Girl's Camp 2011, part 1

As promised, good and happy things. Namely, my adventures at Girl's Camp. Most of you know this already, but this was my very first ever experience at Girl's Camp. I joined the LDS faith at seventeen and missed going as a last year Laurel. (Laurel meaning a young woman who is seventeen or eighteen.) Having been called as a Young Women adviser and now the First Counselor in our ward's YW presidency, I had the responsibility and opportunity of attending Girl's Camp this year. Being totally honest, I was a little nervous about it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into or what to expect. I was worried that it was going to be like some of my early experiences with the YW organization, namely that there would be cattiness, gossiping, and cliques. However, our ward is not like that. Our Young Women all care for one another and they do their best to include everyone. I should have known better, but I was surprised by how amazing our Young Women really are-- they are an example to me.

Because people want to see pictures more than read a bunch about how all of us were touched and how every one of the leaders cried at one point or another (in a good way), I'll include a lot of fun photos.

I got together at the Vanderheyden home at 6:30AM. We had all the girls together and organized into cars and were on the road by about 7:30AM. We were at camp and unloading things by 8:30AM. After a night of not sleeping all that well, that was a really early start for me. The Stake's theme was about seeking after Eternal Treasures, so each ward got to represent certain traits and qualities through a gemstone. We were the Sunstones/Hot rocks. And Sandy (the YW president) had the sneaky idea of incorporating an underlying theme that all of the girls could get behind: The movie Tangled. And you know (if you've seen the movie) that it is a cute story, and they have this thing with purple banners with a huge yellow sun. . . so yea, we took that up as our symbol and used the movie in other ways, too.

Decorating banners.

Emilee placed a lot of yellow vinyl hearts on the purple bunting.

First day, so we haven't gotten a chance to get grimy or too sweaty yet. 

Our treats that we handed out to all the other wards.
Notice the banners in the background....

We also came prepared with rain boots and boy were we ever grateful to have them. Six weeks before we got there, the mountain was covered in over ten feet of snow. Feet, people. Even a couple of weeks before we were to arrive, there was at least a foot of snow everywhere. But our camp director had prayed and prayed and felt strongly that some people needed the experience on the mountain. Last year weather forced them to have move Girl's Camp to Pinto, UT. If you don't know where that is, I don't blame you. It is outside of Enterprise, if that helps. Anyway-- it is flat there and windy and apparently that is not what we needed this year. So after many prayers, it was decided that we would go up to the mountain, and after many more prayers, the snow melted in time. And with all that snow melt came the mud. But like I said, we were ready for it. While others had to delicately choose where to put their feet down, we could easily tromp down the trails without a care.

And, just because it was Girl's Camp, we also got to coordinate in other ways, like wearing matching purple hoodies with giant yellow suns on the back, putting sunflower clips in our hair, necklaces with suns as our name plates, yellow bandannas, and cute yellow and purple nails: 

By the end of our first day, all of the first years had their chance to get embarrassed in front of a crowd. This included the first year leaders. It is that song where you make more and more silly gestures while singing "eh too ti tah" over and over again and at the end you are flapping your arms like a chicken with your knees bent in and your tongue sticking out. It is really attractive, let me tell you. And of course, I have a picture. 

Silly goofy ridiculous fun. 

More to come soon. Like maybe tomorrow.