And Herman, the family pet, Cha!

What is more exhausting than three day of girls camp? Nothing! What's more fun? Nothing! (unless you count the pre-camp hike). This year I was so lucky and got to spend a few days at Ensign Ranch with all my girls for one last Moxee/Terrace Heights bash. Here's a little of what we did:

Wednesday

Adalee, Monet, Emily, Morgan, Taylor, Anna, Me

I got up there during dinner. Dana was kind enough to drop me off but then he had to skeedadle to Suncadia for a tee time (sneaky, sneaky) which left me to put up our new, tiny one and a half person tent. Dana said it was super easy. My fellow campers will attest to that not being the case (I think the spiders were even laughing at me when I pulled the tarp off the third time:)) In any case, I got it set up and joined the girls for evening devotional, the taking down of the flag and songs, songs, songs.

Thursday
Mornings start early in the forest which was a good thing since we had to cook our own breakfast and making enough pancakes, eggs, and bacon to feed 20 people takes a while. I learned a valuable lesson too: if you sign songs you learned at girls camp while flipping pancakes, you WILL be called down by the YCLs to perform with them in front of the entire camp. Thankfully, I do an awesome Princess Pat (...a rigabamboo. Sing it with me Mom!). After flag we had certification, followed by a whole lot of playing!!
After stealing the key to the rope swing, we got a little crazy. Is that Laura in her red robe of comfort? Yes, yes it is. The girls scampered off to certification, the service project, and one seriously awesome rock wall, which I dominated right after I had to kick some boy scouts out of the way.





Then it was evening flag, songs led by the YCLs, skits, flying candy, ditties and wiggalos.


Friday

Sally, Adrianna, and Kelly cleaning up from
their crash wounds.

Another early morning, more delicious food, and some fun cleaning the biffies (with plenty of screaming and sanitizer for good measure). The best part of the day was the YCLs mock disaster. A plane went down in the center of camp and the girls were told to run to their campsites to locate medical supplies (because we love our girls, we left out a first aid kit for them to find...shame shame). Along the way, they encountered YCLs with various injuries. Some of them were super gruesome--broken bones, head traumas, gashes. The water puddle by our camp was stained red for the rest of the week. Super cool.

Unfortunately, our girls panicked a little and did not remember Morgan's excellent first-aid training. Instead of leaving their concussion victim to go for help, they decided to bring her for a bumpy ride in Sister Barduhn's wagon. Guess we'll be going back to remedial first aid. Whoops. The most hilarious bit was that we leaders were not allowed to be in the camp to offer help or advice (the theory behind this being that every disaster movie, book, etc always kills off the adults so the kids are left to fend for themselves. Lovely.) So, we adults spent two hours laughing it up at the leader camp in the middle of the 'ocean'. At the very end, we noticed a group of young campers dragging a YCL to our area. They decided it was more sanitary to bring the dead and toss them into the ocean:) Funny for us; not so much for the YCL who got tossed on the grass. The remainder of the day was free time. Most of our girls went horse back ridding, but I took the rest to the other end of camp for canoe races and swimming. Because what camp is complete if you don't scare some ducks and go down the slip n' slide, am I right?



Hands down, the best part of the week was the Bishops arriving for dinner and our evening program. Bishop DeGooyer even took a brave turn on the rope swing before beginning his devotional. Finally, we headed down for our Iron Rod activity. For those who haven't done this at a camp, it's intense. We brought each girl blindfolded to the Iron Rod where our 'tempters' tried to coax them off. At the end of the rod, the entire amphitheater had been turned into an amazingly glorious Celestial Kingdom, complete with a white tree. I had the priviledge of putting the girls on the rod and it was such a special experience. We finished the night with a testimony meeting and birthday cake for the Bishop.

Saturday
Cleaning up is never fun but our girls were great. We had one final flag ceremony before bundling them into cars for the drive home. Dana came up to get me (and he brought me a donut...wonderful man!). We got home, off loaded their packs, and crashed. I'm so grateful I was able to go up and so appreciative for the other leaders up there (especially those who took the whole week). And I'm doubly grateful for all the new girls camp songs. I'm probably gonna need 'em.