Tyra – Page 6 – Andelin Adventures

Locks of Love

My group of Girl Scout Juniors are working on earning their bronze award, which is kind of a simpler version of the gold award which they can earn when they are older, and is the Girl Scout equivalent of the Eagle Scout award for boys. The bronze is a 20 hour service project that the girls do as a troop. In a couple of years they can earn their silver awards which is a 50 hour service project done in small groups of no more than 4. Finally they can earn their gold award which is a 100 hour (or two 50 hour) service project(s) that they do on their own.

We had each of the girls submit at least one project idea, along with a basic plan of what we would need to pull it off, and in the end we didn’t select any of the plans the girls turned in. One of them had suggested that we organize free hair cuts for poor people, but that isn’t a sustainable project, because you cut the hair once and eventually it will grow and need to be cut again. Somehow as we talked about that, other ideas came up and the idea of doing a Locks of Love drive was presented. This would be more sustainable, since girls would come and have their hair cut for free, and we would send the hair to Locks of Love to be made into wigs for girls who lose their hair due to medical issues. So that is what the girls decided they wanted to do.

Being the leader, and having long hair, I of course let them cut my hair to donate:

Tyra was at the event with me and the rest of our troop, and Kyle brought the rest of our kids by to check out the bake sale and craft sale that we were also having. The girls thought that would be a nice way to provide opportunities for people who don’t have hair long enough to donate, to help Locks of Love with the cost associated with making wigs.

One of Tyra’s friends from church came to donate her hair, and that started Tyra off, begging us to let her donate her hair as well. So Kyle took the kids home and washed their hair so that they could come back and donate it. Tyra, Dinah and Chloe all donated their hair.

Lydia’s hair isn’t long enough to donate, so she is the only girl in our family that didn’t get a hair cut. Tyra, Dinah and Chloe were all so very excited to get their hair cut though. Personally I am afraid of having their hair so short. I don’t own a curling iron and if it starts flipping every which way, I’m not going to know how to fix it. This also means no more braids or pony tails for awhile and Chloe is simply adorable with her hair in a set of french braids. As for myself, my hair was long enough to begin with that I was able to donate the required 10 inches (minimum) and still be able to have long hair. Here we are with our new dos:

Legos and the Zoo

A couple of years ago, the zoo had a special exhibit of dinosaurs. This year, they have a special exhibit of Lego animals! Ethan LOVES Legos and so we didn’t want to miss it. So we decided it was time to renew our pass to the zoo and go check it out. While we were there we decided to have Ethan earn the Cub Scout Hogle Zoo patch, and so he wore his uniform.

We also took a friend of Tyra’s along, and since it was a school day, we had all the kids bring their composition books and pencils so they could take notes of the different animals and things that they saw. But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any monkeying around. 😛

Every time we pass the big elephant the kids just HAVE to sit on it’s trunk.

Ethan really liked the snake made of Legos.

It was really bright sitting on a shiny polar bear in the full sun. 🙂

Tyra was also working on a scout badge today. She is working on the Animal Habitats badge and so while we were in the building to observe the polar bear and the seals, we had her talk to one of the zoo employees about the Arctic habitat and why it is endangered. She got to find out why “global warming” is dangerous to the animals that live in the Arctic circle, and she learned about some ways we can help (such as not leaving our cars on when we aren’t driving).

Lydia saw the bears on the wall and wanted to “walk like a bear” too.

In the small animal building we had to wait while a couple the kids drew pictures of some of the animals.

Dinah’s drawing of an owl:

Dinah’s drawing of an armadillo:

Jeremy’s drawings:

When we finished searching the zoo for all of their Lego displays, we decided that it was time to go home. Tyra’s friend’s parents hadn’t expected us to be gone all day, which I kind of find funny, because who wants to spend an hour driving to the zoo and only spend an hour there, then spend another hour driving back? I mean, doing that you spend more time driving than you did at the zoo! But I think the kids had a good time, and they really thought the Lego animals were awesome. Hopefully they learned a little something too.

