Girl Scout Snow Camp!

What a weekend it was! Zoe, and the girls have been counting down the weeks and days until Snow Camp! Now that they are junior girl scouts, they are finally able to go and be a part of all the fun. We had a couple girls and moms that had to back out at the last minute, so it was 6 of our girls (Zoe, Lacey, Madison, Jaeda, Sydney, and Emilee) plus 3 moms (Brook, Denise, and me).
We headed up to Idyllwild on Friday afternoon right after school. We packed all our stuff in 2 SUV's and off we went. Lacey, Zoe, and Madison had big smiles as we got ready to go.
After stopping for a quick dinner at a pizza place in the village, we got to our camp. It was a bit tricky trying to find it and get to our cabin in the dark, but we finally found it. Actually, I couldn't possibly call the places we slept in cabins, they were more like shelters. In fact, we called it our "cell". Oh, what a home away from home...
The girls couldn't wait to get their pj's on, climb into their bunks and snack on some boxes of girl scout cookies.
After staying up very late laughing and talking, and getting up very early for more of the same, we made it to the flag ceremony and breakfast in the dining hall. Unfortunately, we woke up to rain which we knew would put a slight damper on our day!

Of course the girls didn't care and just had fun playing. They found some rings and rope poles to climb on and had a great time. One of the troops also put on a puppet show for the girls and then brought tons of stuff for everyone to make their own sock puppets.
When we got back to our "cell" we realized we had locked ourselves out. Luckily, Zoe was small enough to get into the window and let us back in. :)
We then decided to take a walk into town to look around and do a little shopping. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures, most likely because it was pure misery (well at least for the moms!) It was cold, rainy, and windy. The girls still managed to have smiles on their faces, found some souvenirs and candy, and made the best of it.
After lunch, we spent some time in our shelter to dry off and try to get warm. The girls did some finger knitting, we played a homemade version of Pictionary, they put on their own puppet show, and we did lots of singing and laughing while we watched the rain fall.
The rain eventually turned to hail and then finally into snow. The girls were ecstatic, a few of them had never seen snow fall before. They couldn't wait to get outside to play and start sledding!

The girls were exhausted and wet after a few fun hours playing in the snow. Our evening consisted of a turkey dinner, girl scout songfest filled with lots of songs,skits, swaps and more late night giggling. By morning, we were all exhausted, but we woke up to a beautiful winter wonderland.
We enjoyed our last meal in the dining hall, and the kids had some last minute fun playing in the snow while we finished cleaning up and packing the car. It took quite a bit of work getting our frozen doors open and scraping all of the snow and ice off the cars!
The weekend wasn't quite what we had planned since we were hoping for earlier snow, but I was so impressed with these girls. We never heard ONE complaint, whine, or disagreement during the entire weekend. They are such a good group of girls and they all get along so well. They made the best of everything and had a ton of fun. I guess that makes it all worth it in the end!