YWs Camp 2025

When I got called as a seminary teacher, Craig warned me that he didn't know when exactly I would be released as YWs president, and that he wasn't sure what would happen with camp.  He told me to be prepared in the case they needed me to go again, even if I wasn't the president anymore.  That was fine with me-- Kendra was one of only three girls in the entire stake chosen to be a Youth Camp Director and I wanted to see her doing that.  (I also figured it might be nice to be there in case she needed a little moral support, since I knew she was a bit stressed out about everything she was in charge of!)

When they called the new YWs president, everything made a lot more sense: it's Amy Patchett!!!  Who got married the Saturday before camp!  And she seemed to prefer going on her honeymoon over camping with a bunch of teenage girls-- go figure!  So I very happily stepped in and got one more summer of camp.  That turned out to be more stressful than I had thought it would be, simply because I wasn't sure how much I should be taking charge and making sure stuff happened, or if I should be deferring to the new counselors, even though they had never been to camp before.  In the end, I reluctantly took over and hoped people weren't mad at me for it.  But whatever they thought-- I had so much fun!!!

Kendra had to go super early, so Kari (the stake YWs pres) picked her up, leaving her own daughter to finish sleeping on my couch.  We tiptoed around her very quietly as I finished getting myself packed up, and then once we'd collected the other girls, we headed out, arriving at camp around noon!  This year they'd given us permission to set up our own tents (rather than only using the boy scout tents that are already there), so I was pretty excited to have my tent and air mattress!  The boy scout tents aren't the worst thing in the world, but they tend to smell a little mildewy, and you get a lot of daddy long-legs in them, which I don't love.  And more to the point, I do love my own tent!  We got it last year and it's tall enough for me to stand up inside, and it has this nifty little lantern that screws into the top!  It's just a really great tent.  And I'll take an air mattress with real bedding over an army cot and sleeping bag any day.  Sleeping bags make me claustrophobic, I always end up tangled up in them. 

One of our girls also brought a large tent, which she shared with her three besties.  So we got set up, ate our bagged lunches, and then headed to opening ceremonies by the lake!

I loved seeing Kendra and her fellow YCDs, Amelia and Melisse-- they were such great girls and seemed to work so well together and just love each other.  It made me happy!

Leading the opening ceremonies

Just being adorable

We hadn't gotten far into opening ceremonies when it began POURING.  There was a shelter nearby so we hustled into that, and Anita ran back to our campsite and closed up all the tents.  Bless her for that because I had-- once again-- left my tent windows wide open.  When will I learn?  But thanks to Anita, everything was fine.  The girls were divided into their battalions with their assigned YCLs (Youth Camp Leaders-- all the girls 15 and up) and they all scattered to various locations where they could get to know each other and play games.  Us adults got to hang out together and hear all the camp rules.  Good times!

Then our ward met back at our campsite to make dinner.  (Just for the first night-- all the meals after that were AMAZING camp food made for us by our awesome kitchen staff-- seriously, I love all the people who come and work in the dining hall so much!  They're the absolute best!)  We'd made freeze-dried meals back in May just for this dinner, but it turned out that we hadn't planned very well how to actually reconstitute them once we were at camp.  It took us a while (and a couple trips to the dining hall for various supplies that we hadn't brought, like measuring cups and a colander) to figure out what we were doing, but thanks to Anita's ability to delve in and just get the cooking done, everything turned out just fine.  In fact, despite Wendy's fears that the meals wouldn't be very good, I thought they were actually quite tasty and we had PLENTY for everyone.  Phew!

l-r: Violet, Lydia, Ember, Lilyann, Luci, McKinley, Marianne, Maisy (aka Stacy!), Kendra, Jadyn, and Lizzie

Julia finds a really uncomfortable way to nap while they dry off any of their wet bedding...

Then we had ward time for activities!  Last year the girls just wanted to hang out and talk, so we'd given them a craft to do and they had a great time.  When I mentioned this to the stake leaders, they suggested that fishing was another great activity where the girls could still mostly hang out and talk.  The girls all agreed that it sounded like a great activity for them, so when the stake actually sent around a survey asking what we wanted to do, I immediately chose fishing and sent in our response.  So I was surprised when Sis. Ray emailed me back informing me that we could choose more than one option if we didn't know what we wanted to do.  I was like, No, we just want to do fishing.  And then Sis. Hardy made a point of checking in with the new leaders to ask if they were really sure about the fishing (they assured her that was great).  And then a few days before camp they let us know that they had actually managed to find a couple fishing rods which we'd just have to share, and there was another group that wanted them after us, so we could only use part of the time.  It was a little weird-- why did they suggest it if they didn't want us to do it?  But no matter, we got our fishing time and the girls had fun!

