Tyra started Girl Scouts late again this year. Last year her troop leader had said that they were going to be meeting on Monday nights this year, and I kind of wanted to keep Monday night open so we can have family home evening. Even though we aren’t very good at holding FHE regularly, I didn’t want to sabotage it by having Tyra gone on Monday nights! So I asked her troop leader if she would get information for other brownie troops in the area for me. I waited all summer and she never got information for me. I called her in October to ask if she had ever gotten information for me and she still hadn’t. So she told me to ask the girl scout council if there are other troops around. In a way now was a good time for Tyra to switch troops anyways. She just finished Daisy’s, and is just starting Brownies. Last year wasn’t the best for her last troop anyways. Her leader canceled so many meetings in a row that I began to expect a phone call on Thursday afternoons to tell me that there was going to be no meeting that night. There were, easily, two full months of NO meetings and they weren’t all cancelled for the same reason. There was always a different reason: the leader is sick, leaders whole family is sick, leader is in school working on her degree and has a project due that she needs to work on, leader just moved and the house isn’t ready for a meeting yet….Getting sick happens, but really the leader should have done some better planning in the other situations.
Over the course of a few weeks, I called the girl scout council several times, before I saw a friend on facebook mention that she just became a GS co-leader and she gave me the contact information for the lady at the council that I needed to talk to. After that things picked up quickly. However there weren’t any troops around here that we could just join so that means that *I* am the new Girl Scout leader! The council gave me the phone number of someone else out in my area that was looking for a troop, and also just happened to be coming from the same troop that Tyra was coming from! She also knew some other people that were interested in girl scouts and so we got a troop organized! Honestly, I knew that someday I would join the ranks as a girl scout leader, I just didn’t expect it right now! I feel like my house is still very cluttered and therefore, it’s very easy for me to feel overwhelmed. But as I get more into this leader business, the more I think this has been a really good thing for ME. I am really having to come out of my shell to stand up and lead these girls.
We had our first meeting today. We made some bread, and then we made some cookie turkeys, and then we let the girls make butter. That was lots of fun. Each girl got a small container with cream in it and they got to shake it, until it turned into butter. We only had one major spill and one container sprinkle a little. Then we finished off the meeting by passing out the hot bread and spreading their butter on it so they could eat it. It was a fun little Thanksgiving activity. And talking with my co-leaders we decided we are going to have the girls help collect toys for Toys for Tots. This is going to be a fun group of girls, and an amazing year of girl scouts! (Not to mention the fact that I get patch happy and being the leader means I get to pick what patches the girls get to add to their vests. 😉 )