BUILD UPON THE ROCK- GIRLS CAMP 2015!

Girls camp was a HUGE success this year!!  I was SO relieved!  After fighting for it so hard, I couldn't bear the thought of it going bad somehow.  It was really awesome.  Some of the cool things that happened:
I had volunteered to pull the trailer with all the gear with my car.

 It seemed like an okay idea, and I was confident things would go well up until the night before when I started really thinking about what it entailed.  I finally decided I needed to just turn it over to Heavenly Father.  I kept thinking- I know that he CAN help me, I just don't know if it is His WILL to help me.  So I just prayed tor help to get there safely and not have it ruin my car.  I decided that if anything then went wrong, I would know that it was His will that something go wrong and we would be able to work through it.  It was a cool little boost to my testimony.  I love the power of prayer and how much answer I've seen to my prayers lately.  I was able to pull the trailer without any real trouble.  I hung on to Nate's encouraging words he'd given me before we left when I asked him if he thought I should have Lane drive our car.  He was so nice to me and had so much faith in me.  Made me feel good.  Helped me get through it.  It was stressful and I'll admit I was shaking while I was driving it up to camp.  It was a long 2 1/2 hours.  Once we got up there, I got to show of my newly found natural talent of backing up a trailer.  I don't know if a 15 point turn counts as a good back up job, but everyone was really nice and made me feel good about it :).  Kinda funny.  Although I will admit that when I was backing it up, TWICE, Lane and then Jacox had offered advice about which way to turn the wheel and I knew they were wrong, so I said no, and then I was able to do it the right way :).  Tooting my own horn?  Yes.  Feels good.  It was cool.  They were very complimentary afterwards.  Made a great end to a very stressful experience.
We unloaded the trailer, set up tents and camp, and then had our lunch.  Our campsite was SO AMAZING!!!  I was so impressed with the scenery!  I still can't believe Jacox called it a "barren wasteland".

Just right up over the edge of this rock is where the Laurels ended up sleeping the first night.  

If you look just above the orange water jugs, up on the rocks, are the ledges that a few of the other Laurels slept on~ Kinda freaky.  I feel all better about my mean decision to not let the Beehives sleep out there the second night.

Everyone decorated their bandanas

This is my good friend "Good Side".  And this just happens to be her good side.  

Good side and Gill #1- not to be confused with her "Mini me" that I'm carrying in my uterus.  She wants me to name her Jill as well :)

Look at Annie's cool shirt!  How does she think of this stuff!  She traced the dye on her tie dye shirt.  Looks like a giant map.

Jami and Abbi giving rock climbing demo

Everyone is crowded into the tiny bit of shade we had, it was too windy that first day to put up any canopies.

The weird things: the toilet was about 300 yards away and no running water.  That seemed really weird at first, but ended up not being too bad.  I actually drove myself to the bathroom a few times... couldn't get myself to walk and risk not getting there in time.  Plus it was tiring to hike up the hill to get back.  Yes, I am a wuss.
We all had a lot of fun exploring the area, climbing on the rocks, scouting out perfect places to sleep.  I still can't believe the ledges some of them chose to sleep on!  I was so scared for their lives.  We didn't let the Beehives.  I think they were bugged at us.
We had dinner, and then went and did some rock climbing on a rock wall just around the corner from our campsite, walking distance.  This was really cool!  I LOVED watching the girls help each other, encouraging each other to get up, cheering for them, and enjoying their success as they reached the top.  It was incredible!  I loved the bonding.  Everyone stayed there together talking, and bonding.  So cool.
That was something I really enjoyed about this camp.  Everyone bonded SO MUCH.  There were so many opportunities to sit around and enjoy each other's company and just talk.  We played the question game with a big beach ball which was really cool.  Fun idea.  The YCLs really outdid themselves this year.  They planned and carried out an amazing camp.

I think Kelly was one of the first ones to try it, she did so great!  All the way up to the top, first try!

Charity did great too!  I was so glad that ALL the girls gave it a try on this first wall!  