Claire's husband is an avid fisherman, which meant she knew enough to at least help the girls get started!

Missy, my faithful, long serving 1st counselor, with her daughter Marianne!

McKinley with Ella, who has already graduated but came back to camp as a nurse's assistant

Julia pretty much tossed in her hook and caught the only fish of the evening!  What a natural!  (I should say-- the angle of this picture makes the fish seem a lot bigger than it was.  But I'm still impressed that she caught anything at all!)

Then Anita was the only person willing to unhook it and toss it back! 😝

We also had three girls in the Cville 3rd Branch (the Spanish branch) who were combined with our ward-- Nayelli, Alexandra, and Megan.  They were all pretty shy and happiest just hanging out together, but we tried our best to include them, too

Kendra

And then we got to do everyone's truly favorite thing, which is to sit around staring at a campfire.  McKinley is our resident pyro and had a good time using all her various fire tools to try and get the damp wood burning.  And the other girls sat around annoying watching her, yelling suggestions, and using very dull axes to split off bits of wood for tinder.  (No fingers were lost in this venture, but they made all the grown ups nervous!)  Tony Herring, his daughter Chelsea, and Amy Gaskin came by from the kitchens and brought us bags and bags of puppy chow which was much appreciated.  And everyone had a great time!

Oh hey-- that's me, sitting with someone's sleeping bag draped over the back of my chair!

That night the girls stayed up way too late chatting and were very tired the next morning.  But that's half the fun, right?  Me, once I rearranged my bed so it was my feet were pointing downhill and not my left shoulder, I slept all right.  For camping.  Some owl or something was making a lot of noise in the night (in addition to the chatty tweens)!

I was delighted, in the morning, to see McKinley and Maisie's camp t-shirts:

AMEN!  Also, how are these two NOT sisters?  

The girls all ran off to their various activities and I... wrote in my journal and read my book!  I was supposed to go to stake training, but since I've been released from YWs, I felt pretty good about skipping that!  And my book was really enjoyable!  It was an extremely pleasant morning!

Here's Kendra learning to throw an axe.  She was outraged last year when she found out that the Young Men got to throw axes while the Young Women were doing watercoloring.  She made sure to remedy that this year!

One of the fun things about all the stake activities I've gotten to be involved in is that I'm slowly getting to know more and more of the girls scattered throughout our stake-- it makes it a lot more fun to wander around saying Hi to people everywhere!  

Some of the other activities they were doing included kayaking, archery, making a reverse egg-drop experiment (basically, they were trying to create a landing to protect the egg, rather than something that drops with the egg), and camp service that involved clearing out an invasive weed.  There was also an obstacle course and something where they had to figure out how to drag a really heavy weight using poles and a sheet?  I dunno...  And, of course, the groups had to work on their skits, too...

Here's Kendra calling the various wards in to lunch.  I love the antennae look she's got going here!  😂

And then she got even crazier looking!

Now these two actually are sisters!

Ember and Lydia with a monster pile of weeds behind them

Lizzie and Jadyn with their reverse egg drop project

Playing 9-square in between stations

Reese doing the axe throwing

The various battalions (this year all named for flowers-- last year they were gemstones) lining up for lunch

Ember doing the obstacle course

Skit night was actually better than in years past-- we got to be outside (last year it was raining so we had it in the dining hall, and between the awful metal chairs and the echoing, it was kind of the worst!).  The girls managed to be loud enough so that you could kind of hear what they were saying, and a few of the skits were actually quite funny!  Who saw that coming?

Most of the leaders doing their skit (it was about how each generation goes about starting a fire and was pretty funny); I'm sitting off to the left in my yellow dress!

And then that night we had another campfire!  I think this may have been McKinley's best fire...

Wednesday morning, they had time for the grown ups to try out the various activities while the girls were busy with solo time.  After some fits and starts, I finally managed to try out the axe throwing!  With the axes, I got every third throw to stick to the target, which I thought was pretty good!  Then I tried spears, and was terrible at them (mine kept going into the lane next to me).  And finally I tried out throwing the shovels, which you grasp with both hands and then swing above your head before throwing them.  I only had a minute to throw all three and they ALL STUCK!!!  I was so proud of myself!  Who knew I was a natural shovel-thrower all this time???

I'm going to start keeping these under my bed just in case...

After that I was asked to me the second grown up for Scott Huff's egg drop class.  Unfortunately I was not assigned to Kendra's group, but here they are anyway:

I spy Ember and Lydia in there, too!

The group I was with was exhausted and barely participating.  I thought they were pretty lame, but Scott took it all in stride.

And here are Morgan and Luci (on the right) with their weed pile!

And here's Kendra pretending to lifeguard at the waterfront!

