Girls Camp 2008

This past week was girls camp. Katie went and did participate and did have a good time despite what she might tell anyone. I can tell by the way her attitude is and it was good. I was happy about that. We left on Wednesday morning. We stopped at Provo Falls for lunch on the way up to Stillwater which is where out campground was. It's just about 100 miles from Bountiful. It was a nice group campground with bathrooms - the non flushible kind. No hot water. No electricity. But otherwise, a nice area. We set up camp and then covered and decorated journals which we then left out for everyone who wanted to could write nice little messages in each others journals. After that activity, we did an activity known as the Electric Fence. We found 4 trees spaced nicely apart and put a rope completely around the four trees then put all the girls inside the roped area. They were told that the rope was like an electric fence. They couldn't touch it or go under it and they couldn't talk to each other. They had to figure out how to get all of them outside of the roped area keeping those rules in mind. Everytime they violated a rule, it would count as a point. 3 points, and if anyone had gotten outside of the electric fence, they would all have to go back in and start all over again. It was quite the challenge for them to figure out how to get out without speaking, without us giving them any clues and without touching the fence. It took about an hour and a half before they succeeded. We were all getting frustrated by that point. Especially everytime they had to start over. It was a good learning game since they learned how they had to work together in order for all of them to succeed at the game. After the game, we started the fire and cooked our foil dinners. We had our devotional time every evening after dinner around the campfire. Katie and I slept in the back of the van next to one of the tents. It got really, really cold at night. We about froze all night long.

On Thursday we were happy to wake up to the sunshine which quickly warmed us up. After breakfast, a lady from the ward came up and helped us make plates or bowls out of pottery. We had to gather things from nature to make impressions in the pottery. It was another fun activity. For lunch I told the story "Stone Soup" and all the girls put in the items they had brought from home to add to the soup. While the soup cooked, we finished up with our pottery activity and wrote in journals. We then did a compass activity for the girls who had to pass off that skill. We played games and goofed around until dinner which was hamburgers and hot dogs. After dinner we had our devotional time and then went to bed for another long, cold night of sleep. This time, Katie and I both slept with our hoodies on our heads, double socks on our feet and we doubled up our blankets. It was better, but still cold.

Friday morning after breakfast we all made sack lunches and headed off for our hike. We did a 4-mile round trip hike. It was nice but exhausting. I pulled my groin muscle somehow and limped most of the way back in extreme pain. It was your birthday so I yelled "Happy Birthday Charlie" when we were at our stopping point of the hike for lunch out in a wooded clearing. Did you hear it?? We got back to the camp around 4:00pm from the hike. I didn't make Katie go on the hike which was a good thing. The terrain would have re-injured her healing fractured foot. She stayed behind with 2 of the YW leaders and they did their own version of solo time and got potatoes wrapped for dinner and stuff like that. While dinner was cooking, we all made bracelets. For dinner we had dutch oven BBQ chicken and baked potatoes. For our campfire devotional on that night, the dad of one of our leaders came and played his guitar and sang and did a spiritual devotional for us. He sang a song about our Heavenly Mother that brought us all to tears. After his part, we had our testimony meeting. By the time bedtime came, I could hardly walk and I could hardly life my leg without excrutiating pain. I tried to go go to sleep but even laying still brought me to tears so I finally hobbled back outside and had the Bishop and Josh give me a blessing. My nights sleep was less than comfortable to say the least since everytime I moved it hurt but I managed to make it through the night.

Saturday morning we got up, had breakfast, packed up and headed home. We got home about 1:30pm. The shower felt heavenly after almost 4-days and being able to use a bathroom that didn't stink and you could flush was also fantastic. And, I slept soooooooooooo good last night in my own, comfortable bed.