That first night we had a really cool devotional from Annie and Abbi.  I loved hearing about Annie's experience in the temple with being aware of the blessings she had received from choosing not to play soccer on Sunday.  Cool girl.  Good example.  We all talked and sat around just having a good time together for the rest of the evening.  We went to bed so late both nights.
That first night was pretty okay sleep.  I managed to cut off my water supply at the right time- never had to get up to go in the night!  Very awesome!  The slant that we were sleeping on was not ideal, and my skinny air mattress was... super skinny, so it wasn't the most comfortable night sleep, but I wasn't on the ground!  That helped.  And sleeping in til 7:00 felt good.
The next day we had breakfast and then hurried off to "Practice Rock".  I will have to steal some of Jami's pictures of this, This was was way more spectacular than the one the night before. This was our big rock climbing day.  Every single girl took a turn climbing- it was so cool.  I loved watching them struggle and then succeed.  Most of them made it up and felt really good about it.  I loved watching Kelly and Charity.  Kelly struggled on her first time up, but then was able to get up to the top the second time without too much trouble.  Charity got to the top both times.  Pretty awesome experience!  I was really wishing I could do it with them! We were there for a good four hours, until the sun had crowded out our shade.  We came back to camp, ate lunch, and then headed out for some swimming.  The "hot springs" ended up being a swimming pool that had really REALLY warm water (almost hot).  Not the most refreshing thing.  Not how we'd expected anyway.  Kind of a bummer.  Would have been really cool in the winter though.  We played there for a good two hours though, amazingly.  That was a lot of fun.  Annika and I had it out- dunking each other.  She got me about five times, I got her twice with the help of about 10 other girls!  Annie is one strong little chick!!  HOLY MOLY!!  I was seriously impressed.  I wish I still had it.  I lost big time.  I have several bruises to prove it.  I was in a lot of pain for the last half hour or so of the pool.  Kind of stressed about what I might have done to my baby while I was wrestling Annie.  Felt like one big long contraction but I think it might have just been scar tissue.  Not sure.  It wasn't til an hour later that I felt her move again.  That was a huge relief though.
We got back, started on dinner which ended up taking WAY TOO LONG because the scout stove was broken.  Ended up being a really great time to sit and talk though- we had some pretty fun discussions about first kisses and stuff.  Lots of fun :).  We ate our spaghetti, had another devotional by some of the girls.  I missed a couple- they did them every morning and every night.  Then we listened to some beautiful music to get in the mood for testimony meeting.  Testimony meeting was AWESOME.  I LOVE Girls Camp testimonies.  I was so impressed with so many of them and the way they've been overcoming their trials and struggles.  They are all such strong girls.  I loved it.  I loved hearing Kelly and Charity especially.  They are such good girls.
Time for bed, everyone was so happy and getting along so well, it was sad we had to tell them to go to sleep.  It was SO late though.
I didn't sleep as well that second night.  I think I needed to go to the bathroom but I so didn't want to.  Took me like 2 hours to fall asleep.  Finally did though and only woke up about half a million times during the night.  I just kept imagining sleeping in my own bed!!!  That was kind of hard, but whatever.
In the morning we raced the clock, trying to take down camp and load the trailer.  I was so annoyed that Jami, Lane, Jacox and three of the Laurels were off climbing while the rest of us were left to clean everything up ourselves.  Seemed REALLY unfair.  I don't think it could have happened any other way though.  They hadn't had much chance to climb any of the other days.  It was a struggle to get anyone to help though, so I got grumpy.  We finally left camp around noon.  It was another slow, long ride home from camp, pulling the trailer.  Nothing exciting happened though.  So very cool.  We unloaded at our house, everyone got their stuff, and camp was officially over!  Kind of sad, but also very relieving.  I couldn't believe how well everything went!!  Anyone who had not wanted to rock climb ended up loving it.  There was so much bonding time, and VERY FEW tiffs and drama.  It was amazing!  Words really can't describe how perfectly it went!  I was so glad.  Jami and I had prayed so hard for this camp!  It was so nice that it was a success and with very few issues.  Made me happy.