Weekly Review July 24 '16

Happy Pioneer Day!! This week's review is coming a few days late because I was gone all week at Girls' Camp. Now that I have had 2 solid nights' sleep, I think I can compose a coherent blog post.

Let’s see if I can remember way back to last Friday! We had Pack meeting that evening. For the activity, we helped the boys make kites out of newspaper and dowels. I was really skeptical that they would fly (especially because it was hot & humid with no wind), but when the kids took them outside to the parking lot and started running around with them on fairly short strings, they actually flew a little! The kids loved it so that turned out to be a fun and successful activity.

(Reading the funny papers on the newspaper of his kite!)

On Saturday I was swamped with packing for Girls’ Camp and finishing up all the preparations for that. Frank and I were just coming back from the store with all the stuff I needed to buy for camp when we saw the sister missionaries. Frank asked them if they had a place to eat, and they said “home”, so he invited them to dinner. I was fine with that, but told him he’d have to figure out what to feed them since I was too busy (there wouldn’t have been enough food if we’d made what I planned to make). So he decided to order Chinese food…of course! It was nice having them over and they helped me make two reflector ovens for camp too. Seth went to a birthday party that day also, where they played water games and he had a lot of fun.

I can’t remember much about Sunday—must have been a pretty routine Sunday. I indexed a batch on Family Search so I was part of the Worldwide Indexing Event. I would have done more over the weekend if I hadn’t been so busy.

I was up bright and early Monday so I could get ready and pack up the car. I made it to camp okay although I got a bit lost…there was one strange turn and after I missed it the second time, the GPS rerouted me. I went through some pretty country on the way there and still got there in time. The camp we go to is in Pennsylvania, a short distance from Gettysburg. It used to be a Girl Scout Camp but was purchased by several of the stakes around here to use for Girls' Camp, Trek, Scout camp outs, etc. I went to Girls' Camp 15 years ago as a camp mom, and we were actually at this same camp, although it was still a Girl Scout camp then and we were leasing it from them. Now it is called Camp Liahona.

One of the things I love about the camp is that they have signs with scriptures on them all over the camp, like this:

And this:

Here is our area:

And this is our tent:

We decorated our pavilion and we had this little area set up to deliver little notes and treats to each other:

One of the things we got when we arrived was this:

It is the schedule for the week--each day was on a little card. As you can see, it was on a lanyard that I could wear around my neck. I thought this was a very good idea!! All the girls had one, too.

 The first day of camp was really busy. After everyone arrived and got settled, the main event of the day was the hikes. Each level had a different length hike to do. Our level (3^rd level) was the longest hike, so we left first. We hiked a short way to a stream and stopped to sketch for a while. 

While we were there, it started to rain a little, but it was just sprinkling. We kept going and before much longer it started to rain harder and then it turned into a torrential downpour, with lightning and thunder. Of course, this was also the part of the hike where we were climbing up a very steep hill. Fun! Some of the girls had a really hard time with the hill and most of them were pretty freaked out about the lightning. When everyone finally made it to a level place, we stopped to decide what to do—go back or keep going. We were on a trail that looped around the camp but we weren’t sure how far we had come, so it could have been just as far to go back as to keep going. I said “I think we should pray about it” so we did and then decided to keep going. Even though it didn’t stop raining, after the prayer most of the lightning went away and all of the girls were a lot calmer, so that was a real blessing. The rain did gradually diminish and after hiking quite a bit more we found a road into camp and made it back okay. We were all thoroughly and completely drenched. Most of the girls hadn’t brought their rain ponchos. I did bring mine, but hadn’t been able to stop to put it on until we got to the spot where we said the prayer, and by then I was completely soaked so it didn’t help much. My backpack and everything in it was saturated—including the unopened package of Kleenex I had brought along. It was quite the adventure! (My blow dryer was a very popular item for the next few days as the girls tried to dry out their shoes.)

#ilooklikeadrownedrat

 The funny thing was, the rest of the week all I heard was how strenuous and difficult the 3^rd year hike was. I really didn’t think it was that bad. That evening we had family night and s’mores around the campfire.

 The girls in the tent next to ours (we were in platform tents) stayed up until after midnight laughing and talking so I didn’t go to sleep until very late and then I woke up at least twice in the night and woke up really early so it wasn’t a good night for sleeping. That was pretty much the theme for the entire week though—go to bed late, sleep fitfully and wake up early.

