Keeping Up With The Joneses: American Heritage Girls 2016 Camp

I was leading the creation badge for Elyana's group at camp so I have been preparing for weeks for camp. Our original plan was to drive home every night since it was only 30 minutes away but decided to stay as we would miss out on campfire time and other things. The girls and I were all in different tents. Most of you know that I do not enjoy tent camping so I was dreading that part of it. Things went off to a great start. Mikayla was working hard on her archery badge and her citizenship and government badge. She had to have a debate on moral and economic issues and shoot at least 60-100 arrows by the end of the week. Elyana was earning an insect badge and of course my creation badge.

The days were long. We were up and to breakfast by 8:30 followed by two badge sessions before a lunch break. A third badge session was after lunch. Then the girls had free time where they could shoot bb guns, practice archery, or do crafts (which I was also in charge of, we had a different craft each day). Wednesday was fun as we drove to a nearby river in the afternoon to play. We had all made boats out of recycled materials (that I had saved up for a month) on Tuesday and we had fun racing them in the river. It was refreshing and the weather was perfect.

After the river though, Elyana was really looking run down and I had Nate join us for dinner and take her home for the night. I'm glad I did that as we had quite the storm with record amount of rainfall later that evening. I went to bed around 11:00 and woke at 1:00 to find my tent mates were ringing water out of towels as it crept into our tent. We kept up with it and tried to rest until 3:30 when Mikayla's tent mates came to our tent telling us that everything in their tent was soaked. We got them to the nearby chapel and I went back for Mikayla. She was the only one in the tent with a cot and she was wearing earplugs. She was waking up just as she heard her tent mates say, "Three, two, one...jump!" She woke up and no one was in her tent. Evidently they jumped out of the tent and over a giant puddle. When I got to her tent, her shoes and water bottle were floating in front of the tent. We all made it through the night and I was expecting that camp would be canceled. Instead, our badge sessions went on like normal as our camp director and other leaders went tent by tent emptying and cleaning them out. I called Nate to check on him and discovered that our basement had flooded. (We are still in the midst of getting it put back together.) The week was memorable to say the least. I am proud of the girls for their hard work, bravery, and perseverance. I'm proud of myself too now that I reflect on it.

This is a photo of several girls busy with crafts that I helped to organize.

What is a girls camp without afternoon manicures!

These are bugs we made out of bottle caps.

Some of the paintings we did of the Tree of Life. They turned out great!

The string art turned out great! Nate and I found some old deck boards at the Habitat Restore. He cut them and I power sanded them. The girls stained them and used nails and strings with some templates I had printed out.

This was a fun game of giant pictionary.

The games at camp were awesome. This night the girls played human foosball.

It was hard to see in this photo but this evening we played a game called Cautionary Tails. It is where you put a section of Caution tape on your backside. It is a game of tag. If someone gets your tail, you have to sit down.

The girls are working on a newscast interview of Noah, his sons, and the animals. One of my badge requirements. I love that one of Noah's sons said, "We thought my dad was crazy. I'm surprised we all found wives."