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