First of all, I would like to dedicate this post to my friend Beth who is working in Taiwan this summer. She has been bugging me about updating my blog because she feels out of the loop or something like that. I wish I were as diligent as her at blogging, but alas, it is not one of my talents. Beth, I hope this satisfies you're curiosity (at least for the time being).
So I have been a slacker when it comes to keeping up the blog.... my summer at Aspen Grove has ended. The last day was August 30th. Here are some pictures:
During the summer time, the supervisors live on-site with their families. This picture is of me and Eric who lives here all summer with his family. He is one of the most fun little boys. He would alternate being with the Kittens (my group) and the Trompers (the group right below mine).
A few weeks ago, we had a very special guest come to Aspen Grove with her family. It was Sister Cheryl Lant, the Primary General President. She attended our primary. By the way, if I haven't mentioned before, I was called as the First Counselor in our Primary Presidency up at Aspen Grove. Sister Lant gave a special message to the children which was a wonderful thing to witness. One thing that really impressed me was the following experience that she recounted. At one point before leaving to travel somewhere to visit Primary children, she asked President Hinckley what was one thing she should tell all the children throughout the world. He said, "Tell them to never forget to pray." After Primary, we asked Sister Lant if we could take a picture with her. From left to right: Ashley-President, Sarah-Second Counselor, me-First Counselor, Sister Lant.
My friend Ashley (the Primary President) is fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). I signed up to take ASL 101 this semester and was really interested in learning. One Sunday, a little boy with Downs Syndrome was visiting. Because he could sign, Ashley translated for him during Junior Primary. One of the songs the children were learning in Singing Time was "My Heavenly Father Loves Me." I watched Ashley sign the song and I just loved it! During Senior Primary (when she didn't have to translate anymore), I asked her teach me the signs while the children were singing. It was so much fun. From then on, I was hooked. The rest of the summer, Ashley and I signed. She taught me so much...especially with songs. One of her deaf friends visited a couple of times, so I was able to meet him and even sign with him a little. This picture is of Ashley, her friend, and I.
If you remember from my post with the video of our Closing Show dance, there was a little girl who caught a case of stage fright. She was my absolute favorite child from the entire summer. I completely fell in love with her! Maya was one of five foster siblings of one of the guys I worked with. The entire family was so loving and sweet. This little girl gave the best hugs in the entire world. It just made all of your cares melt away. After the Closing Show, she just clung to me and cried, saying "I don't want to leave. I love you." She wouldn't go to any of her family, including her foster mom. She danced with me for at least half of the Family Dance until her mom had her come spend time with the family. Even though it was sad to see her upset, it definitely made me feel loved that she cared about me so much. Here is a picture of Maya and I.
This is just a random picture that makes me smile. If I remember correctly, the little boy was the last one to be picked up. He and Blaine were "resting" after a long, hard day's work. haha.
The next three pictures are from the same week. We had triplets that week!! Three girls...two identical (Annie and Jessie), one fraternal (Leah). Annie and Jessie had curly hair and Leah had straight hair. Here is how we told them apart when they wore the same outfit but different colors: Annie wore pink, Jessie wore green, and Leah wore blue. If they wore the exact same outfit (same colors), we told them apart by the nail polish on their thumbs: Annie had pink and Jessie had green. They were very sweet girls. The last day of camp each week was our "Western Day." In the mornings we did Cowboy activities. After lunch, we did "Native American" activities, including making Native American pictures. This particular week, I decided to make a headdress along with the kids. After making our headdresses, we tell Native American stories in the tepee. I asked the kids to help me make up a story...their suggestion for the Indian Princess was Buttercup. Can you guess the boy Indian's name? Yep...Wesley. Sound familiar? I thought it was funny, so I told an Indian version of The Princess Bride.
Eric (from the beginning of this post) has an older sister named Melissa. She is a fun girl. She kinda just roves around helping/playing with whatever group. We both discovered that each of us is very ticklish, which began a "tickle war." On her last day up at camp, we kept tickling each other in order to be the one to get the "last" tickle. I thought I had won, but then a few minutes after I thought she had left, she snuck back into the dance, ran behind me, and tickled me!! And then she ran off too quickly for me to get her back. Just wait until next year though! I'll get my revenge!! ;)
One of our supervisors who lives on site all year round has two adorable little girls. His youngest is about a year and a half and has Downs Syndrome. She is the sweetest little baby! At one of the dances, I was lucky enough to hold and play with Maddie. Here's a picture of the two of us.
This next picture is the Maddie's older sister, Aspen. She is a fun little kid. She definitely has a mind of her own though! The picture takes place at the last Church meeting we had up at Aspen Grove.
I was so lucky to get the roommates that I did this summer! Both girls were so sweet and fun to be with. Before Church on our last Sunday, we took a roommate picture in front of our cabin...cabin 26. From left to right: me, Canda, Mikell.
This next picture is of me and my "brother." Alan and I became really good friends this summer...we'd joke around a lot that we're just like brother and sister. And it was so true! He'll be going on a mission in November to Chile Santiago East. He is going to make a great missionary!
