Girls Camp at Mia Shalom

July 5th - 9th I got to spend the week with some of my very favorite teenage girls and young women leaders! It was my first year (and hopefully not my last) at Camp Mia Shalom. Here's a few of the highlights from my week...

Shortly after we got there on Tuesday, we got to spend time at "Water Front." This picture is one of the two great girls who canoed me around the lake (more like a large pond) telling me funny their funny jokes. They did a great job of not tipping us over, although I did get a paddleful of water a couple of times.

Here are two of the GREATEST camp leaders EVER!!! I am so blessed to serve with such wonderful women. I know that I spent countless hours getting ready for camp. But what I did was just a drop in the bucket compared to what the other leaders at camp did for these girls, especially Sister Brown. I got to know her so much better through camp this year. She is an amazing example to me of selfless service and love.

We also have amazing young women leaders in the stake. Here's a picture of our WONDERFUL young women's president (in the white hat) with two of the stake leaders (the one in the cowboy hat is her sister). This woman gives so much of her personal time to taking care of our girls. She loves them so much and is also a great example to me.

The Stake theme this year was "Happily Ever After" based on President Uchtdorf's May 2010 talk given to the young women. So our ward's theme was "Daughters of  a King, Queens in the Making." Our value was Integrity and our color was purple. We has so much fun with the fun princess stuff we could do. Here we are making our own tiaras out of a headband, wires and purple beads...

This is my cute Beehive President. This picture sums up her personality so well. This girl is always happy and is a great example to the other girls. Gotta love this outfit. She wore outfits similar to this all week long. She kept us entertained with her clothes ensembles.

Here's another one of my cute Beehives all dressed in her purple stuff...She's also a girl who always has a smile to share.

Here's a picture of our fearless leaders and a couple other girls getting ready for flag ceremony one morning. Our camp cook is on the far right. She goes camping all the time with her family, but we found out that it actually her husband who does the cooking on their trips. So she had to have a crash course in dutch oven cooking from him before coming up to camp. I thought she did a great job! And she was so much fun to be with at camp. Not only did she keep us well fed, but she kept us well entertained too!

Here I am in all my purple too...

On Wednesday we took the girls on a hike. It ended up lasting about 3 hours and we figured it was about 4-5 miles. But the girls were real troopers. They did so well on the hike. As leaders we were amazed at how well they did. Don't let this picture deceive you though...the girls are actually going up the hill backwards in this picture. One of the few times I got to see their faces while hiking.

I stayed in the back to make sure none of the girls got left behind. So this is the view of the girls that I got throughout the hike...

I have the best Beehives! Here are some of them entertaining the crowd with their crazy camp songs while we are waiting for everyone else to join us for flag ceremony one night. I'm pretty sure they are doing "The Beaver Song" here. I love that we get to see the girls enjoying pure happiness!!!

For skits on Friday we did a "hair session." Almost everyone got their hair braided or done up cute. These are a couple of my Beehives again. The one in front was the evil queen in our version of "Sleeping Beauty" so she got to have her hair done all crazy!

Here's some of the girls doing a team building activity down by the lake. For this activity each side had to take turns pulling the ropes to make the A-frame "walk" across the field. It was tricky at first, but the girls did pretty good once they got the hang of it.

Here we are singing our song "Daughter of a King" as part of our value presentation on Friday evening. I hadn't really heard the song before getting ready for camp. But now that I know it really well, I love it. It is a beautiful song with an even more beautiful message. It made me tear up a lot when we sang it. I hope the girls remember this song and really take the words to heart. They truly are Daughters of The King, our wonderful Heavenly Father!

I loved my camp experience and would do it all over again if I had the chance. It was so nice to get away from all the distractions of everyday life and to be up in the mountains where you could see God's beautiful creations and feel so close to the Spirit. My favorite time up there was testimony meeting. It was beautiful to hear these girls bear such sweet testimonies and know that they were feeling the Spirit so strongly. I hope that is a feeling that they remember and can recognize for the rest of their lives.

In case you are wondering, Leah and Ross did just fine while I was gone. It's great that Ross has so much time off in the summer. He did have to go to teach summer school three of the days, but he had plenty of people around to help him take care of Leah when he needed them.

I want to add one other experience that happened while I was at girls camp, mostly for my own memories so that I don't forget this great blessing, so if you have reach this point of my post and are getting bored, go ahead and quit reading...the Saturday before I left, we discovered that our hot water heater was leaking. Not enough to do any damage, but enough that we knew it needed replacing soon. Since it was a holiday weekend, we knew we didn't want to call a repairman until at least Tuesday (when I would be gone.) Normally I am around to help in these kinds of things, but this time Ross had to take care of it himself. We had talked to my family and did a little research online about cost of water heaters, so we were expecting to pay about $500-$1000. So when Ross had a person from a nearby store come look at it, he was shocked when the price quote was $1700! But as Ross and the repairman got talking, they chatted about how Ross worked in education and how I was away at girls camp. I guess the guy decided to take pity on our situation ( I like to think he was inspired to help us) but he told Ross "[The company I work for] isn't going to like this, but I have a friend who can do this for you for only $600." Needless to say, Ross got the name and number of the friend and on that Friday the new water heater was installed and is working great! Now I realize that we could have gone to another company to get a better price quote. But I really feel like we were blessed to have it work out this way because I was away serving at girls camp and that this is just one more way that he Lord has shown me that He is always there to take care of us when we are doing what He has asked us to do. I love the gospel and all the great ways that it blesses my life!!!

