Girls Camp

Megan went to Girls Camp for the first time this summer.  I will try to focus this on her and NOT MENTION how insanely jealous and sad I was that I wasn't going with her.  I am not sure exactly why the Lord has not had me work with the Young Women hardly at all since I was in Young Women's and for as much as I LOVE girls camp have not been in charge or attended a full week since I was myself a young woman (I went up for a day when I was pregnant with Madison).  I was so excited for her.  Excited for her to go up by herself without anyone in the family (for her sake I was glad I wasn't going), excited for her to camp, excited for her to feel the spirit of girls camp, excited for her to feel the spirit stronger than she probably ever had, and excited for her to bond with the girls in the ward.  We missed her greatly (she is my best observant helper and reader of my mood).  I am going to have her write the rest of  this post - because as mentioned... I wasn't  there.  She did, however come home and  tell me she cried at the testimony meeting.  Obviously.  :) 

Megan, Ace, Liesel, and Claire leave for girls camp

                   On the first day the leaders set up an embroidering station, and so for the                                                 rest of camp, when ever the girls had free time they would work on their                                                embroidering.

Christina and Molly made all the meals

All the girls played reverse Pictionary. Megan's team won, because they had the name "the hot chicks" ( Megan clams that ever since day one any team named "the hot chicks" has always wins.

this is after the skits.

this was after the lake day. it achally was raining all morning on the day that they were supposed to go to the lake, but after a lot of praying the clouds rolled away and the sun came out long enough for them to spend 2 hours at the lake. but as soon as they came back it started to rain not 30 minuets latter.

all of the leaders

this is Megan's skit. it was this 101 Dalmatians parody about a crazy fashionista called loco armadillo,(it was aftans camp name) and her quest for the blue(rubber)chicken.

this all the stuff they put together for smores. Megan did an interesting experiment with peeps, which apparently are really bad for smores, on the account all the surger just caramelizes and burns.

this is from the minuet to win it games. all the teams had to keep all the balloons pleased to each other with out popping, and win a race. (Megan's team won because they were the Hot Chicks again)

this is anna, Leisele, and Claire. they were best friends entail anna moved right after girls camp. now it is just Claire and leisele

this is the polar plunge. at 5 in the morning all the girls who wanted to had to wake up, put on there swim suits, and jump in to the freezing cold lake ( the girls called it the medium-sized-pond.)

the tents.

 

First day of school

ok, I am not quite done with summer, but I have to move on.  The summer posts left are all the kids youth camps and I want them to write those posts and I keep forgetting to tell them.  So those will come later.  Since the year is half over by the end of the week, I guess I should post about the first day of school.  Haha.

This is a pretty fun school year for all of our kids so far.  Some "first", some "lasts" and a lot of "new".

Megan's first year in middle school, and the only time she will be in a school all by herself.  She was SO nervous for middle school.  I was a little worried about how worried she was.  I knew she was going to be fine and the middle school would be easy for her.  But she got all in her head that it would be too hard and way too much homework.  Maybe it would have been hard pre-covid, but they have really made everything so easy since then, plus she is smart, organized, responsible, and "on it" - I have no doubts about her.  Luckily I was right (she admits that now) and she is going great - even in her advanced classes.  She is in Tundra pod (a family favorite) and has lots of friends in her pod and classes with her.  Now if we can just get her to put down her book and talk to her friends!

These boys are in high school together and I feel like my heart could burst.  I just love them both so much and am so glad they have each other.  They are killing it at early morning seminary - they seem to really like it, they get up on their own, are ready long before they have to be, and brock even rides his bike at 5:45 in the morning.  He likes to get there early and stare at the stars.  Jason is still teaching (not their classes) so he drives Noah and David. 

Both of the boys decided to really push themselves this year and are taking 2 honors classes each. I am so proud and impressed with their class choices.  They are taking great electives (Brock: Orchestra, weights, and ASL. Noah: Choir, Drama, and Weights).  They both have good friends, teachers who love them, and a pretty good relationship with each other.  

