Helping Those in Need

The Juniors had there 5th annual Food Drive for the Pickerington Food Pantry earlier this month. This year they had the new Daisies join them. Each junior patrol was assigned two Daisies to help and teach about the importance of helping others and the community.

What fun they had in the process! We collected from many houses. The girls unloaded all the food and checked for expiration dates. When done we had 270 items to donate! Our largest amount ever collected. The people at the food pantry could not believe how we kept bringing bag after bag in! What a great feeling for the girls to see that with just a little work one afternoon they can make a huge difference to many, many people.

When we finished it was time for a well earned snack! October 31st is our Girls Scout founder, Juliette Low's birthday. In honor of her birthday we had a special cake made by Mackenzie's mom. Complete with all the badges, the sash troop number was 1912, the year Juliette founded Girl Scouts.

Great job Juniors and Daisies!

Flying Up! We are JUNIORS!

The day finally arrived for the Brownies to bridge up to Juniors. They have been so excited for their bridging ceremony. They planned it by flashlight while sleeping out in tents back in July so it has been in the works for awhile. They have done a fantastic job earning over 500 try its as a group! It has been a great three years and they have all grown to be such caring girls. Many have developed close friendships with each other and I love to see how special this group has become to them.

The girls invited parents, siblings, and grandparents and we had over 75 people attending!

We opened with our flag ceremony.

Showing off all our patches, look at all the fun things we did!

Each girl received their wings for "flying up" to Girl Scouts, their year membership pin and their rainbow patch for bridging.

The cake was a very specific request. The girls wanted 1/2 white and 1/2 chocolate and they wanted all of their 18 names on it. It turned out better than they imagined.

Lily and Skylar both cross the bridge.

Since I couldn't take many pictures the night of the ceremony I did a little photo shoot of Lindy and Paige the next day.

Little Erin is so excited to start Daisies in a couple of weeks. She is going to have such a great time. I have enjoyed being Lindy and Paige's leader so very much. It has been an awesome experience to see the girls grow and become responsible leaders. I can't wait to see what the next two years in Juniors brings them.

Girl Scout Camp

It's that time of year again, camp! We are a very lucky Girl Scout group. Our service unit sponsors it's own day camp right here in Pickerington. Each year for a week in June, the Pickerington Girl Scouts have run of the local park and it is transformed into a day camp. We have fun filled days with crafts, camp songs, games, cooking, creeking, hiking, and so much fun. The days are long, we leave at 8:15 and don't get home until 3:45 , and the days are hot and very humid. But any other way would not be camp!

This year was Erin's first year. She is not an official Girl Scout since she doesn't start Daisies until this fall but we were able to bump her up to the first unit so she can have full participation. To say she was excited would be an understatement. The picture above is her backpack, hat, and shoes waiting by the door. After the first day when she went to bed she said she could hardly wait to go back. What an awesome way to spend your summer when you are five. She feels so grown up!

Lindy and Paige are in my unit along with some of the girls from our troop. They were excited to see many of the girls they met last year who returned along with our helpers. Our theme this year is the Olympics, Silver and Gold Games, each day at the end of camp we have the entire camp of girls compete in a fun game. Yesterday was a spoon/egg race and today was a sponge contest to see which team could fill a sponge with water and squeeze the most water into a bucket. For an added treat today the Fire Department stopped by with their hose and soaked all the girls. Erin and Paige were drenched and Lindy was a bit more timid. Erin came and pulled her into the water and got her soaked as well.

We are tired when we get home but what a great summer, they are making so many memories! Tomorrow is cooking day which is always a high light of the week. More fun pictures to follow....

Tea Time

Tea is served! Last week was our Brownie Troop tea party. I had some of the girls in the troop request a tea party and thought is was a perfect way to incorporate our Manners Try it. The girls voted at the last meeting to dress up so I wanted to make it extra special for them. We started our meeting off by having a presentation by Sonya from The Red Thread Promise. She went to Haiti last month and took the money we raised at the bake sale. She showed the girls her pictures and explained how the money they raised went to buy supplies in the orphanages. It was so nice for them to see exactly where the money went and how it was used.

We then moved on to our tea party and etiquette lesson. I wanted to go over the basic place setting with all the forks, spoons, plates, and knives. In addition we covered table manners, how to use a cloth napkin, how to properly pass and butter your bread, all while having fun and eating lots of good food. All the girls tried tea, some of them did like it, but most preferred the punch!

The girls had a great time. Cynthia and Cassie waited on the girls and served them their "courses" and cleared their dishes when they properly placed their silverware on the plate showing they were finished. Most of my food pictures are of the desserts and treats. I was busy teaching manners while the finger sandwiches were being passed. Our menu started with Bread and Butter, Chicken Salad, Egg Salad, and cucumber sandwiches, fruit, desserts including ice cream served in flower pots with a real flower "planted" in the ice cream.

The day was a complete success and we all had a great time. I think the girls learned something very useful  while earning a Try it!

Lindy and Paige enjoyed getting ready. They chose to make these cute little fruit tarts. It's just refrigerated pie crust cut with a cookie cutter and baked in muffin tins. Then we filled them with fruit dip and berries.

The tables were set with fresh flowers, china, candles, placecards, cloth napkins, and my moms silver.

The lessons...

The food...

Looking at money from Haiti...

 Our wait staff... (Don't they look lovely!)

Girls, girls, girls.... (They look lovely too!)

The adorable little sisters...

Kyle arrived home from Teen Pact just at the end and ready to crash the party for food! Don't they all look lovely!

Great job girls! You can dine anywhere now no matter how many plates and forks there are!