Halloween Parade

We participated in two Halloween Parades this year and the costumes came out wonderfully. I had to do a bit of the work myself because I canceled a meeting due to family issues. Each box had a picture of the girls doing something at a Girl Scout function.

The first parade was at night, and I don't have any pictures of them! We bought 30 dollars in candy and would you believe that they threw out all that candy in about 2 blocks. And we had about 10 blocks left to walk.

A little girls brother and my son held the banner. I love when the brothers help out.

And the girls walked great. It was a bit chilly and it was a bit of walking, but there was not a complaint among them. I just love these girls!

We did not win or place in this parade, but that was OK as long as they had a good time.

Then we did a parade in our home town on Saturday morning. The weather was fabulous and the girls were in such a good mood. They stayed together and walked so well.

At the end of the parade, they stood before the judges and rocked the Promise in sign language.

We ended up winning first place inn the group category!

We are hoping that they won enough to help them go to a reptile zoo.

Happy Birthday Juliette!

Our meeting on Tuesday was a throw back meeting. We wanted a way to celebrate our founders birthday. I decided to have the girls make butter and I would bake a loaf of bread. After all, what is better than hot bread and melty butter?

I made butter once with my own kids before and it is fairly simple. It does take a while, especially with the little ones shaking, but when it goes from cream to butter the kids get a kick out of that.

I started the bread at home and was planning on bringing the dough into the meeting place.

Then the temperature outside dropped.

Now I was worried that by taking the bread outside in the cold air, it would flatten the dough.
I heated up my car and made the transfer from the house to the car as fast as possible. I left the dough right on top of the vents in the dash board. But it didn't work. However it smelled awesome and the girls loved it.

To make the butter I bought heavy whipping cream and I brought with me some small ziploc containers. I filled 3 containers about half way full, snapped the lids on and handed them to the girls. I have 5 girls that night and I figured that with 3 containers, once they pass it around, every now and then the girls arms will get a break.

While they shook the containers, I read the Brownie story out of the big brown book. The week earlier, we asked the girls to tell the new scouts the Brownie story. Now I wanted to read it to them. It is amazing to me how these little things make such an impression on them and that they remember them.

It took about 5 minutes before the first container became butter. That made the girls so excited and all of a sudden they no longer had tired arms and they were shaking like crazy. Just about the time when the butter was done, the bread was done as well.

The smell was amazing!!

The girls could not wait to put that butter on the bread. They were so proud of themselves.

Even with the flat bread!

The Meeting that Wasn't

I don't know if it is just my council or if it is a common problem, but reps just don't make meetings!

Yesterday my co-leader was supposed to meet with our council rep for her adult training. She gets to McDonalds at 5:15 because she had her daughter and figures that they would get dinner. She was supposed to meet the rep at 5:30.

5:45 I get a text saying that the rep is not here yet, WTH!

I know that the rep knows that she is supposed to be there because I sent her an email earlier in the day with a troop roster and to let her know the Miss B is going to have a new girl registration and check. She acknowledged that she would see B there.

And I know that Miss B is getting angrier with every passing minute.

5:55 she sends me a text saying she is leaving, and quiet frankly, I don't blame her.

Ten minutes later my phone is ringing.

Our rep called her and asked if she was running late. Miss B said she had sat there for 45 minutes before she left and that she was not coming back.

And really you can not expect a child to sit for 45 minutes and then go back and sit longer. Even the best kid will have trouble with that.

Turns out that the Rep was sitting there the whole time. Unfortunately Miss B had never met the rep before. And I guess the rep didn't know what she looked like either. 

Miss B offers to do it again next week and is told that it would be the 24th before the rep can come back and do the training.

BUT this is not the first time that this has happened!

Once with a different rep, my co-leader of the time and I sat for an hour waiting for a rep to meet with us. We called her several times, sent text messages and did not hear anything from her until the next day when she said that she had forgotten about us.

It is absolutely frustrating. These are supposed to be the PAID people who are there to help you and they can't be bothered to make a meeting or a phone call or even get up from her seat and walk around looking for someone.