This is Madison's last year of Elementary and the only Herbert at Trailblazer!  And she is living it up.  When she wakes up everyone is already gone, so she gets everything to herself!  She was so cute this summer.  She really cared about her back to school items and purchased most of them by herself.  She wanted a "theme" and bought all things to color coordinate.  I wish I would have taken a picture, it did all turn out so beautiful (mostly white and gold).  She packs her own lunch every morning (they all do, but she does more variety than the rest).  She typically rides her bike to school and loves that she can leave whenever she wants.  The babies and I also love having her around in the morning.  She was initially sad about the teacher she got (Mrs, Casey) and that all of her friends were in the other class, but by the second week she was happy with her class and her teacher.  She felt like her class was more unified and fun. (however b half way through the year I can report that she has gone back to being pretty negative about her class/teacher... so that is disappointing.)

Madison has such a great group of friends that she just adores.  She is my first child to have a "group" of friends in elementary school that she wants to hang out with all the time.  It has taken some getting used to by all of us.  My other kids preferred to be home rather than be with their friends, so we are all trying to not let it hurt our feelings.  However, I was like that so I totally get it. 

Since Noah and Megan were both starting new schools they both started a day before everyone else.  So a picture of just them!  These 2 have found each other for the first time in their lives.  They have always been my 2 that fought and didn't get along.  However, I have probably 4 or 5 blog posts about how they are so similar and if they chose to stop fighting they could be b3est friends.  Well. .. they might be taking my advice because they are becoming great friends and realizing they have similar interests.

 

More summer randomness

 Since I had phone troubles this summer my photos are pretty unorganized.  So I just discovered some photos from summer I never blogged about.  At least I think so.  Some of these might be duplicates - so bear with me!

This is from a hiking activity from Madison's primary activity days.  She has a great group of girls.  They aren't really "friends" but they are friendly and I hope as they all go into young women's together in January they will really develop a great friendship.

Megan spent most of her free time this summer working on making a summer book camp for her and her friends favorite book.  It was pretty cute and amazing how much work they all put into it.  They made matching shirts, crafts, decorations, games, food and everything.  They set up and took it down each day.  I was blown away!

One cool summer day we went to climb the incline.  It was one of those mothering fails for sure.  Because i have so many kids and most people around me don't I hate to be a bad example of large families or even young children to people around me, for that reason I try hard not to put myself in situations that i can't handle by myself or look "crazy".  But on this day I did.  I really thought Dane and Eve would walk up a few stairs and turn around and go backdown a few times - I figured we would play around at the bottom while the rest climbed.  I was wrong.  They were determined to climb up, and fast, with out being held and with out turning around or stopping.  Dane got fat ahead of me and Eve and even while she slowed down she wouldn't even let me hold her hand.  The further up we climbed the more I realized I was in big trouble, I knew I was going to have to get both of them down, on my own.  It didn't turn out quite as bad as I had imagined. By the time I finally caught up to Dane and convinced them to turn around they were tired and done.  They wanted to be carried down.  I did my best.  We would go a few steps at a time and then sit down.  Luckily about half way down we found the girls again and they assisted. 

One day the girls came with me to Hudsen Garden with the babies.  We didn't stay together, the babies and I went and played and the girls took their books and off they went.  I found it hilarious that I would find them over the next few hours in different places reading.  I took pictures, they never even saw me.  It was pretty cute.

Although Megan spotted me here and I missed the moment, they were both walking and reading - it was funny.

This was the babies on that trip

Here is another hike.  In the first part of summer I thought the babies were old enough to take on hikes but after this one and the incline one i learned that they really weren't.  They are at a hard age, wanting to do every thing, but not being able to.  This was another rough hike.  Again... I took the older kids so they could hike and I picked a hike that had a lot of rocks and I figured the babies would be content to stay at the trial head and climb on the rocks while the bigger kids hiked the mountain.  Again... I was wrong.  They wanted to hike the mountain.  IT was hot and miserable.  I ended up carrying Eve almost the whole way and fighting with Dane because I really wanted to turn around and go back down and he didn't  - but I knew I couldn't drag both of them down the mountain so I felt like a hostage to his good graces.  It was awful.  But again... we eventually made it back to the car.  

The mountain behind us is what we were climbing.

We did make it to the top - which wasn't the hard part.  The hard part was getting back down!

There girls came with me wearing their summer camp shirts. 

Maddie went to a friend's birthday party.