Departure into the Wilderness

The weekend right after Youth Conference, Craig took the Young Men camping and doing stuff and they had a fantastic time!  I wasn't there for any of it, so I don't have all the fun stories to share, but here are some great pictures!

The stake sort of hinted that we shouldn't be calling this "High Adventure" any more, so the YM dubbed their trip "Departure into the Wilderness."  (Hey-- that's the title of this blog post!)  This was a little bit silly because they never actually were in any sort of wilderness.  In fact, they were just outside of Richmond the entire time.  But whatever.  (In my head, I liked to think of it as "Into the Woods," which made me chuckle to myself every time.)

They began by going to the temple while they were still nice and clean!  Good planning!

Craig with the Young Men!

In the back, Topher, Eli, Daniel, William, Jason, Gideon, Colton; in the front: Stephen, Sawyer, Ryder, and Truman

And then after the temple, they went to their campsite and got all settled in.  It was extremely hot, so they made the last minute decision to go to the swimming pool for a couple hours in the afternoon. That got everyone tired out before they went back to camp and made dinner.

They were in cabins based on their ages (except for William, who asked to have a cabin to himself so he could get more sleep!)

Ryder and Daniel "helping" cook.

Truman actually cooking!

And then they got good and muddy playing gaga ball.  Happiness!

In the morning they made breakfast

and then went rock climbing!  (All the good pictures Craig got were of Colton, but I swear Ryder was there, too!)

Apparently there isn't really anywhere to do real, natural rock climbing in Richmond, but Scott had found a company that uses these old pylons from  Civil War era railroad bridges that you can climb now.  They were actually pretty tall, too!  So that worked, I guess?

Happy Colton

Ooh, look, there's Ryder learning how to belay!

They walked out on a pedestrian bridge over the James River so they could see a preview of where they would be rafting the next day. 

After that, they went and helped out at a food bank.  Craig was really impressed with this place-- he said it was very well run, and really easy for volunteers to come and help out without any real training, so that was awesome.  Put those boys to work!

These were the biggest cabbages ever.  Apparently someone has a farm that grows cabbages exclusively for this food bank.  I hope the families receiving them actually know how to cook them!

And then the final morning, they got up and went whitewater rafting on the James River!

They finished up with a testimony meeting and lunch at a local park, and from there, they came home!  I was glad to have my boys back!

Between this and Youth Conference, that was two weekends in a row that the van was carrying teenagers camping!

Flower Arranging with the Young Women

We had another YWs activity where we all went to Tupou Nesbit's home and she talked about flower arranging.  She had huge vases FILLED with so many gorgeous flowers from her garden and the girls (and leaders!) could just grab whatever they wanted and go to town.  I wanted as many flowers crammed into the mason jar I was using as possible.  Others went for more spare looks, or for a certain color theme.  It was interesting to see how everyone went about it differently, but they all ended up with very pretty arrangements!  I guess you can't go too wrong when you're working with hydrangeas and peonies and so many other pretty flowers!

(That's my arrangement in the bottom left corner) Tupou's home was ALSO lovely, as was her yard and various gardens.  I can't even imagine how much works she must put into it all!

Kendra's three different arrangements