She Put on Her Big Girl Pants

Malia hauled out her courage and decided to go to girl’s camp this year. She hasn’t been since the boundary change brought us to a new ward, and this decision was a bit of a hard one for her. She does know more of the girls now and has some friends in the ward and that definitely helped. We also have a different young women presidency, and that helped too. Most of the presidency is made up of ladies we knew from the previous ward, so they know Malia and know about her food deal and are people that Malia trusts. So, we got the menu in advance, prepped her meals, coordinated with the leaders, and sent her out the door.

Malia was reluctant to go when it came right down to it, but she ended up having a great time. Her favorite activity was archery, and one of her least favorite was the water cannon, although there is a caveat for that one. She had not intended to get wet and was hauled out by some of the leaders but in the end, she laughed and had fun. There was a coordinated effort to heat her meals as needed and a consensus that her food looked better than theirs. One of the leaders, whom we all love to death, reported, “So proud of this girl! She laughed. She did hard things! She had fun.”

I’m so proud of Malia for being willing to go. I know this was a difficult decision for her, and I’m so very glad that she decided to take a leap of faith.

No Regrets

Malia got back from girls camp this morning. She was smelly and tired and happy about being smelly and tired. 😂 She has kindly accepted my offer to be a guest blogger as I was definitely enjoying my soft bed and my indoor plumbing while she was experiencing the joys of sleeping on the ground and using a port-a-potty. (I did tell her that she lucked out with the port-a-potty. All of my girls’ camp experiences were accompanied by the…aroma…of an old-fashioned pit potty. 😜)

 I was a little hesitant at first about Girls Camp, but after I didn’t regret my decision at all. The drive up was pretty boring, ‘nuff said. When we first got there, we got fed lunch, then we went to the amphitheater for our welcoming devotional. The Stake leaders then told all the wards where we were going for rotations, and we all headed off to our respective locations around the camp. Our ward started off with Archery, which I super duper enjoyed! The Archery set up was within walking distance, and so all us girls sang a whole bunch of camp songs on the walk there (including but not limited to: Boom Chicka Boom, Milk, Noah, The Moose Song, and Princess Pat). The bow I started off with was really hard to pull, and so I had to have some help- After I got pulling back the string, I did good! (I only broke one arrow…But it wasn’t in half, It was the top fletching.) Afterwards, we went back to our camp and had ward time. We worked on our secret sister bags, and I made a couple of bracelets for a couple of the older girls. We went to dinner, and had our first evening devotional. We then had a ‘Jesus Walk’ along the trail up by the old archery station. It was dark out, and so they set up fairy lights around paintings of Jesus. After we went back to camp, we all went to bed because we were all so tired.

 On Wednesday, we woke up, had breakfast, and went to the morning devotional. We went to the lake (which was really just a puddle…) before lunch, then went back to camp, and straight to lunch. After lunch, we went to the zip line. I opted not to do the zip line, because it had broken a couple of times previously. (It did once while we were there too.) It was still fun watching the others girls though! Following the zip line, we went back to camp and had ward time. One of the girls put beads in my hair, and of course the beads were green! Green is the best color. *Nudge Nudge, Wink* After ward time, we went off to dinner, and the evening devotional. Following the devotional, we had a whole dance party, in which the boys from another stake, who were camping by the archery, intruded on our party because they were silly gooses and didn’t realize the fact that there was a road for travel, and therefore climbed down and back up the mountain. Needless to say, none of the leaders were happy that they intruded on our GIRLS camp. After the dance party, all the wards chose a primary song of some sort, and we sang it to each other from our camp sites. After this, we all went off to bed.

 Thursday was the last full day we had. We woke up, and had breakfast, as well as the morning devotional. We went to our rotations, and we started with an obstacle course. There was a 7 foot wall…I may or may not had maybe kind of gotten stuck, but it was okay…the other girls were really cool about it. After that, we went to the crafting station at the pavilion. I made a bracelet, and then went back up to camp to get my lunch. After lunch, a couple girls and I went to the hammocks and met with a couple girls from a different ward, and then we went and spent the rest of the afternoon at Archery again. One girl found a lizard, and it was a little bit chunky…because it was chunky and found at Archery, she named it “Fatness Everdeen”. We all laughed about that… After Archery, we went back to camp and had ward time, in which we all started packing and stuff. After dinner, we had testimony meeting, and everyone but me and one of the leaders started crying… I felt so out of place not crying ;) The sunset during testimony meeting was amazing, and there was a rainbow on the other side of the sky as well. There was a storm way off yonder, which we didn’t think much about. UNTIIIIILL….That night was the first night my tent and a few other girls decided to actually stay up and play games. And then, that storm from way off yonder I mentioned came right on top of us, and we all had a freak out. We all ran to the leaders cars, and finished freaking out there. In the car I was in, we all jammed to Frozen… It was quite entertaining. After it stopped raining, we all went to bed. It was that moment, in which my tent and I created most of our inside jokes.

 Friday morning, we woke up, finished packing, and then did camp awards. I got the award of “Crafty Comedian”. After that, we went to our last devotional, and went back to our camps. After checking around and packing our last things, we got on the road headed back to the church.

It was a very very good week, but needless to say I was glad to be back home.😁👍🏼