Girl's Camp is over!

Girl's Camp is done for the year and it was a great experience! I believe that for the most part, the girls had a great time and so did I. We especially enjoyed the Sunday activities... the Gila Valley Temple Dedication and a presentation on the iron rod by the YCLs. One of the memorable moments for one of my cabin moms occurred when the bus left all of her group at the church while they were in the restroom. She luckily was helped out by members of the ward who drove them back to camp. Only one girl was seriously injured. She sprained her ankle on a hike and is still walking around on crutches.

What follows are some of the things that I did to give the girls during our camp stay...

Our theme of camp was based on the 60's and 70's, so I gave the girls some things that came out of those decades. I found mood rings and gave the girls those. Everyone had them in the 70's at some point.

I also gave them this based on a short term fad in 1975.





I found some Pet Rock Instructions on line that included such pithy wisdom as how to make your pet rock "Stay", "Play Dead", and how to take your rock for a walk (in your pocket.) I miniaturized it and made an instruction book of my own.



And here's the finished product.



These guys are warm fuzzies based on a story I've had for many years.



As I wrote earlier, the girls enjoy giving out little gifts to fellow campers. We gave out the bracelets that I wrote about in an earlier blog and the following too...

This idea came from a cabin mom who got sick and was unable to go to camp this year. Each person got bubbles and a sticker that said "I've been bubbled!"



I saw girls wearing these rainbow bandaids on their faces. It was a mini-fad for a day or two.



The cabin mom who got sick sent these with us to give to the girls. This first one is a journal for camp. It was a composition book that she spray painted black and put vinyl stickers on.



She also had these name posters to hang by the girl's beds.



Lastly, I had these wooden boards left over from a project I did when I was RS President and decided to put them to good use. They were used to write messages on. It was such a good idea that they made something similar at their craft class! Great minds think alike! The magnets were based on the theme. The peace sign for "Peace", the heart for "Love", and the daisy for "Virtue".



All in all, it was a great experience. I would post pictures of the girls and some of our activities, but I want to protect their privacy. I have pictures of the most hilarious time we had. We played one game of spoons and it started a fun rivalry between two girls that was just plain fun and never got out of hand. On the last night, one of the girls found plastic spoons in her sleeping bag, inside her pillow case, etc. Fun, fun, fun!

Ammendment to the update

Jeanine has told me that she has not had pain since the treatments. It started up last week.

Update on Jeanine

I arrived home from Girl's Camp to some not so good news. Jeanine had her CAT scan on Monday. It shows that her lesions in the liver have grown somewhat and that there are more spots of cancer there. She has had some pain in that area ever since January and suspected that might be the case. They have ordered some other tests that will take place in the next couple of weeks and then she will go see the doctor on the 8th of June. More updates then.

Mother's Day

Today was Mother's Day and as I went through our Church meetings, I formulated a plan. I would offer to take my 3 oldest grandchildren who live close by, home with me. That way their mother could put the baby down for a nap and take one herself. I also had an idea or two of things I could help my grandchildren do to honor her.

My DIL was happy for the nap and the grandkids were happy to be able to spend some time with me. I took them home and suggested what we could do to honor their mother and they turned me down (of course, it was because we had made it for her previously and I had forgotten that little fact.) It was negotiation time. After discussing an option or two, we decided to decorate their garage for Mother's Day. It was a great plan. We used my Cricut and cut out letters and flowers and then took pics of my grandchildren and printed those out in an 8x10 format.

We were ready. We loaded ourselves in the car and headed to my DIL's home. We started putting all the cool things up on the garage and watched as each one quickly blew off. We were experiencing high winds and the magnets were not about to hold. Now what? The front door? Good idea, but the security door's pattern did not lend itself to the size of the items we had made.

We came back to my house and put them up on my security door and metal front door. My DIL and her family were going to be eating at my house, so she would be coming and would see it then.

Here is what we came up with...

All the decor was made with the size of a garage door in mind.



This was the more personal part, with pictures of the children and pictures that they had made and decorated for their mom.


I had thought of resting while my husband and son made a scrumptious dinner of roast chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, chard, biscuits and strawberry shortcake for dinner. Instead, I did something much more rewarding and fun.

Blooming

I got a phone call from my neighbor today. He said, "Come over now and bring your camera." I had no idea what to expect. Here is what I found...



This year has been an unusual one for the Arizona desert. It has been a fairly cool and long spring with lots of rain (at least compared to our normal rainfall.) I have learned that this is the perfect condition to make the desert flower. This was a spectacular display.



I can't believe how many blossoms are on each cacti.



This picture looks like I oriented it wrong, but I haven't. It is exactly as I saw it.

Singing time with a twist

My singing time today was crazy! I was greeted at the door by my Primary counselor. She wanted to know if my pianist had gotten hold of me. She hadn't. She wasn't going to be there, had found no one to take her place and I found that there was no one available in our ward to play for Primary (pianists are scarce in our ward).

Any ideas? I play the piano. So the first thing I did was to send my counselor to find my assistant activity day leader to help with the first song. We had been practicing The 4th Article of Faith song in Activity Day and had planned to have the girls teach it to the Primary today. I know that she is capable of leading it at the last minute. She has been teaching it to the girls in our Activity Day Meetings. In the meantime I decided to turn the piano so I could see the children while I sat at the piano and if I had to I could try to do it like a multi-talented music teacher at school... leading, keeping track of all the kids, and playing the piano all at once.

My leader didn't come and music time started. I asked the girls to come up to the front and sing the song through for the Primary while I played it. They did.

At activity day, each girl chose a line of the song and colored a picture to represent the line. After singing the song through, each girl took their visual aid and they said the words, we had the children repeat and then we sang that line. We were about halfway through the song when my very talented and johnny-on-the-spot assistant came. She took over and had the children finish singing by line and then sing the song through a time or two. We then had the girls take stickers and put them on the faces of the children who were singing. They were getting the singing measles.

After we finished that song, I needed to practice with the children for the Mother's Day songs that they will be singing in Sacrament Meeting next Sunday. They already know the melodies for those songs, so we practiced them a capella. I noticed that the children were not consistently doing the actions that we had made up, so I took more singing measles and put them on the faces of the children who were doing the actions. It got all of them doing it.

Singing time was over. Thankfully. And yet, it wasn't really bad at all. The children were well-behaved. The girls did an excellent job teaching the song and my activity day leader took over admirably. It was a crazy day, but a good one nevertheless.