Young Women's Camp!

So, yes, I got to go to YWs camp this year!  I've been in YWs tons throughout the years, but I've always had small enough children that I didn't even try to go (except once when I stopped by for a few hours during the day-- but if you aren't spending the night, I don't think it really counts), so this was exciting and scary!  Other than those few hours, the last time I attended camp was when I was in Young Womens, a thousand years ago.

I didn't really know what to expect or what I needed to be doing to get ready, so the higher ups kept asking me what questions I had and I'd have to admit that I didn't know enough to even have questions.  Fortunately, I have a counselor and advisor with more recent experience and they were on top of things.  They got me through it and I was so grateful to them!!!

Things were also complicated this year because the YW were using the same camp as the Young Men, and the two overlapped by a night.  This made for something of a logistics nightmare for all the people planning it, as they tried really hard to never let the boys and girls see each other.  (That might sound oddly puritanical, but I thought it was a great goal since the girls arrived at camp on Monday, but the boys came Wednesday, meaning the girls were already pretty gross.  I was glad that we weren't setting them up to suddenly feel the need to preen for the boys-- it's camping, for crying out loud!  Also, I'm a firm believer that girls need time away from boys to be free to be their own wild and wacky selves, so I didn't want that time intruded upon.)

But.  This meant that I was gone Monday through Thursday (with Kendra), while Craig arrived on Wednesday and stayed until Saturday (with Bentley and Ryder).  We originally told Tom and Donna we needed them to babysit Colton and Camille Wednesday to Thursday, until we realized (in one of the biggest duh moments ever) that Craig would still be working 8 hours on Monday and Tuesday while I was gone, and maybe it would be a good idea to have a little adult supervision, especially since Bentley was also working one of those days.  So they were very gracious about adding that to their schedules.  We have REALLY put them to work this summer!  We also had to negotiate who was driving the van when and finally settled on me taking the van to camp, and then it stayed until Craig drove it home at the end of the week, so we could offer the girls rides to camp, and the boys could get rides home from camp, but we needed parents to help out the other directions.  See what I mean about the logistics???  It was all very complicated.

The other wild thing is that we had 14 girls attending camp from our ward!  We had a few people move in, a couple visitors who joined us, and some girls who decided at the last minute to come (one doesn't usually come to church, the other usually attends in her mother's ward about an hour away).  My guess is that last year we had about half that number.  So it was AWESOME to have so many girls, but it also made everything a bit more complicated: one girl had a lot of health issues (probably related to her habit of staying up until 4am and then eating bread soaked in butter even though she was lactose intolerant); one girl has mobility issues from birth and her dad had assured her we would have a golf cart for her, but we had no way to get one so she felt pretty let down when she arrived (I felt terrible about that, but we did get things worked out by having the camp quarter master drive her everywhere that was too far for her to walk), another girls has a lot of anxiety from being around other people and would need down time to calm down a bit, and one girl just liked to follow the leaders around offering up terrible suggestions (such as waking me up at 6:15 to ask if we should start waking everybody up since they were supposed to be up by 6:30...  Um, NO?)...  And then we had some issues with a couple of the girls just not wanting to do anything and then being really angry with me for trying to get them moving...  So, yes, things got a bit messy at times.  I suspect with less girls it would have been easier to keep track of and manage everyone's various issues.  

But.  Having said that, the girls were also wonderful in so many ways!  They all got along really well with each other (which is HUGE.  SO HUGE!).  And the girls who were leaders were out there working with their girls and just being amazing.  

I had no way to charge my phone, so I was trying to use it as little as possible.  This means I forgot to take very many pictures, but here's what I did get and a few pictures I stole from other people...

Working on name tags to go outside our tents

This year the wards all slept in tents near each other, but then during the day the girls were divided into battalions based on their age.  The girls had mixed reactions to this, but I thought it worked really well!

Avery, Kendra, and Liberty

Avery, McKinley, Violet, Sabrina, and Lina

Gaga ball was a HUGE hit

As was Nine Square

Marianne doing bottle rockets (with our friend Chris Shaw!)

