GIRLS' CAMP 2009

I had the most fun with 25 fifth-year YCLs this year - as the pictures will show. They were such a delight to work with. They had many leadership building activities before we even arrived that when they did, they did a tremendous job. Many went shopping with the cooks, created our banner-newsstand, made shirts, created certification rotations, skits, rules commercials, and schedules. They were so involved beforehand that it was fun for them to see how it all came together and to see how much effort leaders really do put into it. Leadership is not always fun - not always just in the spotlight - it's a lot of behind-the-scenes work. Anyway, here are some highlights:



Carolyn brought up lots of stuff for 'creative s'mores' like cream cheese, Andes mints, caramels, butter waffle cookies, banana, etc. We didn't see any graham crackers or hershey's chocolates! The girls LOVED it!
This is pretty much what Charisse and I did during the week (not!) But the girls were sooooo good, that rarely did we have to remind them of where to be or what they should be doing. It was an overall enjoyable week with them!
The girls overheard the stake staff one morning over breakfast talking/playing the "guess how many..." calories, carbs, protein, fats, etc. that were in the different things we were eating at camp and we got kind of loud and hysterical about it. The sneaky YCLs took back that info and created a 'skit' mocking us about it that morning at flag. We had no idea. They were always doing little skits, dances, hand-jives with their flag songs - they were definitely NOT a boring group of gals!

The girls would stay up late into the night chatting, giggling, laughing - we hardly got any sleep having our tent so close to theirs (but we enjoyed it...) But we were grateful for the tradition of the YCLs moving into the Pavillion the last night to sleep all together. They had such a great time - a little too loud, but it was far away from US! - in the morning, Charisse and I got our revenge by going up and making lots of noise to wake them up. She even steamrollered some of them and dragged others out of their sleeping bags - it was absolutely delightful! The morning before that, when they were sleeping in their tents, we had all the 1st years in camp (they had gathered to begin their hike early) come down with noisemakers and yell and bang pots to wake up the YCLs. They thought they were hot stuff for getting to do that!

Overall, it was a fabulous week - and I really enjoyed the Stake Staff I got to work with as well. We had lots of laughs - to tears at times - and I grew to love those ladies.