Girls Camp and Starting Over

This week I have been roughing it up at girls camp! I'll admit, for a while I really didn't want to go. But when the time came for me to pack I found myself really excited to get away. Life is like a roller coaster and the past week or so i have been at the bottom of the ride. But I woke up monday morning happy, hyper, and ready to sleep in the dirt. Adam and Jared drove up with us so they could bring the wood up and help set up. These boys are my favorite. Things have changed a lot with Jared lately. Two years ago we really liked each other but i was a month away from turning 16. Jared Adam and I skipped mutual one day to go get pizza and then Adam's girl friend came a little later. Jared's parents got really mad at him because he took a 15 year old on a "date". Everything blew up. The ward made him feel terrible. People started spreading rumors. We stopped talking and avoided each other. But recently we have started talking a lot and hanging out. We watched the fire works at sugar house park last night with Adam and then played with sparklers. The timing just kinda sucks because he leaves for his mission on the 14th. But it was still great :)

Anyway, back to girls camp...haha
The guys helped everyone set up the tents and tarps and then us three disappeared cuz i told them about the zip line we had at the camp site. The zip line was all chained up but Adam and Jared figured out a way to rig it up so it worked any way. This camp site was sooooo much better than our old one. Timberlane was a mess. Rocky ground, bears, so much flooding. The list goes on and on. But this site was awesome! Beautiful view. Awesome hiking trails. Sooooo green.






This year i got to know the girls really well. I love getting to know people so this made me love girls camp even more. The food was amazing, like always. But my favorite part of camp has always been the snipe hunting. There is just something "magical" about scaring people out of their mind. It's weird cuz i don't see why snipe hunting is so scary. I already knew about them my first year but McCall and Noel didn't. They chased us down the hill and into our cabin and then they scratched on the door. Scared poor McCall and Noel to death. The way our ward does snipe hunting is pretty epic. The older girls go off to do "star gazing" for certification. They hide in the trees with different colored flashlights. The "white eyed" ones are safe. The "red eyed" ones are violent. and the "green eyed" ones are poisonous. They also sit and they hiss at us. I run over to one of the lights and pretend to catch one. We use the cut off hand of a teddy bear so when they pet it, it's fuzzy and you can stick your finger inside and make it move so it really freaks the girls out. Two years ago, we had a girl climb on the top of a car she got so scared. This year we only had one first year. She is the YW president's daughter and Jared's little sister. I had to use a sock for the snipe cuz i lost my teddy bear hand but it still scared her way bad. She had her back to me and wouldn't even look at us. Her mom finally said we better tell her so she would be able to sleep. Her mom dragged her over to me and made her pet it. She was whimpering and then i opened up my hand and showed her the sock and told her how they aren't real. She gave me the dirtiest look i have ever seen and she turned around and walked to her tent. Her mom started laughing and we all walked back with her. I felt really bad because she sat in her tent and started to cry. We explained about how when we were all first years we got the crap scared out of us too, and that she would be able to scare the first years next year. She felt a little better but was still mad at us. Mostly me. Whoops...:)

But i think the greatest part about girls camp thing year was the hike. They had the first hike around 11:00 am but i didnt go because i was feeling really sick. The hike was only about 20 minutes long. around 2:00 pm we had to go on the hike again and mark the trail better for a service project. I love hiking so i man-ed up and grabbed my camelbak and i was off. We split into two groups so we could get the trail done faster and we would meet up in the middle since the trail was a loop. So we hiked for about 10-15 minutes and then met up with the other group. We started hiking on the trail that we thought would lead us back to camp. After about an hour of hiking on this trail we realized it was just going straight and down and nothing looked familiar. We stopped and couldn't decide what we should do. We had no idea where to do because we had forgotten our map. One of the leaders, Crissy, said that we should say a prayer and ask for help. We said our prayer and not five seconds after we said amen we hear voices behind us on the trail. There was another ward from our stake camping by us and two of the girls came walking down the trail. When they saw us, they ran up to us and told us how they ran ahead and got separated from their group and had no idea where they were. We realized that we needed to hike back the way we came. It was really hot, and we realized we hardly had any water since we thought it would be a 20 minute hike. Then me and McCall started having a really hard time breathing since it was up hill and we had forgotten our inhalers. We made another stop and decided we needed to pray that we would all be strong enough to make it back. Right after we ended our prayer a small wind started to blow and a bunch of clouds came over and it got cool and shady. maybe an hour and a half later we got back to our camp site and we all crashed. We were all so beat but so thankful that we had made it back okay. We grabbed the map and tried to figure out where we had been. We realized we had been on a totally different trail and if we had kept going on it we would have ended up on a different mountain in the middle of no where. I love hiking, but hiking to stay alive isn't my idea of fun. I don't think i have ever had my prayers answered so quickly. This was probably one of the best girls camps i have ever been to and i know i won't ever forget how strong the power of prayer is.