The rest of the week we (the unit leaders) had less to do—at least, in theory!! It never seemed to turn out that way, though. On Tuesday our main responsibility was unit leader time from 9 to 11. We used that time to help the girls make little lanterns out of mason jars (we tied it into the idea of them being a light to the world). Here's mine:

(There were lots of cute decorative papers, but when I saw this one, I had to use it! If you can't see it very well, it's column paper used by accountants.)

After that, the girls had an hour of free time and lunch, and then they spent from 1:00 to 5:15 going to certification classes. We didn’t have to go with them to that, so you would think we would have had a nice lazy afternoon but somehow we kept busy the whole time preparing for other things we had to do. We did take time out to take a shower, at least, though! They have pretty nice showers but it’s always awkward to shower in a public shower. I have to do calisthenics to get my pants on without getting them wet because the floor is always wet! That night was movie night…we watched a movie outside on “the green”—the large field by the flagpole. The movie they chose was “Once I Was a Beehive”—about a non-Mormon girl who attends LDS Girls’ Camp. It was cheesy but pretty funny too.

Our main responsibility on Wednesday was working with the girls on their cooking certification. Each level had to make their own lunch that day (all the other meals were provided by the camp, which was REALLY nice—this was the only time I had to cook all week). We planned to make pizzas in reflector ovens. We had watermelon too. It was a busy morning helping the girls set up the ovens, chop vegetables, cut up the watermelon, and cook the pizza sauce, but the pizzas turned out really well and they were delicious.

 The lady in the pink t-shirt is the unit leader for the 3rd years; I was her assistant.She's in my ward and she was serving as stake RS president while I was my ward's RS president. She is awesome and I love her!!

You put foil on the ground. Set a cooling rack on top of four small cans. Place hot coals (one coal for each 25 degrees) under / around the rack. Put food on the rack. Place foil lined box over the whole thing. Slide a rock under one edge of the box to allow air flow. Works beautifully!:

My yummy pizza!:

My hot pads got totally destroyed. I didn't even bother to bring them home:

After lunch there was free time and activities for the girls—BB guns, volleyball, crafts, and a water slide. Again, we kept really busy during that time and didn’t even get a chance to shower. That evening the stake president came up for dinner and he and the stake YW president spoke at a fireside. (The stake YW president was there all week—as a matter of fact, she was in the tent with the 3^rd level leader and me. She’s really great and I enjoyed getting to know her.) After the program when everyone started heading back to their camping areas, we had some excitement in our area because the girls discovered a rattlesnake a few feet away from one of the tents. Not to worry, though—rattlesnakes are fairly common in the camp so they have a system down to catch them and relocate them. We just had to call the priesthood brethren and they brought over the snake catching poles, caught the snake, put it into a trash can with a tight lid, and took it outside the camp to release it. The girls who found it actually walked right past it into their tent before they heard it rattle, but thankfully none of them got bit.

On Thursday the 3^rd year girls spent most of the day at a nearby lake. First they had to build canoes out of cardboard and race them. After that, they got to go out in real canoes. Originally, we were told we didn’t have to stay with them for any of that (just drive them to the lake to drop them off and pick them up later) but we ended up needing to stay there most of the time and so all we had time to do that day was take a quick shower. The lake was really beautiful, though.

 The girl on the far right of this picture is amazing! As you can see, she has a prosthetic leg. This did not stop her at all. She did the hike and all of the other activities all week without any problems. (Actually, with less problems than some of the other girls!) I never heard a complaint out of her.

That night they did skits (most of them were really funny) and then we divided up by wards to have testimony meeting with our bishops, who had come up for the evening. After that, the 3rd level leader and I were up really late because the next morning we had unit awards and we hadn’t had time to get them ready yet. Along with giving the girls their certification certificates, we were supposed to come up with some funny awards to give them. (The girls in the tent who found the snake got “snake charmer” awards, for example.) We didn’t want the girls to know what we were doing so we had to wait until they went to bed to talk about it, but a lot of them didn’t want to go to bed and we kept getting interrupted. One group of girls had ended up getting the job to clean the latrines twice, so I said we should give them the “Double Duty” award. Then the level leader said “No, we should give them the ‘Double Doo-Doo Duty’ award.” This was after 1:00 am and I was exhausted and I just lost it. I laughed so hard I cried. Then I started to write that on the certificates and realized I wasn’t sure how to spell “doo-doo” and started giggling again. The level leader got out her phone and said “Siri, how do you spell ‘doo-doo’?” and I totally lost it again. I was laughing so hard!! Okay, maybe you needed to be there. I think we finally got to bed around 2:30 am. You would think I would have slept like a log, but I didn’t, so that was a very short night.

