Girl's Camp 2013!

 **Excuse the blurry pictures... Didn't get many more pictures because by the middle of the day my phone battery would be dead... David told me when I got home it's because I didn't turn some roaming thing off and it kept trying to connect which uses a lot of battery life.**

This year I had the privilege of attending the LDS League City Stake 2013 Girl's Camp as a unit leader for South Shore Ward. "Oh The Places You'll Stand" was the overall camp theme (changing the Dr. Seuss book "Oh the Places You'll Go" to fit with the Young Women theme this year which is "Stand Ye in Holy Places".) each group got to pick a Dr. Seuss book for our individual unit. Technically Dr. Seuss wrote the book we picked, but under another pen name, Rosetta Stone... it's called "Because a Little Bug went Ka-Choo!" We liked that it was about how the littlest event can cause big results. AND we loved that we would get to use bugs as part of our look.

the red and white beads were glued together to represent the Cat in the Hat. The clear bead is my unit leader bead. The black bead was for doing rifles. The yellow bead was for doing archery. The dolfin bead was for coming in second place (with my partner, Sister Delange) in the canoe races. The other side has two shrinky dinks. The purple one, one of the young women (Kennedy) made... she made one for me and one for Holly. It says "It's Hall Goode" on it (a clever pun I came up with ;) ) and half a heart so when we get together we can connect them, lol. The other shrinky dink is a bug I drew to represent this years theme.

Our camp is in Louisiana, not too far from here, a few hours away. I got to go with all amazing women and I had soooo much fun because I got to go with one of my best friends, Holly, who is hilarious. The camp grounds are beautiful. The air is super sticky and hot... that would be the only down side. But looking back I hardly remember the heat (I really only remember because I took a shower whenever I could!). Our campsite had electricity so I got to plug in a huge fan to blow in my tent all night, which helped me sleep comfortably... not to mention my beautiful, comfy tent, and my queen sized air mattress.

bridge just before our campsite

we shared with the Seabrook Ward

One girl said my tent looked like an Asian Temple

I got to design our ward camp shirts and the camp flag, though the girl's helped me paint a lot of the flag.

front of our shirt

back of our shirt

camp flag, a retell of the story around the flag with the bug in the middle. Logan on the bottom left, Angelica on the right. Brother Holt behind them.

We had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun... I can't speak for everyone of course. I was to help in the craft cabin, but if I ever go again (which who knows, David might not want to take a week off again so I can go to girl's camp!) I would like to do certification next time. I went to parts of some certification and I really enjoyed it.

made a muffin in an orange peel one morning at certification

girl's hearing a lesson on how to properly put out a camp fire while waiting for their muffins to cool down

Cute "Cat in the Hat" fruit skewers... this one is Julie's, and she already had the other bananas and strawberries eaten off of it before I got a picture. Pinterest sure has helped out with camp ideas.

From Left sitting down is Kacie, Hannah in green, Julie, Kennedy still eating her cat in the hat fruit, and Elisa.

(this is out of order the above was day three I think)

Back at the campsite on day one, we played some games and hung out with the YL's (youth leaders) from South Shore and Seabrook Wards.

Chelsea with her Dr. Seuss inspired hair

Kacie with her Dr. Seuss inspired hair. The game we were playing: Someone is blindfolded in the center. This person touches the hand of one of the ladies in the circle around her. Then the blindfolded person says the name of an animal "Cow" for instance. And the person they touched has to make the sound. The blindfolded person has to try to guess who made the sound. It's funny.

When I looked in my bag the first night at camp, I found Liam had stuffed a letter to me from him inside my bag.

"Dear Mom, I will miss you. I love you. Love Liam." It made me so happy.

The next day we got to go on a "Pioneer Day" hike... well I missed it. It started at 6 a.m. I woke up at 6 a.m. was ready by 6:30... yikes. Not very punctual of me. But I got to hang out with the 4th years and CPR certification. Holly, luckily, woke up for the hike and took the girls. Thank goodness she was there! We wore the Stake camp shirts that day.

Kacie and Angelica. They sewed some matching shorts.

The girl's, wrestling.

