Girl's Camp!

I forgot how much fun, drama, tears, and joy Girls Camp was. The last time I went was probably 12 years ago. And lemme tell ya, camp in Hawaii is soooo much different than it is up here in Canada. Kind of a scary picture of me, but whatever, I'm campin'!

Our theme for Girls Camp this year was "Believe" simple, yet pretty much all encompassing.

I did take *a* camera, but it was our old junky 2.0mp Toshiba camera that gives every picture a blue hue. :( Very upsetting. I'll do my best with the crappy photo editing software we have here (not my strong suit), but I can make no promises. I just really hope I'm able to extract a few good pictures here. :( Or I'll be super upset.

I "stole" our laminated copy of the schedule. I figure no one else wants it, why not? So here's that scanned in...


As you can see, we had a very jam-packed week. We arrived on Tuesday July 3rd at about 10:30. It was held at the Byng Island Conservation Area camp grounds (you pronounce that like Chandler Bing ;)). Which is about an hour or so south of Hamilton. The camp grounds had been so dry lately that there was a fire ban, and so we couldn't have a campfire. :( Very upsetting. But, we were all set-up by noon or 1pm or so, which was lovely. We all made "crowns" and wore them to dinner provided by the stake. We had turkey, ham, corn, rolls, baked potatoes, it was quite the "Royal Feast", which goes along with our "Daughter of a King" theme for the year. After our royal dinner, we had an activity complete with archery, croquet, and a relay game too. I didn't get pictures of these events. I was too busy shooting an arrow 50 feet past the target and losing it in the forest. Don't worry though, I found it the next morning on my way to the WLM (Ward Leader Meeting - which I pronounced almost like "William" Wull-um, all week long). After dinner and the activities, we had a great devotional where we talked about the creation, and I saw my first firefly! Justine invited her two friends Alysha and Kelsi to come camping with us. They're not members, and I think it was a really great experience for them. After that we all went to bed without too much trouble and "shhhhhhhhhhhhh"shing.

That night it started raining... and raining... and raining. It didn't stop.

Even though it was raining cats and buckets... er dogs... and the tents were all wet, the girls were able to do a service project. They made some adorable Autism awareness ribbons for the Autism society of Niagara Falls. They made 752 ribbons. Last year they made 500, so I guess the rain was a motivating factor in this, there wasn't really much else to do! Our amazing Craft Princess, Maxine Elliot, (LOVE HER!) said these ribbons would be sold to raise money and given to supporters of Autism in the area. She also said we made enough ribbons to sustain them for the next 10 months. Simply amazing.

Our canoe-ing was cancelled for Wednesday, so our girls got ingenious and made a slip-n-slide out of about 5 big black garbage bags and duct tape. It was awesome. So awesome, that other girls from other wards followed suit, and they wanted to play too. THEN the stake activities people pulled out a big fancy slip-n-slide that you could race with (it had two lanes for racing). Everyone who slipped and slid had a good time. Even a leader did it! And I think she was in her fifties!

Here area few pictures. The blue hue is annoying, so I'm putting up black and white pics for now. :)

Justine slipping on the garbage bag slide. Dorina off to the left. Our other girls Heather, Alysha, Kelsi, and Laura are in the background with Sarah, our YW President.


It was held in with tent pegs, and wasn't too safe. The stake brought out their fancy one and even more girls had fun in the rain. I was safe under my umbrella.



I'm so glad they were able to see an up-side to all the rain. They sure kept my spirits up!

Later that night, it stopped raining long enough for us to watch a movie. They brought in a huge screen, and all kinds of technology and we watched the 3rd Work and the Glory movie. I was totally lost. I haven't seen the first two, nor have I read the books... yet? I can't quite get into them right now.

For dinner Wednesday night, we ate enchilada pie. No idea which recipe we actually used, but it was a white sauce thing, with cream of mushroom soup. Which would have tasted AMAZING if we hadn't used so much lighter fluid on the top of our dutch oven coals. Everyone who ate the top cheese layer felt ill, and said they could taste the lighter fluid. I tried to make the best of it and joke around that I liked lighter fluid for dinner... some giggled, others thought I was really serious, funny stuff.


Sarah, our fearless leader with the lighter fluid.


I thought it tasted amazing, except for a slight chemical taste. I don't think anyone was too horribly sick as a result. Alessandra was ill the next evening, but I don't think it was related to this. This was our first meal gone awry.

