Girls Camp

This year we had ward camp and we decided to take the girls to the beach. We rented 4 camp grounds at Sycamore Canyon State Park and it was a hop, skip and jump to the beach called Point Mugu. Garry went as priesthood and he and I went up on Monday with Don and Karen Sawyer and took the 4th years and YCL's for the 4th year hike. Everyone else camp on Tuesday. It was an amazing Girls Camp this year. So much better than last year. I have found out that I prefer the ward camp to the stake camp. Much smaller, your own girls and your own agenda. It was very relaxing and beautiful. We had the best camp site. We had a blanket of trees covering us and didn't have to put up a single easy up for shade. Toni and I are getting ready to head out for the hike with all the girls. We had a girl visiting from Gary Indiana and she had never been out of the "hood" and had never even seen a mountain until she got here. She only made it a little way up the hike (It was straight up hill for about 2 miles), so Garry, Leslee and I ended up taking her back to camp and didn't go on the hike. It was the same hike plus a little more that we had gone on Monday with the 4th years, so we were more than happy to go back to camp and take a little nap by Wednesday.

We spent two days on the beach. It was beautiful, we had sea otters watching us and dolphins swimming really close by on both days.

We made a day trip into Ventura and rented bikes for two hours on the pier. It was so fun letting everyone ride around and see the beautiful ocen and surfers and what not.

This was the view from on top at our hike. We took the scenic trail and once we got on top, we could see so much of the ocean. This is Monday with just the 4th years and YCL's.

Our site had these beautiful, big gnarly trees all around us. The girls loved climbing them, but they were hard to get up, so the priesthood came to the rescue and made them a ladder and a little rope swing to enjoy for the week.

I taught one of the crafts which was macrame bracelets, anklets or necklaces. The girls enjoyed it, and most of them made anklets and wore them the rest of the week.

We ate amazingly well. We came up with a different dessert every night. We had s'mores twice and one night banana boats, then dutchoven cobblers (spice cake with apple filling, cherry and peach), and one night we had pineapple upside down cake and monkey bread. The MB was a big hit even though the top got a little burned.

The priesthood helped out so much. They were in charge of DO dinner night and they helped with other nights too. They were the best!

Our day in Ventura was so fun. Toni, Garry and I rode the surrey around and stopped at a rock garden. There were also two dead seals on the beach that were really stinking up the place. That smell of death was a first for some of the girls.

After the surrey, Garry and I rode this two person bike all around. It was a beautiful day!

Here we are getting ready to go on the surrey.

We ordered pizzas and brought them down on the beach. We played some volleyball and just sat around and enjoyed the afternoon.

Our theme was Seeking treaures in heaven, so we went with a pirate theme and came up with names for each group and then I photoshoped some signs and Karen and MaryAnne made some stakes, so we had everything labled for camp. This was our tent (8 leaders sleeping there) and we were the wenches.

The food tent.

Thursday night was skit night. We did skits in a bag. The leaders and priesthood did skits too. This was the priesthoods.

The game of camp this year was village idiot. Almost everyone played it. If you were lucky enough to be the village idiot, you had to go out into the street and yell as loud as you could "I am the village idiot" and then sing brown squirrel as loud as you could. They also made a sign for you to wear that said "I amd the village idiot" and you had to keep that on till the next time they played. So for our skit, we became "The Village Idiots" instead of the village people and we were each assigned as a different idiot and then we made up a song to YMCA. We thought t was hilarious! I don't think the girls appreciated it as much as we did. I was the "super Immodest swimsuit idiot" and had a shall scantily placed around me.

We even put some dance moves to our song.

Our last night we had a treause hunt for the girls. I made bottles and a letter head for the mother's to write their letters on. Garry and I wrote out a treasure hunt that afternoon and then we burried the bottles in the sand for the girls to find. We did it close to sunset and so they found their bottles and read their letters from home on a quiet spot overlooking the ocean and then we watched the sunset. It was a perfect way to get in the mood for testimony meeting.

It was truly an amazing week.

We put so much time and effort into making it a great week.

I know I was changed for the better because of it, and I hope the girls were too.