Girls Camp

The Beginning

How to begin with Girls Camp? At some point during the summer, after Mommy had been invited to Girls Camp, the leaders of Young Women's also asked Hannah and me to come along. I agreed, thinking it would be an easy, fun time, and although it turned out WILDLY fun, it was by no means easy.

What started as a responsibility-free couple days of camping soon had the Kennedy women working in high gear to get ready for girls camp. At first I was invited to bring my guitar. I start learning a few songs, nothing too difficult right? Everything must be planned and ready to go months in advance right??

WRONG

After receiving a text from the Girls Camp supervisor, the Kennedy women realize we may have underestimated the planning of Girls Camp. Over the next week, we are assigned 2 hours of large group games (Hannah), a Favorite Things activity (Mommy), Fire Making class, scripture doodle activity (Me), and recycle raft boat competition (All of Us). Undeterred by the challenge, we started planning (because even though we had agreed to keep it low key) Mommy and I going to Michael's to create the dopest bead bracelet making kit Girls Camp has ever seen, emailing Sister Kendall to get spark-lite kits and spend every night that week practicing fire building and creating a 50 question Jeopardy game with daily doubles, final jeopardy and clickers to buzz into each question. 

In addition to full gear planning, we have also started preparing for the worst possible camping situation imaginable. With a few days until camp, we realize our campsite has no proper bathrooms, showers or source of shade. So now, in case of emergency, we scout out the nearest restrooms, I learn how to lash and make quick shelter and we add germ-x to our packing list. 

I was going to include an excerpt about the activity that our family single-handedly led the week before camp, but honestly we don't need to unpack that. Just suffice it to say that thanks to our scheduling wired minds and many questions about camp, Sister Rowberry (Camp Director) gave us charge of Tuesday night mutual.

Camp Day 1

Honestly, Day 1 of camp was literally just the Kennedy show. Like I am not even joking. 

SO, just so you understand, when I say POD, that is what we called the groups the girls were split into. It was basically just beehives, mia maids and laurels, but because we got rid of that like a year ago, we had 3 pods and the first hour of camp was spent coming up with names and cheers for our pods. The first part of our pod name was Dolphin - because they travel in pods right? Then, when we were coming up with a cheer, for some reason someone suggested the Vulcan hand sign and "beam me up," and like we like that, so the second part of our name was Alien. And then because we are a royal army, the third part of our name was Queens. And so - the Dolphalien Queens were born. After a quick sketch session with the girls, I had drawn out a true Dolphalien Queen - a dolphin with tentacles and a crowned DANG did it look good. Although our cheer didn't quite hold against the other pod's cheers (The Venus Knights was just BE AGRESSIVE, BE BE AGRESSIVE  over and over again while they did acrobatics and the Jelly Rex's was just when I say -Jelly, T, Jelly - you say -Fish, Rex, Rex) we did have the dopest flag.

And that was when the Kennedy show began - with the first act of Mommy's activity - favorite things. Mommy was AMAZING! Unlike Sister Rowberry, Mommy was determined to learn all the girl's names, and did, by the end of her activity. The stars of the favorite things activity - since it was just white elephant but with a get to know you theme - was the HUGE bag of gummy bears, the wet brush, and bag of gum. And with that, Mommy started the week off in a GREAT way.

Next was Hannah's two hours of group games. Yes you heard that correctly. 2 hours. And Hannah KILLED IT! With some helpful suggestions from Mommy before camp started, Hannah planned some physical activities, but more importantly, an INTELLECTUAL activity as well - because honestly, how long does enthusiasm last, or for that matter, even begin with games that are predominantly running based. Sure those athletic type young women were thrilled to do physical activities like missionary tag, but the other 95% of the girls were GASSED after about 5 minutes. When the sun was high and the girls sufficiently sweaty, a collective breath of relief was released as Hannah pulled out the Disney Jeopardy. Now this wasn't any regular Disey Jeopardy you might see at the store or on Pinterest. She had personally prepared, with Double Jeopardy, Final Jeopardy and Daily Doubles a brain FEAST of Disney trivia, with categories from Finish that Lyric (The Enchanted question challenged the true disney fanatics) to Not Quite Disney(Thank you Dreamworks for providing us with El Dorado and Shrek) to Let's Get Real (Marvel and Star Wars). Plus Hannah and I showed out true HYPE SQUAD colors as I quickly began cheering for every pod and screaming from excitement every time a question was answered correctly and Hannah showed UP with those Disney questions. In the end tho, the Dolphalien Queens came out on top. They were already 2000 points ahead, thanks to our Buzzfeed Quiz taking Disney genius Zan, when I cinched the win when they chose me to do the Let's Get Real section - I mean come ON - Star Wars and Marvel?? The other teams didn't stand a CHANCE man. Plus, I broke out the guitar while we were changing from Jeopardy to Double Jeopardy and it was SO FUN! Peace in Christ is SUCH a bop.

