Girls Camp

Are you ready for lots and lots of pictures? These are lots of the pictures I took at girls camp this year. We had it up Payson Canyon at Blackhawk campground. Our theme was Surviving with the Light of Christ and above is the logo I made for the sweats that we got for the girls. Actually I had some help for another leader in our ward and I had to enlist Heidi to help with the girls ponytail and arm because mine looked dorky. It is great to have an artist in the family for cases such as this.

We hauled our trailer up (or should I say Sean and Tyrel hauled it up)?. Then they stayed to help set up tents. I think Tyrel was having fun being the only boy at girls camp. I must say that the tent they set up did stay up the best of any of them up there I think.

Notice the jewel on the Bishop's forehead. He said he was going to keep it on till Sunday, but I didn't notice it at church on Sunday.

Above are the 4th year girls coming in from their overnight pack in the night before (along with some YCL's that wanted to tag along for it)

Some cute shots of a few of the Beehives at camp above. We had a major wind and lightning storm the first night and some of them got a little scared. I came down the 2nd day for Travis' wisdom teeth and I heard that most of them slept in my trailer while I was gone that 2nd night because they were scared from the first night storm. It was windy the 2nd night but no rain or lightning.

We divided all the girls up into 4 tribes and they all had "buffs" (bandanas) depending on their tribes. They had to come up with a tribe name and then we had them paint a tribe flag which we hung in the trees around the eating area. The morning of the 2nd day, Sasha and Susie did a fun game! Susie gave a "survivor story" and then we had the tribes tie themselves together and they also were locked up with 4 bicycle chains. They rotated around to stations doing challenges and answering questions. If they got their question right, they were able to get keys out of a bottle to unlock their chains. Once they had completed all stations and had all of their locks unlocked, they were finished. They had to do things like paint fingernails, drink juice out of a baby bottle, move clothespins of a certain color down a line (I can't remember the rest) but all of it was done as they were tied together. I think they had a lot of fun. The above pictures were of the fingernail painting and the pictures below are just of various tribes sitting around together and moving along the course doing various things.

We had a slight mishap. One of the chains got wrapped around the wrists of two of the girls and the lock broke when one of the keys was inserted so they were stuck together. Luckily, one of the Priesthood leaders up there had something he could cut through it with.

More Beehives above.

Tent assembling above.

Flag painting above and below and the other picture above is the speaker we had the first night we were up there. She was (I believe) the first member of the church in Kosovo. She joined the church after working as an interpreter for the military when the war was going on over there. They built her a box to be baptized in because the river was filled with decaying bodies from the war (gross). Once she joined the church, her family thought it brought dishonor to them and they were going to kill her. She ended up escaping into Germany but they were still after her. She eventually came to the US and attended BYU. Her story was amazing and I will never forget it. She was a true Survivor. I think the Bishop is going to try to get her to come talk to the whole ward, it will be a great fireside so I hope he is able to arrange it.

I know this picture is kind of small, but it was just funny pictures of all the girls along with Brother Sheets with his grey ponytail attached to his hat. The picture of him is too funny, so I had to do this layout with the saying "One of these faces is not like the others." You know, like the old Sesame Street song.......... You can click on it to see it bigger if you want.

I missed the compass challenge course the 2nd day because of Travis' wisdom teeth and they did skits that night I believe. Oh, we had the girls drop their buffs and mixed up the teams with new buffs before that challenge.

I went back up on Friday morning since Travis was doing so well. The girls went on their hikes and I set up my Survivor obstacle course. It was fun although one of the girls fell and twisted her ankle. I felt bad, but I think she still had fun at camp anyway. For my course the tribes had to use their buffs as blindfolds and all link arms together with thier own tribe so that they stayed together. By the way, they had to drop their buffs for the 3rd time for this challenge and mix up tribes again. There was a course laid out (4 courses identical, one for each team) with orange cones and one person on the team that wasn't blindfolded had to give the team directions to get through their course. It was hard to hear their specific leader because all 4 team leaders were shouting directions at the same time. If they knocked over a cone, the leader had to direct them to pick it back up and set it back in the proper place.

After they got through that course, they could unlink and take their blindfolds off. Next they had to cross a balance beam. If they fell off they had to get back in line and cross again and they couldn't move on to the next station until their whole team was across. Liz thought walking across was too easy so she had them hop across and this is where the twisted ankle happened.

Next they had to line up across from each other and toss water balloons down the line and put in a bucket at the end of the line. They had to get 4 balloons to the end intact without popping them.

After that they had to shoot down 2 bottles with a sling shot and then tie two certification knots and then someone else had to untie those knots.

Next station had a cooler with a frozen t-shirt in it. They had to somehow thaw the T-shirt and someone had to put it on before moving on.

The next spot was BB gun shooting (which was a hit by the way). They had to shoot down 4 cans before moving on.

They then ran to the camp fire area and had to set up a teepee fire and a log cabin fire and then get a spark with flint and steel.

The very last thing was a crossword puzzle. The girls names were the answers for the puzzle and the clues were some unique thing about each of them. It was fun for them to get to know each other a little better.

Friday night, we had another guest speaker, Glen Judd, who came up and talked to the girls and had them do some challenges to find out a little more about themselves, whether they were a follower or a leader and why each of those things can be a good thing. We had our testimony meeting that night and it was amazing. I think everyone there (except the two girls who fell asleep) bore their testimonies and it was a great evening. I think everyone had fun!

Saturday morning they had a quick breakfast, took down camp and came home.