4th of July Weekend

This year the 4th of July weekend was different for the Leslie family because we decided to actually stick around town and participate in some of the local festivities.

On Friday morning we went over to Seven Peaks water park. Leah enjoys being in the water and she also enjoys watching all the people. I love that we have our passes this year because we can go for an hour or so in the morning before it gets too hot and too crowded. We can leave when we want to and don't have to feel like we have to stay a long time to get our money's worth.

Saturday morning, Ross's cousin, Julie, invited us to join their family at the pancake breakfast at the hot air balloon festival. I've always been curious about the balloon festival, but never curious enough to get up that early to check it out. This gave us a good reason to go. 

By the time we got there, most of the balloons were already in the air, but we did get to see the Darth Vader balloon take off.

That evening we went over to watch the "Stadium of Fire" fire works show. We had never tried to watch them from somewhere outside the stadium, so we didn't really know what to expect. There were definitely a lot of people gathered to watch them where we were. Leah was so tired but so hyper because there was so much going on and so many people to see. We had a very hard time getting her to settle down and stay in our little area.

The family next to us was so nice. One of their little girls came over and offered to give Leah one of their glow stick necklaces. She loved playing with it. By the time the fireworks started, we was SO tired, but wouldn't sit still long enough to fall asleep (who does that sound like?). She wasn't as excited over them as I was hoping she would be (the fireworks are my favorite part of the holiday), but she wasn't bothered by them at all either. So that was nice. But needless to say, it didn't take long for her to fall asleep in the car on the way home.

Lots of people at church on Sunday thought Leah was so cute and patriotic in her blue and white striped dress that she got from her Grandma Leslie. (Of course people at church always thinks that Leah is so cute-I might be a little biased but I have a hard time disagreeing with them.)

Monday morning we went to the parade with the Millers. Thanks again to Julie and a few of the other cousins for saving us such great seats! We really enjoyed the parade. Overall, the weather was pretty pleasant. Leah seemed to enjoy all the excitement, the people and the horses in the parade. By the end, she was ready for a nap but of course was not about to fall asleep with so much going on.

 Of course, I had to get a picture of our favorite "float."

That evening we joined the Millers again along with Ross's mom and sister and her family for a great BBQ. There was so much food, we could have had twice as many people and still had plenty! After a few fireworks in front of the house, we loaded up and went back home so I could finish packing for girls camp the next day.

It went by so fast, it's hard to believe that the 4th of July has come and gone already. We had a lot of fun. I kind of wish I could have slowed down and enjoyed it more (I spent most of the weekend getting things ready for girls camp). But it was still fun to participate in so many of the activities and pause some to reflect on our freedoms and pay tribute to those who have and still do sacrifice so much to protect our liberty. Thank you to all our troops!

Heber Valley Camp with the Turners

Last weekend was another great one for the Leslie family. This time we got to join the Turner family for their family reunion at Heber Valley Camp. We went with them last year. But since Leah was so little, we didn't spend the night. This year we stayed for the whole time and had so much fun. Even Leah had a great time. She loves being outside and wanted to get down and play as much as we would let her. But we had to be careful because she kept trying to eat the rocks! Silly girl!

The first thing we did when we got there was to go to the Challenge Course. This is where they do some fun team building activities and such. For the first challenge, each partner was on a wire about 18 inches off the ground. The two wires started out together and then gradually spread apart. As you made your way down the wires, you had to push against your partner to stay on the wire. Ross and I had to do it with our eyes closed. We didn't make it very far before we fell off.
Next we did an activity where everyone had to stand on two boards and then work together to lift the boards and walk a little way down the hill and back. The team on the left had all adults and teenagers. So they caught on pretty quickly. Ross was on the team on the right with the little kids. They had a harder time getting the boards going, but once they caught on, they did pretty well.

The last challenge we did was to go down the zip line. I did this last year and loved it. But this was Ross's first time trying it. He was a little nervous at first, but did just fine and ended up really enjoying it. Here he is watching one of the kids do it while he waited for his turn.

First you had to climb up a big wooden pole.  Then walk across the beam to the zip line platform. (Don't worry, you are harnessed to a rope and the senior missionaries serving there support you the whole time so you can't fall and get hurt.)

Once they get you harnessed to the zip line, you can go for a ride!

Here I am doing it too.

We had so much great food while we were up there. Thanks to Greg and Deb for doing so much of the cooking. Of course you can't go camping without roasting marshmallows for s'mores.

Leah loved eating the marshmallows I roasted for her. She would have eaten them all night if I had let her.
This is where the battery in our camera died. So I don't have any more pictures. After marshmallows, some went to bed. But me and Leah stayed up to play games with some of the others. She's a night owl like me!

The next morning, we went down to the lake for activities. Some people canoed, but Ross and I used the paddle boats. It took a little getting used to, but by the end we could maneuver our little boat pretty well.

Later we played some "Minute to Win it" games and then got the camp site cleaned up. We are so glad the Turners invited us to join them. We had a great time. It is so beautiful up there and the cabins and other amenities were so great to have. Thanks again Larry and Vera for all you do for us!!!