You want to know why I labelled this day the Kennedy show? Because every part of this day that WASN'T planned by us was a MESS. No really... a MESS. So, before my fire making class, we had to make dinner....

What was dinner? Well... it was a dutch oven dinner. So, each pod was given a dutch oven, four raw chicken breasts, some carrots, some potatoes and parsnips (which I found out... I really DON'T like). Along with these raw ingredients, we were given the most random assortment of kitchen utensils. It felt like someone pulled out a random drawer in a church kitchen and gave it to use. Between the 3 pods (who split up immediately to prepare each of their own dinners) we had 1 peeler, 3 knives, one of which was a small, unshapened machete, 3 cutting boards and WIPES. While handling raw chicken, we were given a couple baby wipes, and with no running water at our campsite except for a pump a quarter of a mile away, it was an adventure. At some point, Mommy asked Hannah for her Swiss army life, pulled out some tin foil and started chopping the chicken right there because it was taking SO LONG to get our food ready and in the pot. and don't even get me STARTED on the Briquettes...... which I didn't know existed until Tuesday night. So, with our ingredients and dutch ovens, to help us prepare dinner, we were given written instructions, telling us to light 24 briquettes. Do you know how to light briquettes? I didn't! So after holding a lighter to 24 unresponsive briquettes, I finally find out that we are supposed to use lighter fluid! At this point, it is 4:45 and our dinner isn't even cooking yet.... after what seemed like a quart of lighter fluid and constant vigilance, our briquettes finally lit and at 5:15, our dinner was cooking in the 3 fire pits around camp. Now, at this point, Sister Rowberry realized that I wouldn't be able to teach fire making or light fires in the fire pit since they were now all in use SLOW SLOW cooking our dinner. So, since the rest of our campsite was covered in lush grass, I settled for the circle of dirt around the fire pit that looked optimal for fire making :)

Not to toot my own horn, but my fire making class was the BOMB! Like seriously, fire is just like inherently cool right? But then you add the excitement we instilled in them last week during the activity, when we decorated their fire-making kits and assembled them with matches and spark-lites, the girls were RARING to light those fire. I think a shout-out is also needed to the Kendalls. When I found out I was teaching fire making, I seriously think it was the spirit that brought to my mind the spark-lite boxes that the Kendalls had given to us over the years. So I contacted Sister Kendall and asked if I could order 20 spark-lite fire making kits from them, and in classic Kendall fashion, within a week she had packaged them up and sent them to me, free of charge. She said they were getting rid of some older kits they still had, but I think she just made an excuse up so I would take them for free. The spark-lite is literally just a spark/flint wheel thing and little rolls of tinder to lite with the sparks. Earlier in the day I had spent a significant amount of time, with the help of Hannah and Mommy, and collected sticks. Now, my fool-proof fire making technique differentiated between small (fast lighting sticks), medium (smaller but longer lasting fire fuel) and large sticks. I had before hand organized the sticks I had collected into piles to make the whole fire making process easier on the girls. 

To start off each class, I did a demonstration. Because of the space restrictions (we had to fit 6-7 small fires within a dirt circle around the fire pit) and purpose of the class (Fire Starting - not fire sustaining), our fires only lasted a couple minutes but they were GOOD little fires :) The key to the class was preparation - before the girls could light their tinder, and before I lit my demonstration fire, we built the oh so important TEE PEE!!! WIth some add covered newspaper provided from Meijer in the center, covered with little, then medium sticks, the girls were then ready to light their fires. Not gonna lie, the spark-lite made the whole fire-making experience THAT much more legit. Seriously what is cooler than lighting your fire with a hand-held flint? Some of the girls were afraid of the sparks, but after reassurances from me and with some good ol' peer pressure of fires lighting around them, they were seriously amazing. Every single one of the 20 girls, within in 30 minutes, had successfully lit their fires with one tinder from the spark-lite kit. It was seriously so awesome and I was SO PROUD. Like they were so amazing. I was worried some of them might not be able to make a fire, and like with some paper and some sticks and some practice with the sparker, there was just a PLUME of smoke coming from our little class area. And it just built their confidence so much for the "camp-fire" chore the pods had each night. It was such a blast to build those fires with those girls, and it created a great base for the rest of the week. Like I loved every moment of girls camp, and that fire-making class made me so proud and happy and excited to get to know those girls better. 

Then, after that HIGH, we were bought low once again by dinner.....at 7:30, two of the dutch-ovens had cooked the meal enough that we could eat it... the hard, unseasoned vegetables and plain chicken.... was a little underwhelming, and the small salt shaker the was available was empty within 10 minutes of dinner starting. But you know what? After dinner, the Dolphalien Queens had a roaring fire going in less than 10 minutes, and they were awesome. The YCL of our pad, Zan, was seriously awesome. She was so confident and she is such a leader and she was so amazing for our pod.