As is becoming my mantra, "Thank god the girls are awesome!"

Halloween Prep

The last two year we have been in the local Halloween parade. For us it is a way to celebrate scouting and JGL at the same time. When we started scouting there was no real presence in the community. It has since grown to several different troops for the same age group and a definitely a bigger presence.

The first year the girls were still Daisies and we went as the Flowers from the journey. Each girl made a face mask and we marched behind the Brownie troop.

Last year we wanted to do something a bit more. My co-leader of the time and myself came up with the idea that the girls would dress up as something the represents the badges they were working on. They would then make a sign to carry that has their badge on it. We won second place in the group category.

My daughter as Billy the Exterminator for the bugs badge.

This year we wanted to do something better. We had originally thought of doing a float, but that is a big no-no and a lot of work!

We settled on the girls being boxes of cookies and when they are in front of the judges, they will do the Promise in ASL.

Last night we started on the costumes. We have 6 girls now in the troop. (Yay, we added one officially last night. She tagged along for the hike.) We are going with these cookies, Samoa, Tagalongs, Thin Mints, Dosidos, Savannah Smiles and Trefoils.

Did you know that trefoils are nut free and produced on equipment that is nut free. Making it perfect for those with nut allergies. I have a little girl in the troop with an allergy and we are making her the Trefoil. Plus as a mom of a kid with food allergies, it is so nice that there is something that an allergy kid can have without worry.

The colors of these boxes are pretty straight forward. Purple, red, green, orange, yellow and blue. I bought the big bottle of acrylic paints for the girls to use and sponge brushes.

We only meet for an hour, which translates to about 30 minutes of work time. Some of the girls got 2 coats of paint on their boxes, and some girls used a whole bottle of paint and only did one coat. But that is what you have with young girls.

After they painted the girls had to wash their brushes out and clean up. This is where stress for me and my co-leader, Miss B, came in. There was no way that I could put 6 wet freshly painted boxes in my car and neither could she. We needed a place to store them at our church. She found a spot, kind of out of the way, and we layer garbage bags down and then proceeded to transfer wet boxes to the bags. Needless to say that we got covered in paint. I get stressed out at the end of scout meetings because I have to leave right away. My husband works third shift and we have one car right now. I need to be back in time for him to leave. As I am seeing the mess, I am starting to worry about getting out of there in time.

But then, like always, I get shown how my girls are truly amazing. Two cleaned the kitchen, where they were washing brushes, two scrubbed the tables clean, one gathered the garbage and then they worked together to clean the floor. I was so happy that these girls took the initiative to "leave a place better than we found it". I did not have to ask them to do it. They knew that we were done with the project and it was time to clean.

That is what scouting is all about.

Today my co-leader is meeting with our council rep to have her adult training done. Here is the problem with that statement.
1. She has been a volunteer for 2 full years.
2. She has been in some form of leadership for those 2 years.
3. It was done before.
So I guess my problem or complaint is two fold. First, if it wasn't done before this point then someone wasn't doing their job for 2 years. Her back ground check was done, so her training should have been done then. And Second, I know it was done because the rep before this came to our meeting (2nd year Daisy) and did the training for all the volunteer parents. Why wasn't it put into the system?

We have been working with this rep for over a year. She has never once been at a meeting. She doesn't come to our mini service unit meetings. We have no support at recruitment events unless the council sets them up. When we have our sign up nights, they are not there. We have no support at all from this woman. It is so frustrating.

 I am hoping her meeting goes well. My co-leader is a bit more outspoken than I am, and has no problem speaking her mind. It will be interesting to hear how it goes.

Hiker Badge

We had so much fun! We went to Rickets Glenn State Park in North Eastern Pennsylvania. It was quite a drive for us. I did not realize how far it actually was. We set out for the hike in a caravan. However every little town that we went through seemed to be having their fall festivals or fireman's boot drives. So not only was it a long drive, but now it was long with traffic. I do not think kids at any age a patient in traffic.

