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

Our First Meeting As Cadettes

No matter how hard I try, I am never on time to this group's meetings! So today was no exception. Good thing Gloria and Patti are early birds (an totally on the ball organized I might add). When I got to the meeting I said my hellos as quietly as I could, since I was late I was trying hard to not be disruptive - I knew how much Gloria had planned for the meeting.

This was a BIG HUGE meeting for the girls. They were going to get their first taste of being a Cadette and what that means to how GS was going to change for them. Big changes for "Older Girls." Wow, Older Girls. I know that bridging is always a nice (way too long with this many girls in our troop) ceremony and it is touching for the parents-but we as leaders, we are running our behinds off trying to make things go smoothly, help the girls with the show, etc. and don't really get to enjoy the ceremony so this was the moment for me-the gushy happy feeling came as I was so proud of them for growing so much both individually and as a group. How did these little adorable Brownies that I started with get to be so grown up??!!??

They were into discussing the things they want to do as Cadettes. And not quite realizing that now, Gloria, Patti, and I can only suggest to them activities, we don't choose them, plan them, run them, or clean up after an activity anymore! It's all on the girls, they "run their own show" now. As leaders, we are stepping in for things they can not yet accomplish-advanced logistics, watching them, answering questions, chauffeuring them around, approving activities for safety and age appropriateness, those kind of things. But not planning them, or executing them. The girls have to do that. We are there for the 30% they can't yet accomplish and they have to figure out the 70% that they can-no matter how tough that is going to be! (We expect a few not-so-progressive meetings early on until they really get it! Ha Ha)

I looked around the room. Oh boy! How are these kids, my little ones, Our little ones, going to be able to do that? They aren't ready! They are still so young! Exit over-protective Julie-they HAVE to do it, and possibly fail a few times, in order to learn the skills. The feeling usually passes quickly but it's there. I love the girls so much-every one of them-and it's just me wanting the best for them and then I remind myself that the "best" sometimes is having a below than average experience but learning how to make it better next time. Failure is not failure if you have learned something to carry forward. They CAN be leaders peer-to-peer. They might stumble along the way but they CAN do this! And they were, they were each picking the activities that they wanted to do this year from the GS activities catalog (if they lose it, click here for a copy). Gloria must have said fifteen times, you can pick to suggest activities NOT on this list too-I don't think they were getting that-parents, you can help them make suggestions if they try to stick to the list. If they suggest something NOT on the list, they need to put their NAME on the post-its that they got. If they want to do a beach clean up, go to Disneyland, do service projects, they can, they just need to suggest it to the group for approval and begin to plan it.

After that we talked about Mariner Scouts, what they are, what they do, and how the girls can start the process to become a mariner troop. They got invited to Camp Lakota at the beginning of October to attend the first mariner competition of the year, Tambu. We also talked about Sharpeez and how that teaches excellent advanced camping skills to the girls. Sharpeez is an invitation only campout-open to girls who demonstrate the necessary skills.

Then it was on to Troop Government. We went over each type and told the girls to think about it and come back next meeting with what they would like to use as troop government.

And finally we broke into patrols for the Cadette Patrol Challenge. Parents CAN'T help! The girls are competing against other troops and against Each Other. We want to keep it Fair and Friendly and can't do that if one patrol is getting adult help-its CHEATING. Ask them leading questions to have them figure out the answer, don't tell them anything-they have to figure it out and act on it alone as a patrol. This is part of the growing-up-failure/success thing! We as leaders need them to do this on their own so that they gain confidence and a can-do-it attitude so that they can start to take over 70% of their troop. By the way, the Cadette Patrol Challenge is going to be so much fun and the girls are really excited!

After that, clean up and pick up. Whew. So much in one meeting, but it's out of the way and now the girls take over! No more planning for meetings, no more having the girls "get things done," no more urging them along because we are running out of time. It's going to be an interesting (slow to start year). The Leaders will be pushing and keeping girls on tack for the Silver Award. It's up to the girls this time though. Once they vote on if it is going to be a Troop Activity where all of them get it or an on-you-own activity we as leaders will be able to plan our portion of the Award. Since it is so important for college scholarships, we are stepping in as our 30% role to get them going and really press them along on it.

Homework was:

-Pick activities they want to do this year and write each on a post it note-with their name if it is not on the GS list.

-Think about what kind of Troop Government they want to have, be ready to propose it and support why they chose it.

-Practice using Google and Google Maps to locate things, do searches, etc. This is critical for success of the Patrol Challenge as WE CANT HELP THEM!!

-Design a flag/banner for their Patrol.

See you next time!

♥♥ Julie

2011-2012 Scouting Year Kick Off!

What do Leaders do all summer long? Rest! And plan for the next Girl Scout Year! Well, that is what we crazies do :) And as we get closer to the start of the scouting year, crunch time begins.

We went to (more) Leader Training, gathered ideas, talked to other troops, made a skeleton schedule, read up on upcoming activities - by the way GIRLTOPIA is gonna rock! - and began to structure the path the girls will take to their Silver Award.

I was talking to one of My Old Scout Leaders And learning more about older girl programs today. After I hung up I called Gloria to let her know what I had learned about Tambu and GAM and that we were invited to go cheer on MSS WindQuest at the end of the month. Sadly, WindQuest is not quite what it once was but they are hoping to score well at Tambu coming up at the end of this month. Goiod Luck Ladies!

Gloria kept counting. And it was confusing me, I had no idea what she was counting! And I could hear Rebecca in the background-even more odd for the middle of a work day. What on earth was she doing? :) She was at the grocery store getting snack for tomorrow's meeting, duh, I should have know! Between shopping (and chatting with Miss. Sharlene), photo copying, clipping, pasting, printing, packing, and double checking I think we are ready. Bring on the Girls!
♥♥ Julie