Young Women's Camp 2014 Aspen Meadows

I finally made it to camp this year! It was stake camp. Our Stake uses this place up in the mountains above Kamas called Aspen Meadows. It has a beast hill that everyone hates. You get in great shape by the end of the week though! They worked to expand the campsites this year and are actually adding more this next month because apparently it just isn't big enough anymore. It barely holds all our girls!

We had so much fun. We put soooooo much time into it. Scott was so awesome for all the time he spent taking care of kids while I had meetings and taking over the roll of mom (cooking/cleaning/tending kids) while I was up at camp all week. I could not have done it without his help and support. Our stake theme was "With Christ I CAN". Each ward picked a can of soup and we were ABC soup. We thought that'd give us lots of options. We did our own ward theme of Mission Possible. So funny that our youth leaders picked that because I did that once when I was a youth leader at camp. We basically wanted it to be that with Christ ANYTHING is possible. For our shirts all the adults and youth leaders were elite agents and the girls were agents in training. We did top secret journals and made up sticker labels giving them a "mission" to accomplish each day. So it'd say something like, "your mission should you choose to accept it is..." and we used a value to be the theme for the day. The value coincided with our commitment hike that we did. Each leader picked a song with a video that we showed to the girls and then gave a short little message. Mine was on Knowledge. I used the song "All I Need To Know" from the EFY cd this year. Then our oldest girl did something special for all the other girls. After we did our 4 videos we sat around the campfire and she had the leaders come up with one word to describe each girl and then wrote the word on their hand. It was a super spiritual and very personal night and the girls LOVED IT! If we accomplished anything it was for those girls to know they are loved and that they have amazing potential and we believe in them. We also did passports. We took "agent" pictures before and got them printed out and then did these passport books where everyday we had time to write notes to each girl. The girls loved them and loved reading all the positive uplifting things that others see in them.

Camp was very successful for us. We felt like things went well over all. Very little drama because we don't do drama! :) We had a couple illness issues but nothing bad and overall it was a big success. Next year we are so excited to go to Heber Valley. It is church owned and was dedicated by Pres. Hinckley. It is only going to cost us $350! We get cabins and a fridge and stoves and propane. All we have to pay for is food and extras. We want to simplify things this next year and focus on strengthening relationships with eachother. We want to have more fun with the girls and really make those spiritual moments special and memorable. We want to put more money into one or two bigger and nicer things than a bunch of small things most girls will eventually throw out. We are just so excited to go and so thankful we got in. It's not the easiest camp to get into considering how many lds groups want to go. Sept 13th we get to go and see our site and they do an open house and have a question and answer session. I'm really excited to see it in person so we can start visualizing next year. It's going to be so great!

So here are all my pics. I love my girls so much! I've worked with all these girls whether it was in YW or when I taught Sunday School so watching them all grow up is fun and I just love each of their personalities. I missed my family while I was gone but once back home I missed seeing these girls every day. These girls just always make me laugh and they are so smart and just good girls. Love love LOVE them!

 Crazy to think we had 24 girls at camp this year! Just a few of them here...

 Most of my Laurels and one of my beehives who is now a Mia Maid. Although technically they were all one of my beehives at some point!

 My Asst. Camp Director to the left and the rest were all my beehives and most have moved up to Mia Maids now.

I don't know if there was a fire in the area or what but the sunrise one morning was awesome!

I think this one was actually a sunset.

One day we did all our first aid certification. I went down with the girls and rotated around with the 1st and 6th years. I had a BIG group of first years this year!

Two of my laurels... they loved certification! :)

We used to call our youth leaders Liahonas. Up here its lites. This is Lara. She was a lite assigned to our ward. Her mom used to be in the Stake YW pres and I got to do visits with her a couple times. We were both second counselors. Her mom is so sweet and nice and her daughter is the same. She has the greatest sense of humor too and was just a lot of fun.

I was laughing at their book they made. The lites did an amazing job with certification. They were awesome!

Even got the Bishop in on this one. He was fantastic up at camp. Didn't try to take over. Let us do our thing and came up to camp early to get water boiling for hot chocolate each morning. The girls had a lot of fun getting to know him outside of church. So important!

Practicing the Heimlich :)

These two... haha!

 Kylee is always grabbing my camera or phone and taking selfies. I love finding gems like this from my girls :)

The medic at camp made an awesome donation of dummies for the girls to practice CPR on. Great learning tool and opportunity for them!

Kylee about to save Chad's life! We named our dummy :)

How can you not love these girls?

 Caught our Stake Camp Director drinking on the job! Haha! She's awesome. Our 1st counselor in the bishopric gave her the leftover of the cream soda he was using for dutch oven desserts.

My Laurel Advisor. She's awesome too :)

Deb hair! We LOVE Napoleon Dynamite!

Kaitlyn just left for BYU yesterday. We will miss her. This is her Captain America chastity belt! Haha!

We had sooooo much fun. Can't wait to do it again next year!