Girl's Camp

I was able to attend Girl's Camp August 12-15. Luckily for us, Beka came up to watch the boys so Neil didn't have to take off work. The boys love having her come over. The hard part for me was there was no cell phone service. I'm okay being away from my family as long as I can talk to them every night so that was hard just wondering how Conner's day at school went, if the boys got along, what they ate, how Neil was doing, etc. I survived though. Our camp got changed at the last minute to a pretty rough boy scout camp. We had to park at the bottom and hike a quarter mile up a steep hill to get to the camp. Luckily there was a truck we could most of our stuff on so we only had to carry our back packs. That hill about killed me. You had to go up and down it to go swimming in the lake. We had 18 girls and 6 leaders go. It was a lot of fun. It was funny. All 6 leaders had planned on sleeping together in an 8 man tent but everyone had their air mattresses (we didn't let the girls bring them, no room) so as we got two blown up we could tell all 6 weren't going to fit and the bishop just laughed and said there's a reason why they call these tents 8 "men" tents and not 8 "women" tents. Loved it.

The girls got to go repelling, do a ropes course, geo caching and shoot a gun. I had never shot a gun before and we each got an 8X10 paper with a target on it. I got 20 out of my 24 shots on the paper and most on the target. I was pretty surprised. The first time I picked up the gun it did scare me and made me nervous knowing that what I was holding could kill someone. At first I didn't want to do it but realized I need to know how for my own protection.

I must say the food at camp was scarce. The stake provided all the food and we thought they'd have snacks and stuff but not really. Our first breakfast each person got one scrambled egg that we boiled in a ziploc bag. Who eats one egg. I felt so bad for the men that were there. Luckily we got smart after that first day and realized if we waited to be the last ward we got larger servings and often seconds if we waited around long enough. It was kind of embarrassing because the cooks got to know my face because I was always going back through the line but all that hiking really builds up an appetite.

Well everyone survived while I was gone. It was a nice break. There was a lot of time to think and I received a lot of inspiration I probably wouldn't have received otherwise. When I got home the boys were waiting at the door and although it had only been 4 days they looked a little different and bigger. Mikey was my favorite. He just started doing his happy dance all around the living room for about 10 minutes. How I love these little boys.