While at camp this summer, I was talking with another leader and we had come up with the idea of having a sleepover for the girls in order to accomplish this badge. We had thought that it would be a great way for the groups to get together and we would be able to do it at once instead of packing up back drops and lighting equipment several times to get it done in the 1 hour meeting times. See in my other life, I am a photographer. I was looking forward to this badge and showing the girls what I do in real life.
We let the one of the girls pick the date for the sleepover and thankfully our host church was more than happy to let us stay over.
We got to the church around 6pm and the girls put all of their stuff in the nursery, where we would be staying the night.
And then the amazing thing, that is my troop happened. The girls just started to play and giggle with each other. These are girls that spend almost all day together. Two sets of best friends, that swap "besties" like normal people change underwear. They love like sisters, but fight like sisters. There are times where I worry about how things will go with them as a group, and then nights like this one happen. They clumped together and started playing with the baby kitchen. Giggling over a private joke that me and Miss B were not privilege to know.
We had a time line of 6 pm drop off, watch the high school marching band parade to the play off game, make dinner and then start work. We planned a 10pm bed time.
Well the moms chatted till 6:45, we missed the parade and didn't even start dinner till after 7. But that is the way with our troop. I like having a plan, in fact I am totally anal that I have to go into an event with a plan, but I am also extremely flexible with in my plan. I have no problem throwing out the plan and having the girls dictate the pace. I wonder what that says about me? (Other that I am crazy, lol )
I had picked up raw pizza dough and I figured that each girl can make her own pizza. Which went over great. They were loud with out being obnoxious and they laughed the whole time. They had flour every where. They called the corn meal chicken food and then dared each other to eat it.
After dinner we went upstairs to start our night. They decided that they wanted to do a photo shoot in their pj's, and that they really wanted to work on their lego movies right away. So they got started on their backgrounds and then started to take pictures.
I thought I had enough camera's for all of the girls. I had my two older point and shoots, which kept going through batteries like they were water. I had my Canon 50d and my Big camera, my 5d Mark 2 (which I was only going to let my daughter use). Well I forgot to put a memory card in my 50d, so we were down to only 3 cameras for 4 girls. The one with out a camera did not have to wait long as they were pretty quick taking pictures with the point and shoots. But then everything started to fall apart.
We ran out of batteries, the cameras wouldn't focus. and it was getting very frustrating to be going back and forth between the computer and making the movies, to the girls who were having problems with the cameras. It just seemed like what ever could go wrong, did go wrong. And it was getting late, and they were getting tired.
We got 2 lego movies done, one completely photographed and one that needed to be finished in the morning.
We did not even set up the back drops or lights.
The girls got into their pj's and sleeping bags. There was a tv in the nursery, so we put on Fantasia 2000 for them to go to sleep to. And it worked, there was no late night giggling and trouble making like there is at camp. The girls went right to sleep.
We had an early morning the next day. The girls had to be up and ready to go to the local food pantry to hand out bags. The bags were going to include the holiday turkey or chicken and I know the pantry was looking forward to them being there.
Surprisingly the girls got up with out a struggle, cleaned up and carried items out to the car. It was a pretty chilly morning and they did not even complain once. We got the last few shots in of the last lego movie and I told them that we could continue to work on it on Tuesday at our regular meeting.
I am so glad that we did this. It was a good way to get the girls together to work on a bigger badge. Sure we did not get everything accomplished, but it was fun. The first time you try something is always the worst outcome. We learn from each time we try something.
Next time I will charge my parents 5$ per girl to cover the food. It cost 30$ just in food and if everyone paid 5$, it would have been covered. I will also try to plan it when we have more time the next day. With the food pantry in the morning and I had to go into work, we did not really have enough time to get everything accomplished.
There is always next time! These are the two completed video's. Next week I will post the other two. I hope you enjoy them.
Piper's video
Olivia's video
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