Even though I'm a walking zombie through the whole thing.
I got up at 3:30 in the morning to take my last final (a two part test) which took longer than I thought it would, which left me scrambling to be out the door by 5:00 because I had the trailer with 80% of the girl's personal gear (sleeping bags, and backpacks etc for over a hundred girls) and they wanted that unloaded before the girls showed up.
It was still nice and black outside when I rolled through the neighborhood and picked up my other cabin leader and we hit the road, mostly thankful that we weren't stuck on a giant bus stuffed full of teenage girls up a winding canyon... car sick anyone?
Me, I would be.
As it was, Missie and I ended up being the first ones to show up at Heber Valley Camp, right at sunrise.
And upon entering the gate and beginning up the curving two lane road to our camp ground, driving The Man's monster truck and hauling a large cargo trailer, Missie starts screaming, "A bear! I just saw a bear!"
"Are you serious?"
"I think so! I'm not sure, let's go check."
I wasn't about to get out of the truck with a possible bear sighting. No way. So I tentatively began to back up, trailer and all, on a curve of the road. Guys, backing trailers up is not my forte, but somehow I managed to do and I even stayed in my lane. Luckily it was still so early that there was no other traffic on the road yet.
And I saw it.
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A wooden bear perched just out of the trees on the side of the road.
Totally worth it.
Since we were the first at camp with our giant trailer of stuff and therefore we were the ones who unloaded the entire thing.
But Stacy brought me breakfast (I hadn't had time to eat. Plus I forgot my wallet in the hustle of getting out of the house. And my toothbrush (or so I thought). And my pillow) and lunch from Einstein's Bagels (I still owe her for that) so it made it better.
And with that the buses began rolling in and the sorting of girls began.
This year we went up to Heber Valley so we had cabins and electricity and showers and running water and all the poshness that you could ask for when you're spending an entire week on the mountainside with a whole gaggle of teenage girls.
Though some still seemed to think that deodorant was optional.
And since we were staying in cabins the Stake Camp committee decided to stir things up a bit and assign girls to different cabins. As in, not camping in wards. Not even camping in year levels. Just all mixed up.
They asked various women from the stake (me) and the Young Women's president's to be cabin directors and assistant cabin directors and to plan for camp the best you could because no one would know what cabin would have what girls in it until the sorting of girls Monday morning.
So with a little bit of apprehension and a lot of excitement we all met in the amphitheater where the cabin directors (me) and their assistants (Missie) stood up front and were handed a list.
It was a lot like the Price is Right.
Come on down! You get to be in cabin 6 with ME!!!!!!
And all that jazz.
Jayme got to be in my cabin and she was pretty relieved about that.
Cas and Brynn found they new girls in their cabins and they were relieved about that too.
All I can say is that doing Girl's Camp this way... was perfect. And inspired.
I spent the week with girls I had never met before, and I bonded with them and grew to love them as if I had known them all their lives.
And it didn't matter that I forgot my toothbrush (I ended up with three by Wednesday!), or that I had forgotten my pillow (a leader who left and came back stopped by my house and brought it to me), or that my belt broke (I got to wear a Dr. Who belt that one of the girls lent me. Let me tell you, that made me pretty cool stuff all week long). Those girls were truly my family that week.
And I've made a life long friend with Missie.
My long lost sister.
So as it was, I got to hang out with Jayme pretty heavily that week, which was really good for our relationship, and I loved watching Brynn and Casidee bebop around like they owned the place.
Our theme for Girl's Camp this year was "Make Your Technology a Holy Place."
Each cabin was assigned a social media for the week.
Because I happen to use a lot of social media (do you follow me?), I was given a harder, lesser known social media so those women who don't use social media could have the easier ones (hello facebook, blogger, instagram, texting, and google, I missed you). My cabin was assigned tumblr. Luckily one of my youth leaders loves tumblr and we were able to lean on her to rock our skit (tumblr themed of course).
And we heavily used Ann Dibb's talk, "I'm a Mormon, I know it, I live it, I love it."
We had a glow in the dark dance party complete with glow stick bracelettes, glow in the dark balls and a giant parachute, black light disco ball, and the music was thumping (church appropriate of course). And the snacks were coming out of their ears. The girls sang at the top of their lungs, they bonded, they danced, and we got a mean game of shufflebuns going.
During the week we canoed, we hiked to the top of a ridge to see the sunrise,
half of us got to do the challenge course (the other half of us got rained out, but as for my cabin, we were okay with spending the hours with Disney headbandz cards stuck to our foreheads),
there was sunrise yoga, crafts,
speakers, lots of songs, and friendship bracelets. They gave us a hand out that said something like learning a new scripture is like making a lifelong friend. I mentioned I could never remember the exact reference of my favorite scripture so one of my youth leaders, Danielle, made me a fancy friendship bracelet with the reference written inside of it.
I'm still wearing it. (D&C 45:62).
Making tiny diapers for the organization Teeny Tears as a service project.
We got to see how American flags are decommissioned, which was a really touching experience.
The Stake Camp committee was pinterest and in the main pavilion they had boards of all variations where people could "pin" the fun stuff they were doing in their cabins. They put up hand outs or wrote on chalkboards. And everyday they'd make a Walgreen's run down in Heber and print out pictures to put up on "instagram."
I feel that anytime there's an opportunity to shake the stake up like this and put girls all over the place with random leaders, it should be done.
The best thing about tumblr, by the way, are the memes. The best thing about memes are the Mormon Hey Girls... you know I worked into the skit :).
And now, an overload of pictures.
"Bow ties are cool."
We saw deer by the handfuls and this moose hung out in our camp for a bit.
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