Girls Camp!!!

As the ward camp specialist, I got to go to girls camp last week with our Young Women. We only had 6 girls attend out of 11 or 12 of our active/semi-active girls. The first day, we took the traditional camp pictures in our ward camp shirts (one of our girls didn't get to camp until the second night):Here's what was on the back of our t-shirts:

Our group on the hike (the girl on the far right isn't one of "my girls"); one of the girls didn't have to go on this hike because she went on the overnight hike the night before most of us went to camp:

OUR SKIT!
We did a cute little skit about being virtuous, with all of us as bugs. Our characters were (left to right) Caterpillar, Lady bug, Spider, Grasshopper:
Worm, Ant:
And me as the Bee (you can't see the big stinger on my butt, which was pretty funny):

We haven't had much rain down here lately so the river was too low to go canoeing. Everyone was super bummed about it. Instead, we brought the girls to the water park. We didn't stay long, as it got pretty crowded with little kids and the girls got bored after only 10 or 15 minutes.

My SIL, Becky, was our camp nurse. It was so fun to have her there. We hung out a lot and even stayed in the same cabin.

Other things we did:

• Attended a lot of classes (first aid, fires, survival, sanitation, etc.)
• Family home evening lesson and game
• Went to our stake president's house for water balloon volleyball, water relay games and pool games (only the girls participated but it was fun to watch)
• Craft time (made cute little holders for pass-along cards)
• First Aid Olympics
• Used buddy burners to cook bacon and eggs (ours worked really well this year!)
• Sang "Get Your Elbows off the Table" a LOT, as well as "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting to be fed" for our cooks!!! I got caught with my elbows on the table twice and had to stand up and run around the table. When I was a YW, we'd have to stand and sing a song in front of everyone.

It was an awesome camp--I just wish it could have been up in the mountains, without the heat and humidity. :)

Brenna's 1st Birthday!

Jared had to work but I went to Brenna's birthday swimming party on 6/6. There was tons of food, including a huge three-layer strawberry shortcake from Cocoa Bean in Hammond (awesome!). The kids and some of the adults swam; I did not. There was also an inflatable water slide for the little kids. Brenna was over-the-top cute, especially eating her own Mickey Mouse birthday cake. Here are some of the 300 pics I took that day (yes, that many pics just in just the three hours I was there):

{The big girl in her birthday shirt--it had Mickey Mouse on it and said "Happy 1st Birthday Brenna!"}:

{Havin' fun in the pool with her daddy and Uncle Tim}:

{Just floatin' and relaxin'}:

{Me & the birthday girl}:

{She was so ready for the cake she started grabbing at it before Becky even put it down!}:

{Getting a little more messy}:

{And even more messy! Totally demolished the cake!}:

{She even got icing in her eyelashes}:

{Opening presents. Someone gave her that headband and she KNEW she was cute!}:

{How cute is the look on her face?}:

{"Talking" on the phone she just opened}:

{Paw-paw (my dad) put that bow on her head}:

{Big sis was there to help celebrate, too}:

It was a really fun party. I can't believe she's one! She should be walking before too long. She'll walk if you hold both of her hands and walk behind her. If you let one hand go, she looks up and you and fusses and waits for you to hold both hands again before she'll take another step. Silly girl! She really couldn't get any cuter, though--especially with a bunch of teeth coming in, ha ha!