While the enchilada pie was being made, we had a mini hair salon in the food tent. Heather gave me two french braids. After that, everyone around camp started walking around with french braids. Girls are fun. :) I likey.



Thursday we woke up at 6am to start a fire for the backpack chicken. Thankfully it had stopepd raining long enough for us to start a fire and heat up the rocks. We didn't realize the fire ban was still on... OH WELL! Unfortunatly, the rocks weren't hot enough and our chickens didn't cook. What a sad waste. :( After that, we were all a little sad and depressed that it didn't work out. Next time (should we do this next time) we're putting the rocks IN THE FIRE instead of around the fire pit. Second meal ruined.

Thankfully we had a backup. Dorina's Taco Potatoes! I was so looking forward to them. Unfortunatly again, she said her mom bought the wrong kind of potatoes (You need white baking potatoes, we got yellow/gold type ones... and it didn't quite work, but if you ask me, it tasted awesome none the less.) Since it was raining, we couldnt' cook the potatoes in a fire. Anyway, I'm getting the recipe for the meat, although I'm sure you could just cook a taco-night meat of your choice, and put the toppings on a scraped-out baked potato. :) We had meat, cheese, lettuce, sour cream, tomatos, salsa, and crushed up tostitos on top. So very yummy. I definitely think I'll try and make this at home some day. Our potatoes weren't done all the way, so we couldn't scrape them out, but they were mostly done enough to have a mashed (almsot) potato/taco salad type thing. Everyone was full. Definitely a good thing, even though Dornia said it was our 3rd failed meal.

Friday we had bacon and eggs for breakfast. Something we will NEVER again do at camp. The bacon was a disaster. we cooked it on our grill thingy, and the grease got EVERYWHERE. THEN The pan wasn't cleaned until I started to clean it for our Grilled Cheese lunch at noon! Next year, no playtime without cleaning up the kitchen FIRST. We had girls go tube-ing on the lake/river whatever it was before the breakfast dishes were done. I was not amused. This was right after our WLM/testimony meeting too. Totally ruined my spiritual high. :(

By this time, we were all a little frazzled, some more than others. Our YW president had a PMS related crying break-down and thought she had failed us all. Our 1st counselor Lisa had a depression break-down and she almost went home. I felt like I had to keep it happy and light, otherwise, I think the hatchet would have ended up bloody. Seriously. Next year, we'll be better off. It didn't help matters that our ward apparently (every year) breaks camp early, and sleeps outside on the last night. So Friday we had to take down all our tents, and we had a few murmurings amongst the girls until I told them about Sarah crying, then they seemed to chip in for the next hour or so, which was good. :)

The tents weren't quite fitting into the bags so well, so I steam-rollered them so they would. Lisa snapped a photo of me rolling around. Kinda funny.



So, after the tents were put away, we went down to the Grand River and watched the canoes and tubing activities. The girls convinced me to go tubing with them. President Glandfield (in the Stake Presidency) has a boat and was pulling 2 girls at a time behind the boat like a water ski. I went out with Dorina and Justine. We sat on the front nose of the little boat, and I totally enjoyed going over the waves we were making. It was super fun, until the two girls (he took 6 out at a time on the boat, and 2 at a time on the tube) right in front of us lost their crocs. Who the heck wears crocs while tubing? It's quite beyond me why they didn't leave them in the boat. Really. I think they also fell off the tube, and we had to pick them up. Annoying. That took like 5 minutes alone. THEN began the search for the crocs. We spotted them, and told Cap'n Glanfield where about it was. He pulled up as close as he could to it, and ended up getting a little too close. So much drama. The propeller ended up getting bent, and so he couldn't get too close to the shore anymore. BOO. Our tubing adventure was ruined. BUT I saved the croc, whoop-id-dee-doo. Why am I not happy? Well, because I got a hideous bruise as a result. I rested my leg where I possibly shouldn't have. On the silver round thingy next to the rope tie-off thing (its called a cleat, I looked it up. yay me!). Anyway, it looks like this one I found just now. Only the boat I was on ONLY had the round thing and the cleat (where the rope is tied in the figure 8 way).


So the first layer of skin or so went with it. The cleat bruised me a tiny bit too. I documented it for blogging purposes with the good camera just now. I woke up today with a very sore leg, and I'm sure it will be quite sore all week too.

