Girls Scout Camp 2012

Well, back in March Lillie and I and our entire GS Troop sold a butt load of cookies. Enough to pay for a week at GS camp for the entire troop plus leaders. In August. Yes, it was HOT. But we had a total and complete blast! In total we had 7 girls (Lillie, Lizzy, Lauren, Delylah, Lumina, Emmaleigh, and Cedar) and 3 leaders (Audrey, Vicki, and Lisa)

We went up July 29th through August 3rd. It was completely tiring to constantly make sure 7 girls had all their stuff with them. However as the week went on we reminded them less and less about things. (Mostly because we were so tired of talking : ) After they dealt with the consequences once or twice they became a lot more responsible on their own. It was pretty neat to see them grow like that and realize that children are so much more capable of taking care of themselves than we sometimes give them credit for. 

*A side note, all of the counselors had crazy camp names*

Here's our week:

The girls at Dappler's Den (arts & crafts) with Psyche the art counselor. They got to come here everyday and we did a little of everything. They made God's Eyes, did basket weaving, wrote B-day cards for the GS birthday, and on the last day they even got to paint one of the large storage cabinets with pictures of their camp experience. They were really excited to know that they made something that would be around for a lot of years and other people would see.

With Bull our troops main counselor for the week. 

The girls were leery at first to try archery but it turned out to be one of their favorite activities!

Here's Lillie on one of her first tries:

The leaders even got to give it a go : )

It was such a great experience to be able to be at camp all week with Lillie. 

We had a ton of fun together!

Here are Lizzy, Lillie, Lauren, & Delylah jumping into the deep end of the pool.

We went swimming 3 times a day. It was a lot of changing clothes. 

We also spent the entire week playing an extended game of "mermaids" every time we went swimming.

Here are Lillie, Delylah, & Emmaleigh cleaning the library. 

After each meal every camper had to do something called "Capers" 

or camp chores to help teach the girls responsibility.

Tie-dyeing

Every evening all seven girls would gather in my cabin for a little "party". We had a blast every night!

Here's Lizzy teaching everyone to do the worm:

And here's Lillie attempting to do the worm herself:

One night we had a huge Connect Four Launchers tournament. All the girls were really into it, screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs. All I have to say is that it was good thing that our campsite was stuck out in the middle of nowhere away from the rest of the camp ; )

One of our hikes. This one was to a very pretty place called Green Chapel. Sometimes the counselors hold church services here and they said that even some of the die hard counselors have gotten married here.

Swimming in the river. We only got to do this twice and it was a ton of fun. It took a lot of leadership for them to organize though. They had some cool dinosaur tracks here and the girls all felt like they were making a first time discovery when they found them. It was pretty cool how excited they were!

Here are the girls with their cabinet painting project:

Lillie and Lumina and their outstanding arching:

On one of our last days our troop had flag duty. The girls got to learn how to be in a color guard and all that goes along with it. And they only dropped the flag once...

The girls with Bull. Stephanie Bull:

Playing human knot:

It was a long and tiring week but the girls learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and made good friendships even stronger. We can't wait 'til next year Camp La Jita!