Lily was quite nervous about it.

Some of the girls were looking for him around camp. They were so scared!

After the scary story about Hiram, the girls went snipe hunting. They put toothpaste on their faces and brought Nerds to shake to help attract the snipes.

The girls had fun, but Lily was still nervous and asked me to come too. I was happy to oblige so I could take pictures and witness the whole thing.

Afterwards, the girls all sat around in the cabin while The guys played the final trick on the girls. One of them told another story about Hiram the hermit, while the other one snuck onto the balcony and scared the girls through the window.

The leaders sat back and enjoyed watching the prank unfold.

It was tricky finding somewhere for all 24 people to sleep!

Lily ended up sleeping on the couch with several of the other girls inside.

I slept on an air mattress in the downstairs room with my two friends, Tiffany and Chris. It was fun to have them at camp with me.

A lot of the girls slept out on the deck, but around 6am I heard some noise. I got up to see what was going on, and a bunch of the girls were cold and were coming inside to sleep. Lily, the early riser, was awake and already out taking pictures. When she realized the girls weren't up for good, she decided to try to go back to sleep too. However, someone had stolen her spot on the couch, so she ended up sleeping on the stairs. I loved that all the other girls were not early risers. We had to wake them up at 8:30 the first morning and most made it until 9am the second morning!

I became the official hair braider the next morning. I didn't mind.

The nice thing with being the one in charge is no one could leave without me. Here we are getting ready to go on our 4 mile hike, finally leaving around 11am.

It was a decent hike and very pretty.

When the girls started getting tired, we stopped in the shade and had lunch. The hike back was much easier.

That night some of the bishopric came up.

The girls made princess dresses out of garbage bags and duct tape for a little fashion show we did. Each one represented the Disney princess that correlated with the princess on their mailbox. And each princess also went along with our YW values. They were so cute!

Here's Lily as Merida giving her speech on the value, virtue. She even made a bow and arrow!

Afterward, we had dessert and then I did a devotional. I shared the story "The Parable of the Princesses", a book that Lily has. Then we all sang the song "Daughter of a King" that we'd been practicing in the weeks before and went along with the story.

Afterward, we had our testimony circle where we sat around the camp fire and shared our testimonies.

One of our girls that came to camp was Naya. She's a 19 year old foster girl who has had a rough life and has the mental abilities of a 10 year old. She ended up coming to camp at the last minute (we found out the day before). We managed to make it work for her to come and it was one of the best things! Watching the girls help and love Naya was so amazing! They just reached out to her and made her feel special and included. It brought the spirit of love to our camp. If Naya hadn't come, camped wouldn't have been as special. We've all grown closer to her.

One of the funny things about having 24 people all staying in one cabin is the bathroom situation. There was only one bathroom and one outhouse for all of us! I thought it'd be fun to try to cram as many girls as possible into the bathroom! It seemed like there was always someone in that bathroom and often times a line outside of it too!

The next morning we slept in and then cleaned up camp (the cabin was a huge mess!) Three of the leaders stayed back to finish cleaning while the rest of us went to the reservoir.

We went to Smith and Morehouse Reservoir, which was nearby, for some swimming and relaxing.

Lily was intrigued with a butterfly that just sat on peoples fingers. It probably sat on her finger for ten minutes before it flew away!

I love all the girls, and so sometimes I goof off when I'm with them. However, there comes a price with being the "cool" leader. The girls feel more comfortable playing pranks on me and I didn't dodge the bullet this time. While we were at the reservoir, some of the girls dumped moth balls in my van, which made the whole vehicle smell like an old ladies house! It is what it is, and it could've been worse, but I wasn't too thrilled to be the victim.

After swimming we headed back to the cabin for an awards assembly, to retire the flag and grab the rest of our stuff. Here's all the wonderful leaders that came. We are all a little goofy.