Pretty huh? Pretty disgusting!


Let's see, where was I? Oh yes. Friday afternoon at the boat. SO, we didn't get to go tubing, but President Glandfield said he'd invite us to go some other time. I suppose there's always next year!

This is the longest post ever. lol

Friday the bishopric came up for a visit. It was SO fun having them. They brought desserts! But firstly we had our dinner. We cooked spaghetti and meatballs. We decided months ago to do a "Monk's Meal" for the dinner where the bishopric came. The idea, is that you eat like a monk. In total silence. If you don't, you lose a utensil. First the fork, then the spoon, then the knife, then you lose your hands, then you lose your seat and have to sit on the ground and eat. I didn't lose anything, but Kelsi, Dorina, and Alysha all lost their drinks. We had juice boxes with it, and Kelsi ended up poking her straw into a meatball to eat it... which was also confiscated.

Here are a few pictures of the madness.

Sarah Confiscating a Spoon.



Alysha, sitting on the ground, eating off of the seat. Hey, at least she still had a plate! I suppose it could have been worse!



Kelsi, Alysha, and Dorina eating outside of the tent, on the ground. I'm not sure if they finished eating or not. Poor sister Gao, she's from northern China and I think she's part mongolian... She didn't have a clue what was going on. She's super green, and she was baptized about a year and a half ago. She's a rock though, she and her mom wake up at 3am on Sundays to attend church at 5am, its a 2 hour drive! She didn't lose any utensils, but she rarely talks, so she was safe. :)


After all the madness at dinner, the bishopric brought out drumsticks! No, not a turkey drumstick, ICE CREAM! It was awesome. It totally hit the spot after the week we've had. They brought like 32 of them, so we each indulged in two of them.

We then went to devotional, awards, and testimony meeting. Here's a funny-ish group shot as we were getting ready for it to start.

Back L to R: Laura, Sarah, Kelsi, Me, Heather. Front L to R: Justine, Dorina, Sister Gao, Alysha, and Sister Sylvester. Our sister missionaries got special permission to come to girls camp, I'm guessing it was because of Kelsi and Alysha, our two non-member gals.


At the testimony meeting, I'm happy to say that 6 of our girls bore their testimonies. Only Alessandra didnt' get up there, she doesn't like public speaking. But I was so happy when each of them got up. We were about 30 minutes in to our 45 minute testimony meeting and no one had gone up. I was so close to crying, feeling like a failure, so I said a prayer. I knew that if Justine went up, everyone else would. She got up first, then Kelsi did, then Alysha. When Dorina got up, she totally made me cry. She talked about how excited I was to see my first firefly, and how she'll never look at a firefly the same way again. I was totally bawling. I don't know why I was so excited, but those bugs are so cool! I almost wish all bugs were so cool-looking... but if they were, I wouldn't be as excited. :) Anwyay, Heather and Laura also got up. Alessandra said they ran out of time. Maybe she'll get up tomorrow and give a recap. :) The testimony meeting was great. We had a fire all ready to go after the testimony meeting, and Sister Sylvester shared a few Idaho Girls Camp songs with us. So fun.

This is the "baby shark" song. I think they're doing Grandpa shark right now. See, no teeth. :)


After THAT, we had some cake! A girl who recently graduated from Young Women's (Jen Schulke) made us a cake, it is ADORABLE!

See? totally cute. VERY tasty too.


THEN we set up our tarps, and slept on the ground. I didn't get too many good pictures, because 1) my camera sucks (except in the dark for some reason... what's up with that?) and 2) I was trying to be stealthy. It was 5:45am when I woke up and took these pics!

Everybody!


The Lamb/Cow, Justine, & Dorina.


Alessandra & Heather.


Kelsi & Alysha.

I have more pictures ones I took, of me with each of the girls, but I want them fixed up before posting them. It's been a long, long, week. And this post has seriously taken me the last 3 hours to do. Thank heaven for autosave! Its now 9:03pm... it says I posted it at 5:46pm, which, of course, is the time I clicked "new post" not the actual "publish post" time.

Anyway... I hope you enjoyed my camp experience. :) I did for the most part too. I was just super glad to come home and shower, and take a little nap in my own bed. :)

PS, While I was gone, Sasha got a litter box, catnip/toy, food, and a collar. lol All she does is sleep all day long. Sounds like me actually. :) I guess we have a pet cat.