After that, I sat down on a bench in the shade, planning to read my book.  A leader I'd never met from the Rapidan Ward sat down so we began chatting-- I know people love to hate on small talk, but I actually really enjoy getting to meet new people, and she seemed lovely.  She had tinsel to put in the girls' hair, so she offered to put some in mine, too!  I'd always wanted to try it, but I'm too cheap, so this was awesome!  I got four purple strands woven into my hair and felt very Camp Glam.  (Actually, that's not true.  I loved the purple, but I hated having the little clamps in my hair that held them in place and secretly I worried that I looked like Michael Scott when he comes back from Jamaica with beads in his hair.  I had Kendra remove them the first morning we were home.  But I loved the IDEA of them.  And I'm glad I got to try them out without having to pay for it, since that would have been such a waste of money!!!)

Shortly after this, the Young Men arrived so I went to find them-- I was so excited to say Hi to Craig, Ryder, and Colton and to wish Craig a happy birthday!  (I also had to get our cook stove to them for their dinner that night.)  The stake has been doing this for a few years now-- the YM and YW share the camp for about 24 hours or so.  They try really hard to keep the boys and girls separated, but I feel like each year that rule gets a little muddier.  This isn't necessarily nefarious-- most of the youth have gotten to be good friends and just want to hang out with each other!  But I quickly learned that when the women have been using the showerhouse for a couple days, and then the men think that they get to use the showerhouse, things can get weird pretty quickly.

I have to get on my soapbox for a minute here-- for me, keeping the boys and girls separated sort of sounds overly puritanical, but I actually really like the idea of giving these girls a chance to be outside in nature and not worrying about their appearance!  I was shocked at how many of the girls I saw wandering around in makeup and I wanted to be like, You're camping!  This is a vacation from having to look good!  I thought that was an important concept twenty years ago, but now with everyone on social media constantly trying to present their best faces to the world, I think it's more important than ever!  For this reason alone, I think it's nice to give the boys and girls a break from each other.  

All this to say, I was excited to see Craig and my boys, but this also made everything just slightly more complicated for everyone.  We had leaders manning the gaga ball pit to make sure the boys didn't take it from the girls.  None of the girls were supposed to go to the showerhouse without being accompanied by an adult...  You just had to make sure everything stayed aboveboard.  

But back to my narrative-- the stake had more training for the adults, but this time it was combined with the men, so I went just so I could hang out with Craig.  (I guess I believe in rules for the girls but not for me!  But also, I don't care if Craig sees me without makeup!)  We ran into a few of our youth conference girls right as the training finished and had to explain to them that No, they couldn't go looking for their Youth Conference brothers!

Reese, Morgan, and Abby

And Reese, Abby, and Claire!

After dinner, we had bishop time, where Craig sat around our fire with us and we had a testimony meeting.  Not gonna lie-- it was probably the best testimony meeting I've ever seen at camp.  The ward we were bunking next to didn't all start screaming (as has happened often in the past).  The girls in our group weren't arguing over how best to keep the fire going...  You'd be amazed how often stuff like that can make everything less spiritual!

Craig began the meeting with some really good thoughts about our summer Book of Mormon reading challenge.  And then he asked us to go around the circle and invited everyone to share something-- if they weren't comfortable sharing their testimony, they could share something they learned or really liked at camp.  And that worked really well-- it avoided all those long awkward silences while everyone glances around nervously wondering who's going to speak next, but it also didn't feel like he was pressuring anyone to say something they might not be feeling.  I thought he handled it perfectly.  We ended with Lizzie (Jadyn's friend, who isn't a member) and she talked about how as they began clearing those invasive weeds, she began to realize that they were ALL AROUND the campgrounds, and how this felt like the evils of the world.  How insightful is that???  The whole thing made me really happy.

And seriously, how cute are these girls?

Then we went straight from this to Kendra's Faith Walk!  This was the thing she was in charge of for all of camp, and probably the thing she spent the most time stressing about over the last few months.  I knew it was really important to her that it go well and I was so glad I could be there to see it and participate in it!

Here you can see-- she's got the girls grouped by age, and they'll meet with a leader and then move forward and meet with another leader.  Kendra is in the foreground watching over it all.  You can barely see me in the middle of the whole picture sitting by myself in the grass waiting for my turn to talk with the YW about a time when I felt Christ in my life.  

There were about four rotations of this (so I go to speak to two groups), and by the time those were over, it was quite dark as we all made our way to the amphitheater by the lake where there were a couple bonfires roaring and Megan Huff and Liz Player (the stake Primary and RS presidents, respectively) spoke about Psalms 23.  

Liz Player with the YCDs (her daughter is Amelia, on the right)

We ended by singing all three verses of "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing."  It was a beautiful clear night and you could actually see the Milky Way in the sky.  I was so proud of Kendra for planning such a lovely, spirit-filled evening for everyone!