Sabrina cradling the rocket she'd decorated with her sister, Luci

I was trying to film McKinley launching hers, and it kept not working and then when it finally did work, some random girl walked between us right as it launched.  Such an epic failure of videography!

The whole gang at the mess hall, l-r: Ella, Marianne, Frankie, Lina, Missy, Megan, McKinley, Madeline, Avery, Kendra, Liberty, Violet, me, Teagan, Luci, Elise, and Sabrina

So, yes, the difficult part was just managing so many people.  The part I'd actually been worried about-- the camping aspect of YWs Camp-- was SO EASY!!!  It turns out, after sleeping under a handcart for a couple of nights, sleeping in a boy scout tent on a cot feels pretty luxurious!  I even had a tent all to myself, which was great.  And most of the food was cooked for us and it was pretty good to boot!  The weather was fine, too-- hot if you were in the sun, but pretty pleasant in the shade.  We had a quick rain storm, but I managed to run back to camp and close up everyone's tents before it hit, so that wasn't a big deal and that rain cooled things down very nicely, too.  That night it actually felt good to be snuggled in my sleeping bag!

It was weird having Craig show up on Wednesday!  I was so excited to see him, but we were both pretty busy keeping track of all the kids we were in charge of, so we could only chat for a few minutes while we swapped cars and gear.  He was scheduled to spend a half hour with all our girls, but he needed to be focused on them, not me, so I had to not be my usual co-dependent self.  (I did get to sneak over to the boys' side and give Ryder and Bentley hugs, which made me happy.)  The day I headed home, I was leaving the camp just thinking, "Bye, Craig, wherever you are!  See you in a couple days?"  So, yeah, that was weird.  On the plus side-- in years past when Craig has been at camp, I've been pretty upset if he didn't manage to call me.  Now I have a much better appreciation for just how busy the leaders are, and how hard it is to find a place to make a phone call where you have a signal and everyone isn't just listening in from their tents!  So that's probably a good thing to understand.

Bishop time!

One of the really fun things about doing camp shortly after trek was getting to see the girls who were in my trek family again!  (Especially when a few of my ward girls were not happy with me, it was nice to run into Emily and listen to her telling me I was the best trek mom ever.  See, Rivanna girls?  I don't suck!!!)

Speaking of which-- there's big sister Martha!  (Also, you can see our scout tents back there!)

The girls had to cook for themselves one night.  Since that was the day it rained and all our firewood got soaked, we were very fortunate that Megan planned for that and brought her camp stoves for us to use!

Camp stoves for the win!  Also, Yum!

I brought my speaker and the girls were very excited to get to play their music.  And I tried not to think too much about my draining phone battery...!

Making friendship bracelets for each other

Getting ready for skits!

Kendra, Libby, and Madeline

Sabrina, Elise, and Luci

This wasn't how they actually learned archery, but it makes for a cool photo!

All the leaders

I got to observe the self defense class, and I thought it was really well done.  The woman running it did a wonderful job talking about boundaries and how you get to decide what makes you comfortable.  Once she'd covered the basics of how you enforce your boundaries (she described how your reactions can progress from Classy, to Sassy, and then if that doesn't work, to Nasty!), then she went over some basic punches, kicks, and how to get out of various holds.  It was really good information that I want to revisit with the girls in my ward soon.  I love seeing girls learn to be tough and take care of themselves!  

The last night they did what was called a "faith walk" where we walked along the trails in the dusk singing hymns and holding tiny tea candles.  Every so often we'd come upon a person or two who would share their testimony or a story from the scriptures.  It was really lovely, definitely my favorite thing about camp by far.  Pictures really couldn't do this one justice, though, so you'll just have to imagine it!

So, overall, camp was really great.  And I'll have a better idea of what to expect and how to better set up expectations next year, so hopefully it will just keep getting better!  (Also, the girl who gave me the most grief came up to me and apologized after church the following Sunday.  And while I'm certain that her mom made her do that, I also have a much better idea how impossible it is to make that girl do anything she doesn't want to do, so an apology from her totally counts.  All is forgiven.)

One of our ward members, Gabe, was at camp the whole time running the archery class.  He also took a lot of drone footage and put together this video, which does camp a LOT more justice than my photographs, if you want to watch!