Friday we packed up and did a bunch of cleaning. Oh, and another rattlesnake showed up next to another tent in our area so we had another exciting snake catching experience in our area. That time one of the girls was actually running right toward it when another girl spotted the snake and said “Stop!!” I had taken a few of the girls to another area to clean the shower there so I missed the whole thing and I’m kind of bummed about it. After all the cleaning and packing was done, we gave out awards, had lunch, met together as a whole camp for a final wrap up and some awards for the leaders, and then we headed home. Originally, I was supposed to take a couple of girls home with me but it turned out I didn’t need to do that. It felt really quiet on the way home!! I was pretty worried that I would fall asleep driving after 4 straight nights of little sleep, but I did okay. The GPS took me a different way home, so I had to pay attention so I wouldn’t miss any turns. Once again, I drove through some really beautiful country.

Other than the lack of sleep, I really enjoyed Girls Camp. (If I go again, I will take Melatonin or Unisom or something!) Our girls were well behaved and fun. We had 27 girls in our level and it took me a couple of days to learn all their names! (Didn’t help that we had 2 Annas, 2 Rebeccas, 2 Emilys, and 3 Madisons! Oh, and an Audrey and an Aubrey.) All the girls were beautiful and so creative! In between their other activities we had some crafts set up in our pavilion and they made bracelets and drew and painted and created to their hearts’ content. I was constantly amazed at the things they made. (The face paint was something they did at one of their certification clinics.):

They were good at making messes, too:

When we first got there, the latches on our latrines didn't work. No problem!! The girls just created these cute signs:

(As soon as we let the missionary couple in charge of the camp know about the latches, they fixed them.)

We lucked out with the weather (other than getting caught in the thunderstorm). It was fairly hot and humid the first and last days we were there but the rest of the time it was in the 80s and fairly low humidity. I brought a battery operated fan and one of those little fans that’s attached to a water bottle and prepared to be miserably hot, but I barely used either of those things. (As a matter of fact, I woke up the second night shivering and had to put on a jacket.) Now it is nearly 100 degrees with high humidity and it’s supposed to be that way all this coming week, so I feel really bad for whoever is at the camp this coming week!

All week while I was at camp, I kept looking around and thinking what a beautiful world Heavenly Father has made for us. It really is amazing when you think about it. I saw a moth that looked just like an autumn leaf! I felt really grateful and close to Heavenly Father all week.

  

It was great to get home to see Seth and Frank again, plus Jared got home from Pageant that morning so he was here too. I spent the rest of the day unpacking and showering and doing laundry and telling stories about camp and listening to Jared’s stories about Pageant. When I got home and looked in the mirror, I had these unbelievable bags under my eyes! I tried to get a picture of them, but they really don't show up:

It was AWESOME to sleep in my own bed again and I slept from 10:30 to nearly 8:00 Friday night with very few interruptions (Snickers was whining at about 6:00 am, but Frank took him out.) I slept great last night too. I still needed a nap yesterday afternoon, though, in spite of a full night's sleep!

Yesterday was really busy too—I planned meals and got some groceries, did some cleaning around the house, and finished the laundry (with all of my stuff and all of Jared’s stuff, we had about 9 loads of laundry to do). Frank has been really busy since I got home (and probably while I was gone, too) doing work for clients. He’s upgrading a lot of their computers to Windows 10. Yesterday he drove down to one of his clients and was there for several hours.

Jared looks really good. He’s very tan! I’m sure he still has a lot to tell me, but it’s obvious from the things he’s told me that he had a great experience at Pageant. He showed me all his pictures and a few funny videos I’ve noticed since he got home that he takes more initiative to be helpful. For example, he folded a batch of laundry yesterday without my asking him to. Hopefully that will last! I'm trying not to get too used to him being home, though, since he won't be here very long.

This got a lot longer than I intended (I actually left out a lot of details, believe it or not) so I’d better wrap up. I’m not sure what Frank and Seth did all week other than Frank worked from home Monday and Friday. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he went to work part of the day and I had arranged for Seth to go to different friends’ houses to play. He got to swim at one place and go to a big wooden slide at another place so he had fun. They took the Elders out to dinner on Wednesday too, but that’s about all I know.

I'm looking forward to having a quiet week at home now, although I'll be working on the next adventure, which is Cub Scout Day Camp.