Megan had been watching Camille for me that day, so she'd brought her and her younger boys along to camp.  This meant I got to give Camille a big hug and enjoy a quick chat with Megan before they headed home, which made me happy!  

Camille along with Peter, Bram, and Truman

After they left I met up with Craig and we enjoyed wandering around and getting caught up.  And I was able to stop him from using the showerhouse that night-- he hadn't known it was just for the girls, since that was different from last year!  And then I was just getting settled in my tent when Kendra stopped by and wanted to talk about how the evening had gone.  I didn't want to keep everyone awake, so we went to the showerhouse and sat on a picnic table there chatting and enjoying the stars.  It was a very late night, but everyone was feeling very happy with life!  (While we were there some man showed up, accompanying a kid, and I had to tell them that the showerhouse was off-limits to the boys still.  I don't think the guy believed me.  This was a change from last year and none of the men seemed to know about it.)  

The next morning dawned way too early, but it was very pretty at least!  (Also, I got woken up in the night by some really loud bird; I finally figured out that it was a whip-poor-will!  Apparently they're hardly ever seen because they're ugly and pretty well camouflaged, but they're also obnoxiously loud in the night!  Lucky me!)  I rolled out of my tent and hustled over to the showerhouse to use the bathroom, only to slowly realize that the person I could hear in the nearby shower was probably another confused man.  I tried to hurry out but was still washing my hands when a (very male!) friend of mine emerged wrapped in a towel and we had the most awkward and brief discussion over who was supposed to and not supposed to be using that space.  I hightailed it out of there to warn the approaching leaders to not use that side and give him a moment to get out of there.  And I got a hearty laugh a few minutes later when my very embarrassed friend texted me apologizing for indeed being in the wrong place.  He texted his wife that he had managed to unlock the ultimate shame level that morning.  I'm just glad he was a friend-- if it had been a stranger, I probably would have yelled at him.  As it is, I just thought it was hilarious.  It might be time for the stake to pony up and get separate spaces for the men and women!

But what a beautiful morning!

This was our last day at camp.  They sent us up to the upper area away from the young men for workshops.  There were six, and you got to pick four to attend.  They were all really good, but I have to admit that by the end it was getting quite warm and I was getting sleepy.  Not to mention ready to head home!

And then it was closing ceremonies, which included dancing to the camp song and a few selected people sharing their testimonies (thank you for keeping it short and sweet-- a long, drawn out testimony might have done me in at this point!) and then of course we had to take pictures of everyone and all the various groups!

Waving their battalion flags

All the YCDs and YCLs

Goofy picture

All the grown ups

ALL the girls

EVERYONE

Kendra and Morgan

And then we grabbed the sack lunches they'd provided and headed back to our campsite to get all packed up!  We had several more girls to take home than we'd originally brought (the YCLs and YCDs had to report early, and the Spanish girls had gotten their own rides), so it was very complicated trying to make sure we had enough people coming to haul all of our gear home.  I'd had to make some phone calls that morning and beg people with trucks to come and help us out!  Of course, once they came, it was hard for them to find our campsite, and then Camp Shenandoah has some dumb rule about not having more than one car at a campsite at a time?  I finally apologized profusely to Kari as I informed her that I had no intention of following that rule.  (And bless her rule-loving heart, she let it slide!)  Not all the girls were going to the same place, so we had to make sure everyone's stuff got loaded into the right car.  But I didn't figure that out until half of them had wandered off to use the bathroom (now quite a ways further away, as the men finally had taken possession of our beloved showerhouse!), so we couldn't load up until they'd returned...  The hardest part of camp was just managing to leave!!!

All our girls!  Megan, Nayelli, Alexandra, Ember, Violet, Kendra, Lilyann, Lydia, Marianne, Julia, Ella
Maisy, Jadyn, Lizzie, Luci, and McKinley

Plus the leaders-- me with Missy and Clair (and missing Anita, who'd had to leave the day before)

We also had the boys come say Hi to their sisters very quickly!

Rawlins, Bowes, and Woolstenhulmes!

And Smiths!

The drive home was blessedly uneventful, and everyone came and picked their girls up pretty quickly.  I was so happy to shower and take a nap in my bed!  It was good to be home again.  (Ember, whose family camps quite a bit, said that if you go camping for your vacation, then all the rest of the year feels like a vacation and I loved that so much-- it's so true!!!)

I'm so super impressed with all the people who make stuff like this happen.  I can't imagine all the work that goes into just this one week to make it amazing for so many girls.  I was so pleased with how the week had gone, and so proud of Kendra doing such a great job as a YCD!  I'm glad it worked out for me to go another year.

But I'll be honest-- if Craig and I get to stay home next year, I'll be okay with that, too.  😉