Holly making some crafts

Mess Hall. Julie is in the very back Left, Tyreema next to her, than Tykeema, than Chelsea. On the right we see in the back Elisa, and probably Kennedy next to her, Hannah in the front.

After some classes, bunch of girls walking back for a little free time.

Tyreema on the left, Tykeema on the right. Sisters.

Lots of fun things happened at camp. I can't remember all the funny stories, sadly... maybe I can remember them but my kids are like "Mom, when are you going to be done? When are you going to play with us?" right now so I have to hurry... if I don't finish now, I won't do it... I know this from several unfinished posts I have stored up.

Sister Cowley, South Shore Young Women President

I got a bullseye!!!

special dinner they had for the unit leaders one night, in the a/c part of the mess hall

Holly was making fun of my hair wrap towels I got at target and put it on her head upside down to continue the making fun of. Someone said she looked like a ninja turtle, lol

They had a super fun dance one night. We danced like crazy. They also had a photo booth set up. This is me and Holly. That night I fell. I got the girl's to throw cups of water at Holly because she was sitting down not dancing. That got her up. She forced me to the ground and got some other girls to dump water on me. It was fun until the other leaders got mad at us for playing with water near the music equipment... I don't blame them... Though technically I started it... I did not dump water near the equipment, that would be Holly and her girl's... haha.

hard to see but we got most of the South Shore girl's in this picture

My rifle skills... not very good... I only got to shoot two rounds, 5 shells each round.

Kennedy. Last night there a few girls came to hang out in my tent

Tyreema

Angelica

Kacie grabbed my camera and took some lovely photos of herself :)

We had a few service projects this year at camp. This one is to sew these pieces together to make quilts for a few people. Another was to make bags to keep in your car and hand out to homeless people... inside has information on locations in the Houston area where they can get real help, an inspirational scripture, some body wash/soap, some Capri Sun's and granola bars. Each girl got to take one home and hopefully they'll have a good experience handing them out. They had a few other projects too. This picture is super blurry because my phone camera had some humidity on it... I wiped it off.

We made "Pillow Treats" for the girl's... okay I only made them one night, Holly handled the rest of the week. I hand painted these sneezing bugs on some hankerchiefs... Julie liked to wear it as a head bandana. You can kind of see the bug antenna that Holly came up with.

We ate well at camp. This is Angelica's favorite dessert... dirt pudding or something... I don't like it that much, mainly because I don't like vanilla pudding.

Tyreema is there helping do the flag ceremony

Chelsea... she was also one of the camp lifeguards (so was Kacie).

I made this camp scrap book... but it got destroyed by the time I got home.

Our ward Bishop (if you are another religion, think Priest... we have the young men in the ward as the Priests, that's why we call our "Priest" the Bishop... uh, that's why I think we do it, anyway). Bishop Watts had a smile on his face the whole time he was there... and what a good sport, he wore the bug antenna that we made him longer than the rest of us!

Going to hand out some bug trophy's tonight. I made these too. We have the "doodle bug award" for this girl who was drawing when she could. The "Jumping Spider award" for one of the girls who did the Leap of Faith copes thing, she also 'jumped' to help any of her friends when they needed her. "Fly on the Wall" award for Kennedy who liked to watch everyone. "Worker Bee award" for the young lady who worked super hard. "Assassin Bug award" for one of the girl's who was really good at archery. "Lighting Bug award" for this girl with a big bright smile and was really good rifles and archery for her year... reminds me of lighting... for some reason. "Cricket Award" to go to the girl who sang with me and Holly in the shower area and also for picking up the cup game so quickly.

Some funny moments:

Holly playing the "psychologist" game with the girls and hearing their stories about it at dinner.

One girl, Kennedy, kept watching Holly and me laughing at Holly... but mostly Holly... because Holly is so funny. So one night me and Holly watched her... until she saw us. That cracked us up, maybe no one else, but we thought it was funny.

Kennedy putting on a horse head mask and everyone singing "Get your hooves off the table Clementine!" and then Kennedy ran around the mess hall. Probably had to be there for that too.

There were more but hard to explain why they were so funny. 

Bishop Watts said on Sunday how he got to be there for most of Girl's Camp and that he never saw a couple of leaders have more fun... he was talking about me and Holly :)