Better Late Than Never

Part of the craziness of all the doctor visits last Wednesday, included a visit from the home health nurse to remove Jared's pic line. Now that the IV is gone, he is much more able to move around. Also it means he is now on oral antibiotics. Since he can now be more independent, I decided to head up to girls camp. All the girls and leaders went up on Tuesday morning. I woke up Thursday morning and got everything squared away.



I have to admit, that I really needed a break from nursing Jared. When I first got up to camp, I said "Yay, no one will ask me to empty their urinal, here." Our camp takes place up on Mt. Charleston. It is just a short hour from Vegas, and yet it feels like a different world. So many trees, and at least 30 degrees cooler. I think it was about 107 when I left, and only 75 when I got there. So nice. Also, I love it because I do not sneeze as much up there. Apparently, I am allergic to Las Vegas.

I got there just in time for the leader lunch. Which is a wonderful thing where the stake feeds all the camp leaders. All the girls stay at their camp and eat sandwiches. Our ward did the zip line, craft, and climbing wall before I got there, but I was in time for archery. This is actually the first year I have tried the archery range due to the fact that it always seems to be at the end of the week, and it is way at the top of the camp. I am usually out of steam and unable to make the climb up there. But this year I was fresh and full of energy.
For the first time, I gave the archery range a try. I may not have bow hunting skills, but surprisingly I have some arrow shooting skills. I even popped a balloon, helping our ward move to the front of the balloon popping score. The next day another ward did beat our score, but we were in front for a while.
Here is one of the girls, Bailey signaling victory after we moved ahead in the balloon popping event. The man in the crown, is our Bishop and he was in charge of the Archery range this year.


After archery, the fourth year girls went and did repelling. I can't imagine that I will ever participate in that event, given my fear of heights. There are always more people who want to do it, than there is time, so I am OK with that.

Then it was time for the variety show. Our ward was assigned to do a take off if the show Nashville Star. None of us have ever seen it, but they gave us a CD of some country music. Our Bishop did a great impression of Billy Ray Cyrus, complete with hilarious long curly wig. The first act was mini Shania Twain. This was two girls kneeling down, with one being the face and body, while the other one is the arms. It was so cute and funny. Then the picture above is the "Homely Hillbillies". The whole thing was pretty funny and turned out very well. We are probably biased, but we though ours was the best.
We were the last stake to use the camp this summer. Perhaps due to that fact, the chipmunks were surprisingly bold. As pictured above they would eat right out of some one's hand. We even put out bowls of sun flower seeds for them. They were very cute little creatures and almost like pets. Very strange.That night it got alarmingly cold. Everyone kept talking about how it wouldn't be that cold in August, but it was quite cold and I was disappointed that I did not bring my hand warmers and thermals. Necessity is the mother of invention, and so I devised this attractive hat to help keep me warm. Tell me I do not look like some one out of Fiddler on the Roof.Thursday night was testimony night. It was a very special evening, and I felt so fortunate to be a part of it. There was a very strong spirit and it was worth the trip up there. There is something about sitting around a campfire, that makes such testimony meetings extraordinary.
Of course we stayed up visiting, singing, laughing, and generally having too much fun, until way to late. I think it was 2 am when I finally got to my bed. Here is a picture of me, snug as a bug, in a rug. I am wearing three shirts, and two sweat shirts, my gloves, and a knit cap. I had an extra blanket and my coat on top of my sleeping bag. So I wasn't two cold. I missed my hand warmers, though. And perhaps my thermals.Friday morning, our girls found the spirit stick, which was shaped like the Olympic torch. We found it twice and so our ward had it the most times. Here are all the girls on a large log by our camp. Tori is holding up the prize in the middle.Friday, was unscheduled except for the short obstacle course that we did in the morning. We filled the day with fun activities, such as hair do makeovers. Here is a picture of my new do. Nice don't ya think?
This is my hair stylist, Taylor. Thanks for the colorful hair. She has been to camp all three years that I have gone.Here are Tori, me, and Bailey. They are making the sign of WOW, with their hands and mouth. They have a funny saying they do that says "WOW MOM, COW MOM" All made by turning the "w" into a "m" or "c". Here I am in a rare moment of down time. Kicking back and taking it easy.While lying on the bench, I happened to look up and see how pretty the trees and the sky were. I love nature, and really miss the trees of the northwest. There is something so peaceful in the mountains. Especially the fact that I don't get cell service. No texts from Jared, or calls from Diana. It is easier to feel close to our Heavenly Father in the mountains. Perhaps that is why temples were in the tops of the mountains in the Old Testament.Here is our amazing, awesome, astonishing, astounding, fantastic, incredible, marvelous, stupendous, wonderful camp director. She is returning from latrine duty. What a women. You go girl. At one time I was a bit sad to not be camp director, but Shawna did such a great job, that I felt glad she was in charge instead of me. I only wish I could have been more help to her. But there is always next year.Here are five of the young women leaders. I love working with these women and am glad to count them as friends.
And here we are in a bit more natural pose.

