Whenever I post things that are related to girl scouts, I have to take a moment and make sure that I am in the right mindset. I don’t feel comfortable posting from the leader perspective, as there may be parents that don’t feel comfortable with me sharing stories or pictures about their girls. And so I have to make sure that I am thinking of things from the perspective as the parent, focusing mostly on myself and my daughter. 🙂
When discussing with Amy and Michelle, (my co-leaders) the activities that we wanted to do through the summer, I mentioned that I would like to do an overnighter. Maybe just a simple campout in someone’s backyard that way we were close to a toilet and not out anywhere scary or far from home. After thinking about it, Amy brought up that her family has a cabin that we could probably use. We decided to make it a mom and me since we didn’t want to be responsible for anything happening to the girls while we were away. 😉 And we decided that we would use the time at the cabin to work on earning a few badges.
The girls got to finish up their potters badge by making some beads out of clay. We forgot to bring some toothpicks to bake the beads on, so we ended up using some spaghetti noodles that we found in the cupboard in the cabin. 😛
After we baked them, the girls got to string them up to make necklaces or bracelets.
The girls also got to earn the bugs badge. It was pretty funny to watch so many of the girls scream and freak out at being so close to bugs. One of the activities that they did to earn the badge was to use a shoebox to make an observation area, so they could catch a bug and watch it for a bit.
Several of the girls had difficulties in catching a bug, but after we helped to make sure that they all had one, it was pretty funny that some of the girls would no longer even touch their box JUST because there was a bug inside. 😛
We also had the girls earn the snacks badge, and they got to do things like make and eat guacamole, make and drink homemade root beer, and each girl brought something to contribute to a trail mix (which we planned on taking on our hike with us).
When we had lunch, Amy realized that she had forgotten to bring the grapes. I think she was going to mix some into the chicken salad, and she realized they weren’t there when she was mixing it up. Then when we were helping the girls make guacamole for the snacks badge, we realized that the limes also did not make it up to the cabin. After a while, Amy’s husband sent her a text asking her if she had realized that she left behind the turkey lunch meat, the bacon and the eggs, all of which, happened to be our food for today!
We weren’t allowed to have a campfire, due to the extremely dry weather and the many fires that were already blazing all over Utah (seems like the whole state is on fire right now). The moms that had phones that had access to internet were on their phones a lot checking the status of the fire on our mountain. We even heard a rumor at one point that the city center had been evacuated. I sent a quick text message to Kyle to ask him about it, and he answered back that he had had the radio on for quite some time to get news updates on the fire and that he hadn’t heard anything about our area being evacuated.
So we knew we weren’t allowed to have a campfire, but we weren’t sure if we were allowed to use charcoal or not. We ended up starting our charcoal so that we could do our dutch oven pot roast for dinner. We went on a short hike to the water tank after dinner, and the girls all climbed up on it.
Tyra looks a lot shorter than all the other girls, but I think that has something to do with the way that her neck seems to have disappeared. She is younger than a lot of those girls, but she is not younger than all of them. After they had all climbed on the tank Amy showed them how she used to slide off of it when she was a kid and so they all had to slide off too (with the help of one of the other moms because they were all too afraid to slide off on their own). 😉
One of the mom’s helped keep the coals that we used to cook our pot roast, warm so that we could roast marshmallows later in the evening. Roasting marshmallows over warm coals was very slow business. Some of the girls actually figured out how to get their marshmallows to turn that nice golden roasted color. But everyone was able to get their marshmallows warm enough to be able to squish them between two graham crackers.
By the end of the day, as bedtime drew nearer and nearer, Tyra became more and more nervous. She still has problems staying dry at night, and she REALLY didn’t want to have an accident while we were at the cabin when we were around so many people that aren’t family. I think she was also concerned that the other girls might tease her about it. She was getting really tired and decided that after she finished her smores she had better get ready for bed. I also felt that it would be better for her to hit the sack early and actually be able to use the bathroom before going to bed, instead of her just falling asleep wherever she happened to be sitting, without having used the bathroom first. So she ended up missing the final ‘campfire’ time where Amy read the girls a story that she wrote about a girl and some Brownies, and she missed the Brownie hunt. I was sad that she missed it (actually I missed it too since I was inside helping to get Tyra ready for bed), but I really wanted to make sure she had a chance to properly prepare for bed.
The other girls came in and got ready for bed shortly after Tyra had gotten into her sleeping bag for the night. It took awhile for everyone to get a turn in the bathroom so they could change and brush teeth and use the toilet. But at last all the kids were up in the loft and in their sleeping bags. One of the mom’s was concerned with how hot it was up in the loft, where the girls were sleeping, and thought that her daughter was looking as though she wasn’t feeling very well. So they decided to go out and sleep in their jeep (I guess the seats fold down and so they could just lay some sleeping pads down and they had plenty of room to sleep). Later, after I had gone to bed, a couple more of the girls came down, one saying that she was homesick and the other just wanted to be with her mom. I tried to get some sleep, but it’s always hard for me to sleep in strange places, and the fact that some of the moms were still up talking and the fact that there were a couple of girls up too, made it REALLY difficult for me to drift off. I just laid there in bed listening to everything that was being talked about, and every time someone went into the bathroom I heard them in the hall and saw the light go on. After most of the commotion and most of the conversations seemed to have ceased and things seemed like they were going to be quiet for the night, the real commotion began. The girl that was feeling clingy and just wanted to be with her mom ended up throwing up! I heard it splat all over the wood flooring. Then the crazy rush of everyone that was awake trying to get things out of the way so they could get it cleaned up. Her mom took her to the bathroom to give her a shower to try to get her cleaned up. Unfortunately Amy’s uncle had forgotten to come up to the cabin before us to turn on the water heater, and Amy couldn’t find the key to the basement so that we could turn it on ourselves. So there was no hot water, it was freezing cold spring water. I kept hearing the girl complain to her mom that she was cold. I felt so sad for her. I think after they got her cleaned up and the main room all cleaned up things really calmed down and that was the end of the chaos for the night.
Since most of the food for today had been forgotten, breakfast plans had to be altered. One of the mom’s made a run to a local store to pick up some eggs and bacon yesterday, and so we were able to turn our loaves of bread (that were meant to be turkey sandwiches for lunch) into french toast. We were also planning on taking the girls on a 3 mile hike to Strawberry Ridge right after breakfast, but considering everyone was up so late, and the fact that one of the girls threw up in the night, we decided it would be better to scrap that and maybe just take the girls that felt up to it, back up to the water tank one more time. Other than that we basically spent this morning packing up and cleaning the cabin up so we could get everyone home. I think the girls had a good time, despite the drama and vomit. And I think we are going to plan on making this a yearly activity. 🙂