Adventurous Leila

We FINALLY made it to Skoolie UP! We’re so happy to be at this amazing event! Our spot was right in the middle of lots of our friends and central to all the action. The event was held at a campground so they had all the amenities plus a restaurant/bar, pond, disc golf and more. When we arrived I went straight over to all my friends, we went for a walk and they showed me around. Then we all went over to play volleyball, soon enough the boys started fighting and wrestling over the ball so we ended the game. Since it was a warm day we decided to jump fully clothed into the pond to cool off. We ended the evening with a community bonfire, s’mores bar and fire show.

The next day I was up and out to meet up with my friends. Pretty much the entire 10 days we were there I was off with all my friends, in and out of their buses, eating pizza at the bar, hanging in the game room underneath the bar, going for walks, playing with the kittens, and just enjoying being with 20ish other teenagers. So aside from that I will sum up some of the activities we went to. The donut eating contest was really fun to watch, multiple of my friends entered but I didn’t want to feel like crap so I skipped it. The winner ate 19 powdered donuts with nothing to drink. Afterwards there were lots of left overs so I indulged and ate 7, luckily I felt fine after. That evening was karaoke night, and I sang knocking boots with a group of friends. It was a lot of fun but we skipped out early to go hangout instead.

On Sunday morning, one of the Skoolie people hosted a popup church service where I got to experience my first communion. I really enjoyed the service and will always remember my first communion was with my nomad family. Later we went to the Oreo sushi class, and no there was no raw fish involved. Basically we all got a package of oreos, broke them up, made them into a flat roll, added the cream filling and rolled it to be sushi rolls. It was a lot of fun but mine turned out very sweet so I could only eat a couple.

The next day was the rock hunting field trip but my mom and I decided to stay home. Landon and Dad went and had a great time. While they were gone, my mom scheduled me a hair appointment with the popup hair dresser. A really fun note for the Skoolie events is each person that has a talent offers it to the community in order for them to make some extra cash, hence me getting my hair done. I decided to go full blown and chopped my hair short, but I love it and will probably never go back long.

The next day was kicked off with an Uno tournament, it was crazy and my friends said it was extremely hard. The last two standing was this one younger girl and a kid named X from the fire show. The girl was doing pretty bad but took a slight turn at the end. It was back to back but X took the win! That evening there was face painting, balloon animals, video games, and games for the adults. My cousin Juliette and I got balloon animals, I got a unicorn and my cousin got a dog but we decided to trade because she thought my unicorn looked inappropriate and wanted it, lol.

The next day was a field trip to Mackinac Island, since my family has already been several times we decided not to go. Most of the people that stayed at camp decided to play a really intense game of kickball. It was really hard and my legs were sore but we had a blast playing! That evening was Wine Wednesday, most of the adults went but us teens didn’t.

We all headed to the beach for some fun in the sun and to watch the boat races. All participants made their boats out of cardboard, 2 liter bottles, one tarp and unlimited duck tape! The kid that won had engineered an amazing boat, he even made a template of it to see how it would float ahead of time. It was so funny to watch some of the kids boats, some failed right away, some couldn’t even get in and some lasted to the finish line but most kids were soaking wet at the end. After the boat race we just hung out on the beach, went paddle boarding and went on forest walks. We all headed home to get ready for the pirate party. All the girls apparently had the same idea with a white sundress, a little corset and tights, but our pirate outfit wouldn’t be complete without some gold pirate hair accessories. We all had a blast singing to the music and dancing the night away.

All us girly pops decided it would be fun to paint our legs, so we all pulled out paint and got to work. We sat in the grass for a few hours chit chatting and painting our legs, it’s one of my favorite memories from the entire event. There was many more activities such as community breakfast, ice cream social, chili cook off, led show, fire show and more but you would be reading this for a year if I told you about it all. Saying it was a blast is an understatement and I cant wait to come back next year!