I chose to camp with 3rd year girls, so I had six 14 year old girls, one 16 year old friend of one of my girls, and two 17 year old Youth Camp Leaders (YCL'S) in my unit. Most units had two adults or two units in their cabin. Not us. I was flying solo and we had a cabin all to ourselves. I was actually mistaken for a YW 3 times and asked where our leader was. I appreciated the compliment but I think it was actually more because I am immature than young looking. I am not a very strict "adult" and I have never done the camp thing before so I am not sure I did anything right, but my girls had a good time and that was my
Anyway, I had every girl in my group come up and thank me for being laid back, or for becoming part of the group and tell me to come back and hang with 4th years next year and I even had some of my ward girls who were not in my unit come find me each day at free time to hang out. One of their moms even found me at church that Sunday, having no idea what I had been through, and told me that her daughter doesn't relate to a lot of adults but that she likes to hang with me because I am real and approachable. I am not saying this to brag. I am saying it because I felt pretty dang low at some points and these words of encouragement meant everything to me.
So yes, camp had it's ups and downs, but I really loved my girls so that made it worth the ick. We stayed up later than anyone else in camp, ate more junk food, and laughed super hard every night and it was awesome.
I only had one girl (Jenna) from my ward in my group but she is one of my all time favorite people, so is her sister, and her mom and heck, her dad (the Bishop) for that matter. I planned to camp with the 1st years so I could hang with some of my cute Beehive girls and camp with my buddy, Kira (Jenna's mom) but Jenna had a non-member friend, Tori going and I already happened to be friends with her so I felt like I should hang with them. We met Tori at a Bishopric party months ago and she is hysterical and loud and so we hit it off right away. When I found out she was coming to camp it just felt right to go where she was. She became legendary at camp and people would call out to her everywhere we went because she is truly the funniest person I have ever met and she brought out the funny in the rest of us so our cabin was an absolute riot!
Even though we were massively silly and obnoxious all week, the highlight of the week for me was when Tori got up in testimony meeting and bore her testimony of how much this church has helped her and made her happy and how she wants to convince her mom and brother to start coming with her. I love her no matter what and can so clearly see the love of God in her. For me it was never about trying to convert her, just about letting her know that she is awesome and that God loves her exactly the way she is so it was cool to hear that her camp experience brought her closer to God.
So now I know why I have not yet posted about camp. This is a jumbled mess of a post and it is truly going nowhere, so let's just look at a few pictures. I took almost all of them on the first and last day but oh well, at least I got some tangible evidence that I was there.
Our first assignment was to name our unit, come up with our roll call answer and make our flag. Our theme was Fuel the Fire Within so we were supposed to play off of that. I wanted to be the Girls On Fire and play off the whole Hunger Games thing but the girls liked Sun Drops and so the Sun Drops we were. Our roll call answer was "Drop it Like It's Hot, Ou, Ou, tssss (you know where you lick your finger and let it sizzle?)". Our flag was cute! They used their hand prints as rays of sun.
Tori and Jenna
Me and my girls heading in to Opening Ceremonies...me, Heather, Tori, Becca, Natalie, Jenna, McKenzie, Sarah, Rachel and Haylie. LOVE these girls!!! I was nervous about camping in levels and not wards but we all got along really well and even at meals when you could sit wherever you wanted we all saved spots for each other and stayed together. Sun Drops in the House!!!!
The first night was Ward Night so we had 4 1/2 hours of ward time and a fireside with our Bishop which was so much fun. Our Bishop can be pretty silly so he suggested an impromptu talent show. He even danced and sang Elvis. Too funny! Here are some other acts of silliness.
Song and dance by 3 of my cute Beehives
Roasting stick sword fight
Gymnastics
Pyramids
And 3 more of my adorable Beehives in Pants of the Ground.
Practicing for our song/skit. We were given a bag of props and told to come up with a song/skit. Most groups did a cute revamp of a pop song but we thought it was supposed to be skittish so we did several pop songs rewritten and put in to a very silly skit. We needed two missionaries for our skit and Tori immediately volunteered for that part. So on our first run through she ran in and said, "We're the mistresses." We all died laughing and informed her that they are missionaries and not mistresses.
My kids think our skit was hilarious and have watched it on repeat for two weeks. It is 5 min long so it is taking WAY too long to load here so you will just have to trust me....it was funny!
Making camp journals with our Stake Level 3 Leader
During certification times Tori would fall asleep, in the strangest positions.
Every girl had to teach something so I happily volunteered to be taught games, drawing and even some gymnastics. 20 years ago that looked a lot prettier, but hey, I tried!
Jenna and Tori are both competitive gymnasts so they showed us a few of their routines.
We got pranked and someone hung all our stuff from the rafters which was funny, and put Vaseline under the handles of the rubbermaid totes we packed in which was less funny. Our cabin was mildly famous for cheeseballs. I took these to the overnighter and then couldn't find any for camp so I told my ward friends and whenever someone from my ward came up for the day I got cheeseball deliveries so we had to take a pic of them taped up in the rafters.