We headed to the visitors center and picked up trail maps. Then parked the cars and regrouped at the picnic area. We then proceed to make trail mix. The girls each brought an ingredient. Ours consisted of pretzels, goldfish crackers, honey roasted peanuts, raisins, and honey nut Cheerios. They all got to pour in their ingredients and then shake the bag.

We then looked at the trail map and came up with a game plan. We also laid out some ground rules with the girls. No running was a big one. Get girls in the fresh air and they almost always want to run.

We got to the first part of the trail and they had a big rule sign and trail map. This was a perfect chance to go over the park rules (not just our troop rules) and for them all to see on a big scale where we were going and what we were going to see. We also went over trail markings and what we should do if we got lost in the woods.

We walked for about a mile and all of a sudden the terrain changes. These trails are marked as mostly difficult and they were. The park starts off at a high elevation and you walk down hill to the falls.

The girls were dying to get into their trail mix and we agreed that they could break into it at the first fall. The girls walked great and then spotted a mini-fall and enjoyed their snack. This is the first time that most off these girls were seeing waterfalls in person. This one was about 5 feet tall.

After our snack we continued on. They found lots of wild life and bugs including this white caterpillar. The girls said that he was poisonous, but I am not sure on that.

At this point, I am thinking wow these trails really are tough. I am not in shape at all. We turn a bend, the sound of water gets louder and then another steep incline followed by stairs.

And the reason why I now refer to the first fall as a mini.

We continued walking along the path and saw three more huge falls. My co-leader got to the next set of steep stairs and we agreed, it was time to head back up.

We originally wanted to walk only about an hour and it turns out we walked about 3 and a half hours. The girls were A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Not one complaint from them. Me, I was beat and at the point of whining, but these third grade girl had no issues. They just kept walking. At one point, they even broke out into song.

At the end of the day 3 girls earned their hiker badge and all 5 had a great time. (2 already had the badge.)

My daughter and her friend were asleep in the car before we were 20 minutes into the drive home!

Getting ready to hike!

After over a year from when this idea first came to mind, we are going on a hike. We picked a state park with waterfalls. I am so excited. I went there when I was in 6th grade and still remember the good time I had. I also went with an adult friend about 3 years ago. I am hoping the girls are prepared to hike, because it is not easy. Sometimes we "hike" and it is more like a walk. This is an actual hike.

We are making trail mix and planning the route when we get there. I will share pictures when we get back.

Brownie Potter badge- Part 1

We are working with the supplemental badge skills booklets in our troop right now. The potter's badge we worked on for two weeks. And like any current troop leader, when I need an idea I get on Pinterest.

I got an idea while I was looking for things for camp. The idea was to take polymer clay and to wrap a fork and spoon with it. This will give them awesome utensils for their mess kits.

I decided that we should do a pinch pot kind of fork and a coil wrap for the spoons. This covers two kinds of potter. Our school art teacher is huge on clay and pottery and I knew that they have already made a few tea cups. I have a whole shelf of pottery from both kids.

We used oven baked clay that I picked up from Walmart. I got like the big sampler pack that had several glow in the dark colors. I knew that would go over big with the girls plus there were sparkly and glittery ones too.

I gave the girls two choices of colors and they first made the pinch fork and then made huge "snakes" of clay to do the coils. We were able to finish them up and bake them in the hour before the parents came. This gave the girls something to take home with them and to show their parents. I think that too often, we do things and they have to wait a week to take them home. Then they forget all about it by the time that they pick them up the next week. I have a closet full of projects that kids forgot all about.

We carved their names in them or their initials.  We were able to use these at camp and they were a hit.

The next thing that we did was make beads. We used the same clay and I once again let the girls pick two colors. They made them into balls first and then we flattened them out a bit. We took these rhinestone charms and pushed them in. Then poked holes through the top centers. These needed to be baked longer and had to go home with me.

This night was a success and every one went home with a smile.

This is the original website that I got the idea from. Guidershine