Here is a shot of all six of the leaders from our ward. The sister on the top of our pyramid helps the stake a lot and doesn't get to spend very much time in our camp. She does happen to spoil us with treats and that is good. She is in charge of the zip line. And had to work pretty hard all day long.
Friday afternoon, the YCLs (youth counselor leaders) passed the flame onto the fourth year girls, who will be YCLs next year. Here are those girls from our ward. As you can see they are half of the twelve girls we had this year. Next year will be very, very, small as we only have one girl turning twelve this year. These girls will all turn sixteen during the next year, and move up to my class. They are amazing girls and it will be fun to get to teach them.
Bailey and Tori wanted to roast their starburst candies. Bailey even roasted one for me, just so I could adequately blog about the experience. Seriously, she said, you better taste one if you are going to write about it. She is one of my regular readers, and I even convinced her she needed a blog. I have to say the starburst was good, when roasted the starburst gets soft and gooey.
Here is Tori's pose with her starburst. Two years ago, one of the girls roasted her gold fish cracker. Very odd. We have known Bailey and Tori since we moved to Vegas, as they were in our old ward before they moved to this ward. Jared and Tori are the same age and were on the same soccer team for several years, back in the day.

We had so much fun singing around the camp fire Friday night. We even got in some dancing. Good, good times. It is no secret that camp songs is my favorite part of camp. They even sang my song "Princess Pat".
This is the final picture. It started to look like rain in the afternoon, so we took down several of the tents. Then we took the pic nic benches out of the dinning tent, and let all the girls sleep together. It was a bit crazy, but they had a great time together. Finally they ended up signing primary songs, and put themselves to sleep. And it did not rain, so having several of the tents already packed up, helped us get out of there sooner in the morning.

I did not go to bed until 3 am Friday night. We got up early Saturday morning and packed up. We were the second ward out of there, woohoo! We were back to the church by 9:00, but then the worst part is unloading everything in the heat. It is pretty much miserable when all you want to do is go home to take a shower and a nap. Finally everything was unloaded.

I came home and helped Jared for a while. He did remarkably well without me. At least he was still alive. He said he was hungry and that Marion didn't feed him enough. But he seemed pretty good to me.

The good news about my going to camp was that I had a nice break from my nursing duties and I had so much fun with the girls and leaders.

The bad news was that I got about 9 hours sleep in two nights, and those were not uninterrupted. So I feel more tired than before I left. There is a price to be paid for fun.

Yesterday I took about 3 different naps. And so it has been so long since I have managed to blog. Hopefully, I can do everything this week that needs to be done for school. And Jared has PT three times this week. Then he has 3 doctor appointments next week, to look forward to attending.

All in all I am very glad I was able to go. Girls camp is one of my favorite things, and I plan to keep going until they are sick to death of me. I even can picture my self with my walker some day, trudging up and down the hill. I had to miss the trip to Seattle, I am glad that I didn't have to miss all of camp. In some ways it was good to have new fresh blood show up.