Older Girl Campout Training

Look at me!  I'm back to blogging!

Let's start with our Older Girl Camping Training.  It's as good a place as any.

The back story: Many of our mom's say that we don't camp enough (despite the whining of the girls!!) so we planned two troop camp outs for this year-in addition to the service unit camp outs which are usually cabin camping.  The first being a single night to "train" the older girls on how to teach the younger about camping.

We got up to The Montrose Service Center around 8 am on Saturday morning.  It is probably the most beautiful Girl Scout facility within a reasonable driving distance from us.  It is a nice, very large, "back yard" behind a large community building.

So after we unpacked the truck-thank you Helen!-and Gloria's car, we got to making good time and setting up camp.  The girls that were there had no idea what to do or where to start.  Gloria couldn't believe that not one of them remembered basic camping skills from the last time we camped.  We had to walk them through each. And. Every. Step.  Thank goodness we scheduled a Practice Training Session.

Step One: Tarps:

 Step Two: Laugh at girls as they take over an hour to figure out what the heck a tent is:

Step Three: Victory!

And the rest of the tents were a similar process.  So, about two hours later the girls were finished setting up sleeping quarters and wanted to know what was next.  We inspected all of the tents:

And then let them practice chopping wood.

But it was really Carolina's excellent knife skills that really took top prize for fire building, while everyone was good, her ability to make kindling is top notch!

Now, with a big pile of firewood, we were ready to start on lunch.  Yea for lunch!!  What's that you say, Gloria?  No way to start the fire??!?!?!!!!  Jessi's supplies haven't arrived yet!!!!????!!!!!  Whaaaa?  Uh oh.  Ok, so no need to panic, we are literally across the street from a 7-eleven but how Girl Scout like is that?  I am gonna fix this-and have so so much fun in the process.  There was a troop there the night before.  And they had a campfire, so I took the remaining hot ashes, and Carolina's kindling and tinder and built a fire from that!  I was totally proud of myself!

Now, with fire going, we managed though lunch: hot dogs over an open fire.  See how pretty our mess kit line was?

And on to dinner, a lovely meal of tacos and salad...

...and for desert?  Marshmallows over our campfire of course!!

 Ok, maybe "someone" had a bit too many marshmallows!!!

A little song and dance, cause what is a campfire with out Girl Scout Songs:

And by 9, we were having trouble keeping them awake!

Sooooo it was off to bed.  Well for all except Helen Gloria and I who were going to hang out until the fire was safely out.  We sent the girls to brush teeth and got to work putting out the flames, but our "Little Friend" had different ideas for us:

Yeah, that's Pepe Le Pew there, coming to check us out!!  Gloria says "hey something is moving over there, what is it?  Oh My God it's a skunk, run!"  You have never seen three people run so fast!  It was funny-and of course, woke up the girls from their sleepy walks back from the bathrooms.  So now we have a camp full of girls shreeking about a skunk and boy it was the easiest lesson all day!  Remember the NO FOOD IN YOUR TENT RULE??  This is why!  Critters like to come right up to the tents and help them self.  So three girls quickly emptied their snacks from their tents and put them with the rest of the food and everyone went to bed.

Ahhh the lovely sound of the little pond....so peaceful.....so soothing......wait?  So off??  NOT FAIR!  The trickle turns off at 10 and signals the real "lights out."  Bummer!

Next morning a lovely breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and juice before evaluation of what we can do better and then clean up.  All the girls wanted to chop more wood, so of course, more hatchet time (after learning the differences between a hatchet, an axe, and a hand axe/camping axe). Then Lunch of "freeze dried foods" (well in an emergency, we wont starve-we now know which ones taste half decent!) more clean up packing and finally it was time to go home.  Ahhhhh showers, warm beds and a long night of sleep. ZZZZZZZZZ


Hugs,
♥♥ Julie

Cate's Leadership Skills Kill Her Giggles!

Cate led our meeting tonight and did a great job. Normally she is so giggly but I think that being in a leadership position was great, it helped her not giggle!

Jessi collected dues. We invested our new girls, Emma Mimi and Addie-up to 16 total now.

Then we started working on our Holiday Service Project. The girls realized how tough it is going to be to plan a whole project on their own without adult help. Patti gave them the instruction sheets and let them get to work making their own mistakes and coming up with their own solutions to the issues we will face when having other scouts do the project. The girls had fun but seemed a little frustrated. The ornaments came out very pretty though!!

The meeting ended with our closing circle and "Wishes."

Homework was for the girls who did not bring cards in to wrap up a shoe box, both top and bottom so that it will still open.

We will start the Amaze journey and work more on Sharpeez in two weeks!

Hugs,
♥♥ Julie

Carolina as the Leader

Carolina led our meeting following The Patrol Challenge. We had a guest speaker from the Mojave Primitive Camp, Norianne, a "Mist" or councilor came and talked to the girls about how much fun it is and answered about a million questions.

Emily was officially Invested-welcome to the nut house.

We talked about Sharpeez and Holiday Service Project.

