Survived the weekend and a girl turns 10 today!

I got home around 11AM from a weekend at Camp Wildwood with 12 girls from our troops (mine (9) and my co-leaders daisy troop with 3 ). I'm happy to say we returned with the same amount and all are alive! Heck, I think they were even the same girls!

Saturday morning - after staying the night Friday with silly poses.

Turns out some really don't like the bugs and critters (something about a wee mouse that had created a house by the mattress on my bed when we checked in .... and a nice black spider on the ceiling in one of the girls rooms.... and the need of lifting the seat to check for frogs in the bathroom... where the little green tree frogs are all over the place! and mosquitos.... we were in the woods after all!) .

Mid Afternoon after our last rotation with thunder in the distance.

It was a fun filled day at our Elf Boot Camp. Our service project was making 40 blankets (2 pieces of felt then the girls tied the edge strips together) to donate and the older girls in high school helped make the bunk beds for the new cabins they are currently building on the property overlooking the lake they are 'reclaiming'.

Showing how to tie the edges together.

We got 6 blankets made!

There was a snowball fight (yes, in Florida. This is photos of the second group as I was getting pelted by them from the first group - I was the only adult participating and boy did I pay!),

package relay, decorate the leader like a xmas tree and other reindeer games, candy cane pick up with a candy cane in the mouth and no hands, cookie decorating, and archery.  I missed Em shooting but Ms. Shelby got some great shots of her. A big thank you to my co leaders Sarah, Jill and Shelby for the 2 troops.

Since the daisy (K-1) could not do archery we went to a nearby field and did red light, green light and simon says... as I was shuttling the girls back and forth it seems a popular one was 'Simon says chase Ms. Sarah (one of my co-leaders)'! Lots of hiking in the woods - with me getting 23,000 steps in yesterday on my fitbit!

We weathered a fast moving t-storm that broke off and didn't end up hitting us with any rain for over an hour before dinner yesterday - 137 girls in a main lodge where we eat and they all were great!

We finished off the night with Smores by the campfire and then the walk back to our cabin with our flash lights through the trails in the woods.

Now settling the girls last night.... I seem to have read a first chapter of a book on dolphins one of the girls brought to all 6 girls with us around 11:15 last night to finally settle them down to sleep. Well, one room of 3 anyway. The other room was wound and started to let their imaginations go wild with night noises so Ms.Deb got to drag her mattress into their room on the floor to sleep after that. Getting them moving to finish packing, clean the cabins and bathroom this morning.... sigh. They are all home now and I took off tomorrows meeting for a 'RECOVERY' day..... cause boy do I need it!

I did get to wake Ms. Emily up with a Happy Birthday this morning. She wakes up with a smile.... unlike some others in the troop. I might have threatened tickle torture for one of them to get up and moving this morning =). She was giggling under her covers before I even started, silly L.  Emily got sung Happy Birthday by a couple of the troops out where our section of camp is - we had 4 troops- 23 girls and 9 adults in our area of 4 cabins. I just hope they don't make me unit leader ever again... not hard but just one more thing to be responsible for on leaving morning - all chores done by girls and units cleaned for ranger inspection - ours was at 8:30AM.

Another year of encampment done. Until next year... where I hear the theme might be Halloween related!