We played games and talked every night (went to bed at 3AM and up at 6AM to shower and wake the girls by 7, everyday) but the last night we took the camera out to capture some of the silly. We were bummed when Tori went to bed at midnight and missed the picture fest, especially since she shared a bunk with me and was the one keeping me up laughing at crazy stories every other night. Before she hit the sheets we did paint her with broken glow stick goo and had her run through the camp. Looked like a ghost, and almost made me pee my pants laughing. I know, I was supposed to be the "grown up". Whatever!
While we were playing spoons (with glow sticks since we did not have spoons) we decided that if you lost you took a gumball instead of being out. I lost over and over and over again so I had a lot of gumballs. I started blowing bubbles and we decided to have a bubble contest. Me and Heather were pretty much the only ones who could blow a bubble so we dorkily decided to see if we could blow two bubbles so big that they would touch. Not an easy feat. When one of us was on, the other "blew it".
In the meantime Jenna got the whole bubble thing figured out.
We finally did it and Natalie caught it on video but not in a picture so we watched the video and then tried again.
Until finally......!!!!
Stupid, I know, but keep in mind that this is after 4 days of NO sleep and it was 100 degrees and we were starting to get loopy. So next we turned off the lights and took pictures of our party in the dark just to see what kind of goofy pics we would get.
Meet Heather and Rachel, my fearless YCL's. Loved them!
And since I brought a whole rubbermaid bin full of food we still had plenty of food so we played face the cookie.
And this is a tribute to sleepy head Tori. She added something new to our skit every time we did it and this was her ending pose, which became famous around camp.
Here we are sneaking out to run through camp with our flag, our trophy from field games and our cheeseballs. Again, I know I am supposed to be an adult. By now you know that I am still working on that.
Racoons lived in the dumpster and feasted all night long so going to the bathroom at night was somewhat treacherous but the babies were cute and not quite so snarly.
And here are my buds, Jenna and Tori knocked out on the way home.
So there is my camp experience in a nutshell. As a calling it was not my favorite ever, but as an experience, I loved it. I felt young and fun and carefree and I had the absolute greatest group of girls I could have hoped for.
Seth was excited to play Mr. Mom because he has never had one on one time with the kids like that since I usually stalk the little goblins. They had a great week and one of the best parts about going was coming home and sharing the experience with Alyssa. She is now so excited to go to Girls Camp one day. I feel like being in Primary really helped me to teach my young kids the gospel better and now being in YW is helping me prep for a YW of my own. Only 2 years until she goes to camp! Crazy!
7 comments:
Good for you!! Those girls are all so lucky they had you with them to make the experience one to remember.
Is it such a big deal that you let teenagers act their age and actually tried relating to them rather than policing them over petty things?!?!
I don't even know the story and I'm already annoyed. I will call you tomorrow.
By the way...mistresses?!
Bahahaha!!
Val, Most people were really nice but a few just seemed to be gunning for me. Other adults and lots of the girls even noticed it and they were all quick to encourage me and counter the damage with kindness. It was hard because they didn't know anything about me or how hard it was for me to go and do the whole leave my kids and camp thing but I am in the getting over it stage now. Maybe they had their own set of stress and didn't mean to be rude? Like I said, maybe I should not have mentioned it at all, but it was part of my camp experience.
Okay, I'm seriously camping with you next year or maybe the year after. I can't believe how much you had. I want in on being an adult in your group.
Glad you were with a great group of girls. Lucky lucky girls!
I always loved girls camp and my favorite leader ever (who I am still in contact with) was just like you. She was different from the other leaders and honestly she made us want to live the gospel more because we saw how fun and goofy and open she was but knew she had a testimony too.
We wanted to be like her. Those girls are so lucky to have you!!
I want to hear more about it and see your skit!
Looks like you had so much fun! It reminded me of my YW camp days (as a YW, not a leader - I've never had that privilege). Being silly and having fun is what girls camp is all about, at least to me. You can fuss about shorts length and all the do's and don'ts of the gospel at church and at your weekly activities, but camp should be about showing the girls that you can have a fabulous time without all the bad things in life, and can even be modest while doing it. I don't recall ever reading anywhere in the scriptures that silliness is a bad thing. Maybe that's in the sealed part, but that means we don't have to worry about it now! =) The ladies who were nagging on you were probably just a little jealous that you were having so much fun and were getting along so great with your girls. They didn't like feeling less "cool", so they thought if you reeled it in a little, they'd look better. Sad. If nothing else (and I'm sure there were plenty more things) you taught the girls through your example that being yourself is okay. You are definitely the kind of leader I would want Emma to have at camp (or church or wherever!).
Now you are the kind of leader I would've wanted to hang with. It looks like you had those girls giggling on a regular basis. Glad you all had fun. I'm kind of looking forward to when my girls are finally old enough to go to camp because I'm sure I'll get called to be a camp leader along with my zillion other callings.
That's a bummer that some people actually had the gall to say anything negative to you. It's good to see you that rose above it and still had a fabulous time. I agree with what others have said above that a leader like you is more of a testimony builder than uptight leaders who are pointing out their faults, mistakes, and shortcomings.
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