Girl's Camp 2009-"We Believe"

I just got back from 4 days of being the 4th year girl's camp leader for our ward. It was a challenging, spiritual and amazing time. This year our camp theme was "We Believe", but the 4th years' main focus was 'I Can Do Hard Things'. Our stake decided that the 4th years needed to really be challenged this year, so we got to rough it in the wilderness and participate in the 'Wildest, funniest, wackiest, toughest and downright best race this planet has ever seen' (I didn't make that last sentence up. That's actually what they called it."

It all began Monday morning where we arrived at our campsite up on the rim and began going through different rotations to learn new skills that would be needed in the big race the next day. Some of the crazy things we got to learn and do were: mountain biking, canyoneering, shot guns, archery, blow guns, atlatl, knife throwing, cope, navigation, air rifles, canoeing, rappelling, hiking, orienteering, fear factor, hawk throwing, GPS and problem solving. I am not kidding when I say we got to experience it all.

Here I am with my 4th year girls, Ashley, Michelle and Anslea learning archery. Ashley hit a perfect bullseye, so she became our main archerer.

Atlatl was a new experience for all of us, but Michelle actually hit the hay stack dead on. She became our Atlatl expert for Race day.

I would probaly have to say that knife and tomahawk throwing was my favorite. You did not want to mess with us scary ladies.
Me and my girl, Anslea. She kept us rolling in laughter the entire trip.
Michelle actually hit the clay pigeon at our shot gun station. I don't think holding a shot gun was high on my list of fun. It seemed too lethal for me to be using.
Ashley was a born natural when it came to learning new skills. She was one strong, tough girl.

Anslea was our champion gun blower. All the girls had a lot of fun with this one.
Air riffles were a lot more fun than the shot gun, but I still don't think I am much of a gun kind of girl.
Here we are performing our skit Monday night. We had like 30 minutes to come up with a 2 minute skit with limited props, so I quickly threw out an idea and the girls liked it, and suprisingly it was a big hit. My Anslea tore it up as our "little devil."

Tuesday was our big race day. It began with a sudoku puzzle challenge. Once we completed our puzzle we were allowed to hit our bikes for an 8 hour day of non-stop physical and mental challenges.

The girls had to rummage through this pond, find 5 water bottles that completed a full scripture verse. My girls sure new scripture mastery, which definitely helped. More biking
And more biking. I actually think I want to get into cycling. It was so much fun!
After a few hours of biking and challenges we reached the lake, where we had to canoe to four different cones. We then had to get our bikes around the lake to the big parking lot where the bike trailer was waiting and we got to say 'audios' to the bikes. We were then shuttled to the middle of nowhere,given coordinates and a big 'good luck' where we were hoping our GPS training from the day before would come in handy.

Luckily, my girls were great with the GPS and we were able to hike to all the stations without getting lost. Here we are at the 'FEAR FACTOR' station where the girls got to eat pig skin, squid and fish intestines. They either had to eat it all, which they did, or risk having time put on to our total race time. They were such champs. After several more hours of hiking and challenges, we got to the end where they had this crazy obstacle course set up. It was really fun and we all crossed the finish line together.
We were so happy to be back at camp...filthy dirty, but so proud of ourselves for how much we did that day.
Here we are, hanging out around the camp fire after our big day.

Wednesday, we headed to Box Canyon for some rappelling, hiking and swimming. It was an easy, breezy day compared to the day before. That night we got to go into Camp LoMia, hang out with our ward, have testimony meeting and party till the wee hours of the night. I am so thankful for my calling as a Young Women's leader. The girls are such examples to me and I really had such a spiritual time at camp this year. I can't wait until next year!!
I was so exhausted when I got home today, but these two little kiddies sure put a big smile on my face and made me even more glad to be home. It is Raylee's first birthday today, which we will be celebrating in a couple days with family. Brett and I decided to take the kids out for ice cream, just so we felt like we did something on her actual birthday.