Girls Camp

I got to go to the first ever Young Women's Girls Camp of the Kalgoorlie Ward on September 20th to the 21st.  It was so much fun to be a part of and a great bonding experience for the girls.  I was a little nervous to camp in the "outback" but it was just fine.  There weren't any poisonous snakes or spiders that I saw.  Also no creepy marsupials freaking me out, that I saw.  I'm sure they were there, but I didn't see any.  The most annoying thing about camping in the outback were the pesky flies!  They are seriously a breed of their own down here.  Their persistence never ceases to amaze me.  But other than that, it was a really nice experience.

Here are some fun photos of our campsite, the hike we took, some activities that we did and the dam we swam in.

 The camp grounds.

 You got to love the young women's pres singing to the girls to wake them up.  :)

 Some girls slept in the bed of a truck...crazy!

 Here's a collage of the girls hiking.  There was this stone altar at the top.  It was interesting.

 Gotta love the tie dye shirts hanging out to dry.

 Here is the cool cave that we hiked to.  It was very structurally unsound.  There was a sign warning that it could collapse at any time and to enter at your own risk.  Of course, it didn't stop any of the young women.  Or me, obviously.

 There were a bunch of these little ponds everywhere on the mountain and they were just full of tadpoles.

 Probably can't see them, but they're there.

 We all took turns holding them.

 Here is the dam we swam in.  We swam in the morning and then after our afternoon activities we came back again and swam again before the sun went down.  It was freezing, but so fun.

 This is the skeletal remains of a yabbi, apparently people here bring nets and put them in the water then come back and get the yabbis they caught and cook them and eat them on the fire.  All of the girls wanted to do it, but none of them wanted to carry the yabbi nets on the hike.  Haha, so we didn't.

Here were our afternoon certification stations.

This one was mine, fire safety and sanitation...boring!  :)

 Rock necklace making.

 First aid.

 And campfire cooking.

We also had a lantern making station, here they are all lit up.  Pretty cool, huh?

 And here are just some round the camp fire pictures, gotta have those!  :)

 Yes, I made them all sing, and no they didn't know a single campsong!  We will work on that for next year!

 I thought this was a great artistic photo, with the campfire, the gat (guitar) and the young women's camp manual.  Just about sums up girls camp.  :)

Uncle Bradyn Pick Up in Perth

Cory's little brother, Bradyn, decided to come out and work on a mining project that Cory's company is doing out at Seracen Mine.  So we had him plan his flight to Perth on the same weekend that we had ward temple day and stake conference in Perth and it worked out perfectly.

Here are the kids having a fun time making Bradyn's bed for him the day before we left.

 They were having so much fun!!!

Then the trip to Perth began!! This is our first bathroom break, only like an hour and a half into the journey.  It was going to be a long day.  And it was.  We didn't get to Perth until 6 at night.

About 100 kilometers outside of Perth, this beautiful sunny day turned into a very wet, and rainy day!  And it continued for almost the whole weekend. So no beach sandcastle building for us, like the girls had hoped.  Besides, even if it had been nice there really wasn't much time for leisure on this trip.  Saturday morning we had to get up, get ready, drop the kids off at the stake president's house, whose wife graciously offered to watch our children before ever meeting them so Cory and I could go to the same temple session.  Our previous plan was to take turns watching the kids and going to a session.  So how nice was that of Sister Stake Pres? Way nice!  I do have to say the temple session was absolutely fabulous.  It is so amazing what living far from a temple will do for your appreciation. Now if only we could remember to keep the same appreciation and attitude toward it when we live a mile away.  Hopefully, it will stick if we ever get to be close to a temple again.  :)

After the temple session, we had to get out of there quick, pick up our kids and get to the airport because Uncle Bradyn's flight was coming in.

Here are the kids (sort of all of the kids) with Bradyn after we picked him up and went to Hungry Jack's for lunch.

After that, Bishop Cory had stake meetings to attend to, and it was still pouring down rain so we just headed back to the place we were staying and watched a movie.

The kids were super excited because Bradyn came bearing gifts from both grandparents!  :)  Thank you, Grandparents!!!

Here are the girls with their goodie bags chuck full of awesome stuff!  I could not get a good pic of Will on this trip to save my life.  But he got a goodie bag too and he also loved it.

 Here's Lily with her cool outfit that Grandma Kris sent.

 Here's Ava in her special outfit from Grandma Kris.  Ava loved this outfit so much she slept in it and put it right back on after church on Sunday, then slept in it again and wore it the whole next day.  She still puts it on every chance she gets.

 The next day, we went to Stake Conference and then we decided to take Bradyn to see King's Park before we started on the long drive back to Kal. It just so happened that they were having this Flower Power Festival that day, celebrating 50 years.  It was great.

 They had all these cool paintings on the grass.

 Can you see that it says Flower Power?

 Here we are at the whispering wall, whispering secrets to Lily.

 Here is Will, breaking the rules and going past the fence surrounding this water feature.  In his defense, there was a duck in the water so it was a little too hard to resist.  If you look closely you can see the duck.

 The great views of King's Park.

 We walked through some gardens on the way back to the car.

 I saw this van on the way out. I thought it was a perfect addition to the Flower Power festival.

Then from there we headed out of beautiful Perth and onto the boring open road to Kal.  We didn't make it home until 10pm, but the kids were all very good and we had some great movies to watch along the way.  :)  That made it bearable.  I hope the next time we go to Perth we have nice weather and we get to stay longer than a weekend!  :)