I Spy (vs. Spy)

Camp with 23 girls!

This is me at the start of camp, all doe eyed and bushy tailed - way before the complete and total fatigue set in. Sunday night after camp saw me in bed by 7:45pm.

Late nights, totally exhausted BUT totally worth it in the end.

If you are on a diet, however, you should not , I repeat, should not come to camp with us.

First there were S'mores

We set up a S'mores building station

Each girl was given a sugar cone and coated the inside with chocolate syrup. A spoonful of chopped up bananas, a spoonful of semi-sweet chocolate chips and marshmallows to top it all off. Wrap it in tinfoil and place near the camp fire to toast. We got rained out so we had to bake them in the oven. In the end it doesn't matter how you make them, they always turn out perfect.

Sickly sweet & delicious

Then there was some delicious dirt pudding

After a spaghetti dinner (complete with garlic bread and caesar salad), we had dirt pudding for dessert. A chocolate pudding cup, oreo cookie crumbs and gummy worms. We added whipped cream - the girls told me that whipped cream has nothing to do with mud, dirt and worms. I told them they were clouds. They thought that was stupid.

It wasn't all food and more food. We also had a theme. Spy camp. 

The girls were broken into 4 smaller groups and were told to give their team a name and to come up with a personal alias. They really got into it, some great team names (Agent Girl Guides, Super Secret Spies, Midnight Sneakers, and Ninja Spies) and even cuter aliases (C-Girl, Agent Awesome, Agent ROA).

The girls (and their stuffed animals) went under cover, disguising themselves in hats, scarfs, and sunglasses.

We also set up an obstacle course, this was to test their laser dodging ability.

Testing their Speed & Coordination

Some Midnight Fun

Originally we wanted to do glow-in-the-dark bubbles but our night time fun got rained out. As a back up plan we played glow-in-the-dark win, lose, or draw.

We did your typical camping stuff too - arts & crafts, hikes, catching little critters and lots and lots of gimp bracelets 

Hiking

Beautiful Rolling Hills - generally rain free, lite on the bugs, and only a few tears. So all and all a great week-end.

 Arts & Crafts

We made little sani buckets to pin to their camp hats. Reminds them of the enormous fun they had washing dishes and cleaning toilets. Because who doesn't think that's fun!?!

Pop Tab Bracelets

Lots and lots of gimp - don't want to brag but I am kinda a gimp master

Catching Stuff

There were frogs, toads, snakes, grasshoppers and anything else they could get their hands on.

Engaged in Questionable Activities

Some people love the idea of engagement photos and some people hate, dread, loath, despise engagement photos with the fire of a thousand suns. 

I mean, who really likes getting their photo taken other than models? ok and movie stars, and teenaged girls, and ok ok so there are lots of people who LOVE getting their picture taken. I am not one of them.

I like when (by accident) someone takes a picture of me and it doesn't make me want to barf or go into a rampage ripping up and deleting every copy I can get my hands on. As you can tell, my standards are low.

Back to the engagement photos - we reluctantly agreed to have them done a) because they were included in our package and b) truthfully there is no better way to see exactly what you are getting on the day of your wedding. 

These shoots give you and your photographer an opportunity to get to know one another and get comfortable with each other ahead of the big day. Who wants to find out at the wedding that your photographer is a big jerk and you and your photographer do not get along at all? That would be bad news.

If you were wondering, our photographer happens to be all kinds of awesome. 

We followed some simple rules:

• Photos needed to represent the real us (so no cigarette smoking, martini drinking, Mad Men-esque posing for us)

• We needed to be comfortable during the shoot

• Minimal props (and when props were used they truly represented us and our personalities).