I'm not sure how much I've written about how Church works up at Aspen Grove. During the summer, there is an Aspen Grove Group. It's different than a Ward or a Branch. We have a Group leader and he has a first and second assistant. Because it's not a ward or a branch, I couldn't pay my tithing there, so I just sent it to my home ward in Virginia. We held Sacrament Meeting outside as long as the weather allowed it. It was a beautiful setting to have Church in. This is a picture of where we have Sacrament meeting each week. Hopefully it turned out well enough that you can see a little of what it's like.
Each week we get into groups and clean the camp (more about that later). One week, we noticed a deer laying right outside the cabin we were cleaning. We thought it would get scared and run away, but it didn't. It just layed there as relaxed as could be. Here's the picture of the deer and then a picture of me with the deer to show how close we were. (I apologize for how I look...but remember I'd cleaning cabins for a few hours!!)
The next pictures are from my last day at Aspen Grove. I took most of these just walking around camp before I had to start our cleaning assignment and checkout of my cabin.
This first picture is the outside of the Canyon Rim restrooms. Canyon Rim was the area of cabins where I lived.
Our laundry room...very interesting I know. One thing I'm going to miss though is free laundry. Now it's back to collecting quarters.
The "Kitten Club" or in other words, the Canyon Rim staff lounge. I'm actually not sure why it's named the kitten club, but whatever. It was basically a storage unit but thankfully they converted it for us. Now we have an additional place to watch movies.
The Aspen Lodge was one of the main buildings at camp. This is where the office, the store, various conference rooms, and some guest rooms were. Aspen Lodge pictures in order: the outside of the building, the slowest elevator EVER, the office (along with the 2 girls who work in the office), the store, the store with Ryan "working," and the area in the store with the games and equipment for guests to check out.
The amphitheater...this is where we have our opening and closing shows, church, firesides, family talent show, etc.
A view of Aspen Lawn...where we pick up our groups each day. The official spot for the Kittens to meet is on the badminton court, but generally we sit under the green tent because there's actually some shade.
Emerald Dining Hall...this is where we get our food. Notice I did not say this is where we eat. Actually, let me clarify...this is where we ate at the beginning of the summer and it is where the guests always eat. The staff ended up getting "kicked out" of the dining hall. Instead they had us eat on the deck of Beckham Lodge...a picture is shown here.
This is a picture of the bridge. It gets us across the road to the other side of camp. There's actually a cross walk where you can just walk across the road, but for safety reasons, if we are with guests we have to use the bridge.
The Huish Activity Center. This building has many uses. We held our sharing time here (in the upper left room-you can see the windows). The Rompers (0-2yr olds), Stompers (3yr olds), and Trompers (4yr olds) held their groups here. There are two big screen TVs, so this is generally where the staff watched movies after work (in addition to the Kitten Club). Also, the best drinking fountain in camp was in this building in case you were wondering.
Snowshoe Lodge is staff housing. Most of the staff live in this building (the rest of us live in Canyon Rim-definitely the better place to live in my opinion). When you walk in, you enter the staff lounge. There are 3 computers as well as wireless internet. The guys live on the left and the girls live on the right. Outside of Snowshoe, someone put up a couple of hammocks. They were a lot of fun. Many sessions of "girl talk" occurred while relaxing in the hammock.
The wood chipper!!! So cool. Okay so occasionally, we have to do what is called "Glen Projects." Glen is the camp director so we just do whatever random projects he wants to...for example sweeping the parking lot. Pointless, I know. But whatever. The best Glen Project I did all summer was using the wood chipper. A group of 4 or 5 of us used the wood chipper. It's a very satisfying job. If you ever have a really bad day and just want to let all of your frustration out, I would suggest using the wood chipper.
Now to explain our weekly cleaning jobs. Everyone was placed into groups at the beginning of the summer. Each group was assigned an area of camp to clean at the end of the each week. We clean wherever the guests stayed and then set up for the next week's guests. My group (which consisted of myself and 2 other girls) cleaned Elk Point...one of the two guest cabin areas. Every morning at 8:30am, we head over to Elk Point and start collecting linen-sheets, towels, pillow cases....which we need to collect by 10am when one of the "maintenance boys" comes around to collect it all. And then we start cleaning all 16 cabins. However, breakfast for the guests is between 8 and 9am, so most of the time they aren't in their cabins when we first get there. Checkout is at 10am, so usually everyone is gone by then and we can just clean really fast. But there were a few occasions where we had guests overstay their welcome. One week we had cleaned all the cabins, and made all the beds except in one cabin. We were going to start cleaning the bathrooms, but the cleaning supplies are in the men's restroom and guess what? These extremely not punctual guests were showering in the men's restroom. You can imagine that we were just a tad frustrated. Luckily they left around noon and we were able to resume cleaning. These 2 pictures are from our last day of cleaning...Elk Point restroom sign and Elk Point cleaning crew. From left to right: me, Shaelie, Alice.
So that's it. I am finished with Aspen Grove. It's definitely a bittersweet feeling. I'm glad to be moving on to something new, but I'm going to miss it. I loved the people I worked with and I had some great experiences. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to work up there.
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