The Pierce Family

Monday, October 15, 2018

A YW Pioneer Day Celebration

For some reason we never really celebrate Pioneer Day. I remember when I was growing up that we always seemed to have some fun primary activity to commemorate the day but that is not something I see much of anymore outside of Utah. Well, young women activity night fell on the actual Pioneer Day this year so I suggested we do an activity all about pioneer fun. We did some games that would have been played at that time, like the 3-legged race. Some of the partnerships...

and the races!

Despite efforts by some of the Beehives to slow others down, Carolyn and Savannah pretty much won every race!

Stick pulling!

Most of the girls tried it but we quickly found that Grace was putting everyone away!

So Melissa challenged her...

with the same results!

Grace went undefeated!

While some of the girls continued stick pulling, others went into the kitchen to try their hand at making butter.

Lots of shaking going on!

It actually turned out really good and we all got to enjoy our butter with cornbread.

Lastly we played pioneer bingo. Each of the girls had been asked to bring a pioneer story, either from their own family history or one that they'd read about, and as the stories were read the girls looked for items that were mentioned on their bingo cards. It was a lot of fun!

I'd definitely call it a Pioneer Day celebration success!

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Girls Camp 2018

Girls camp is not usually an activity I attend so I rely on my fabulous YW President Melissa to send me pictures of my girl throughout the week.

But this year I ended up at camp twice! Tuesday night the other YW counselor, Sommer, and I drove up together to have dinner with our girls as well as watch them perform their skit. We had a great time! Almost immediately we ran into Melissa and Nichole, our camp director.

And there were all our girls having ward time so we joined right in. Cute Emma and her ukele...

Liath, Emily, and Grace working on some dance moves...

Wendy Eck and her fab glasses...

and my Savannah getting her groove on with the other girls.

There was also some card playing...

hugs...

and a trip to the reflection spot.

Benches are set up for each value that have the name of a female hero carved on them.

It's a quiet little area where the girls can go to reflect, ponder, and hopefully find some peace.

Time for dinner! The leaders photo bombing are the best!

I caught these ladies all dressed up before performing their skit which was sensational!

Cheering on the young women in the other wards as they perform each skit. I know I might be prejudiced but I can honestly say that our skit was the best! Our value was Divine Nature and going along with The Greatest Showman theme, we were jugglers. In our skit Audrey was trying to juggle the many roles and responsibilities, represented by all of our young women, that a young woman has today. We got tons of compliments about our performance!

Taking an evening stroll around camp with the other leaders.

Can you spot Stephanie?? She kept doing this creepy pose in every picture which had us all cracking up.

Enjoying the amazing sunset before driving home to our nice comfortable beds.

Thursday night I was back up at camp, this time with David as well as Kim and Rich Paul, for Bishops Night. Once again we found the girls in the middle of ward time so we just jumped right in and joined them.

There's always lots and lots of hair braiding going on.

And more card playing.

We then headed over to the flag to sing and retire the flag for the night before dinner.

Rich can always be depended on to do some grilling.

It's always so fun to see some of the young women I don't often get to see, like Akua who used to be in our ward but moved up to Susquehanna a year or so ago.