Homework was to remember those 15-20 Christmas cards for the Holiday Service Project!!!!

Hugs,

♥♥ Julie

Patrol Challenge - The Final Chapter

Ok, so I can only really comment on my experience because we were in three groups but let me tell you it is A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!

The challenge started by the teams splitting up and attacking the clues. Many of which required deciphering and some of which were pretty straight forward. Find a blue fire hydrant. Find a house with no grass. Find a yellow house. Solve this strange riddle and drive to the middle of no where and take a photo of dirt.

By mid day we were HUNGRY! So we stopped for our packed lunches. With a budget of only $20 per girl we were watching our pennies very carefully. Then it was off to take as many photos as possible before shut down time of 11 pm sharp! Dinner at our family's homes-bless them for feeding all of us hungry ladies! And driving like mad to finish up and get to Patti's house.

At 11 pm we all gathered in Patti's back yard and had a big camping slumber party. Lots of the girls, knowing that they wanted to start again at 6 am, did not want to get out of their clothes. Man did the competitiveness kick in!

Do you have any idea how early 5 am comes when you go to bed around midnight and are awake listening to asthmatic girls waiting to jump up and rush to their aid should they have an attack in the middle of the night??? I think I slept maybe a total of 2 hours? Gloria about the same? And I swear, poor Patti, I don't think she slept a wink more than an hour total!

Day three. Dragging. Very. Slowly. And getting yelled at by excited girls, hurry up! You are slowing us down! Yaaaaawwwwn, coming coming I mumbled and we got on our way again.

Back to the fire station, out to Huntington Park, down to Redondo Beach, out to Simi Valley and cruising the Boulevard (Ventura Blvd that is) I swear I drove more than I would have if we went to Vegas and back!

Around 3 we wrapped up and headed to check in-the other two teams were already done and going home. We finished around 4:15 and all the girls made it to their parents. I was out cold by 6pm and slept like a baby!

All in all I would do it again in a heart beat. I swear, I had more fun than they did! I love hanging out with the girls, they are never short on laughs!

Cant wait to do it again next year!

Hugs,

♥♥ Julie

COLD! Very Cold! And wet, that is how night one of the Patrol Challenge ended.

The Patrol Challenge is a special treasure hunt meets amazing race meets photo safari meets driving a million miles around LA meets Scouts-both boys and girls.

And it is FUN!!! Our girls really didn't know what to expect when the challenge was released at 5pm on Friday night. All they knew was that they were in for a long weekend and had been planning lots of fun, gathering snacks, planning on packing and sleeping in Patti's back yard. So when 5 rolls around, we reviewed the rules and then broke into our three patrols:

The Bacon Dogz: Vanessa, Cate, and Sophia with special appearances from Celeste and Giselle Mai had the flu and was missed :(

The Red Hot Wiener Dogs: Carolina, Rebecca, Charlotte, and Alisa

The Rainbow Zebras: Jessi, Taylor, Emily, and Stephanie

From there we all got to work. Night one was largely working on the computers to plan a route, and gathering items on the collectibles list. And then it was read: A photo of everyone chest deep in a swimming pool-fully clothed! So away to the pool it went for Patti's group and Julie's group-Gloria was smart! They came the next day when they could change into warm clothes but it was up to the girls and we let them do what they wanted to do!

We sent them home soaked to the core and said be here early in the morning!

Fun times,

♥♥ Julie

Girltopia

Wow, just wow. What happens when 10,000 girls take over the Los Angeles Convention Center? A whole lot of giggling!

And Gloria and I ready to collapse! We again volunteered our time (what *IS* wrong with us anyway??) and were exhausted by 11 am! Girls arrived at Girltopia, an expo for the sake of being a girl around 9 am and started filling the halls. Presented by Toyota, sponsored by Wells Fargo and Mattel Girltopia was an overall success.

Girls learned about cookies and how to be better entrepreneurs, about careers in fashion, medicine, science, arts, and literature.

There were performances and our girls were asked to help lead the closing ceremonies. Yeah, Troop 925 Rocks. Way to go Sophie Kim, little Sophie represented our whole troop dancing the Ignite dance!

Seems like everyone had a blast.

Until next time,

Hugs,

♥♥ Julie

Monster High and Alisa Leads

Our troop gets to do lots of cool stuff. We get a lot of invitations to do things that other troops don't get invited to due to our crazy leader Gloria offering our services for just-about-everything! One of those things was an invitation to a screening of Monster High's "Finding Kind" a documentary on Bullying and how to end it among girls. Every mom cried. Every girl was impacted. Some of our girls spoke on how they were bullied. It was a very emotional day.

Alisa recapped this whole event while she led the meeting. Also on the list of discussions was Sharpeez, the basic level of camping skills girl scouts should know (basic?!?!?) and the girls picked their holiday service project.

Homework was to bring in 15-20 greeting cards in for the service project. Lisa, Alisa's mom, found packs of cards at the 99cent store if you still need to get yours.

Hugs,

♥♥ Julie