Investiture

Today we had our troop’s investiture and rededication meeting. I don’t have many pictures because I forgot to bring my camera, and the one picture I have, Kyle took with his phone while trying to wrestle Lydia, and Adam to sit still.

Dinah was invested into our troop as a Daisy and got to plant a seed so that she can watch it grow as she will grow.

Tyra got to get up with the Juniors and recite both the Girl Scout Promise and the Law, and then give an example of how she lives the law.

Then we got to give out the awards that we had earned in the previous weeks. The girls always love getting fun patches and awards. 🙂

Girl Scouts Cabin Trip #2

This weekend our troop had our second trip to the cabin to take up the other half of the troop. This trip was to be for all the brownies, and one of our juniors since her sister is a brownie and we didn’t want to make them come to the cabin twice. Amy said that she intended to take Eliza up again since it was their family’s cabin, and then I asked if Tyra and I could tag along as well considering I am the leader of the whole troop, and Amy is just to be over juniors next year and Michelle is to just be over the brownies. Well we hadn’t heard any sort of RSVP from a few of the girls and found out the week of that three of them weren’t going to be able to attend. Two because of other plans for the weekend, and one because she broke her elbow and that needed to be taken care of instead. So the trip to the cabin ended up being Amy, Michelle and I and our daughters. As fun as our big troop is, it was kind of nice and quiet being such a small group. Michelle’s brownie daughter had already earned the brownie badges that we were planning on doing at the cabin, as we had basically planned on doing them for the other girls but since none of them came, all of those activities got wiped off the plans. Amy had been planning on doing a couple of different junior badges with Michelle’s junior daughter than we did at the first cabin trip, and so we worked on those, and we helped her earn some of the things that we did at the first cabin trip. One of the badges that we worked on this time that we didn’t last time was the Independence badge. For this one the girls got to create a design with some buttons to sew onto a shirt.

A couple of the girls had issues, like sewing the front of the shirt to the back, but I guess that is why we do activities like this, right? So they can learn of the possibility of mistakes like that and figure out how to prevent them in the future. 🙂 A little later Amy took the girls out to show them some things under the hood of a car. They got to learn where the oil is and how to check it, and where the windshield wiper fluid is and other basic stuff like that.

Once we did what we could with the badges the rest of the time was spent with the girls playing around, and Amy and Michelle and I played a few games of Rummikub.

After dinner we talked about taking the girls on a night hike, since that was one of the things needed for a junior badge that we did last time, which Michelle’s older daughter missed. We told the girls to go get their water and their shoes and other supplies, as we were getting ready to go out, and they all proceeded to go up to the loft to get their stuff. Then we heard Tyra scream and say, “A BEAR!!!” Michelle flipped out and said that we weren’t going to be taking her girls outside, and Amy and I were just thinking “there is no way she saw a bear!” The girls had been quite noisy all day, and any animals which heard their noises would have steered clear of our location. After questioning Tyra about what this bear looked like, how big was it, where did you see it, and which way was it going, Amy and I went out to see if we could find any sign of any wild animal. We went to the back of the cabin and we didn’t see anything. No tracks, no trampled bushes, no sign that any animal had passed by. Tyra said that it was small so we are thinking that maybe it was a badger or something else like that, something that could have gone under the bushes. So we finished up the night, not by taking the girls out on a night hike, but by having our dessert, and sending the girls to the loft for bed. However the girls were having a really hard time falling asleep. They were really freaked out about the possibility of a bear. They kept talking about bears, and thinking that they saw a bear looking in through the window at them. NOBODY slept well that is for sure. In the morning we got up and had breakfast, and then we cleaned up and headed home. I’m sure everybody was thinking of getting home and taking a nap!

Update 1 Aug:Amy and I went to a service unit meeting tonight, and on our way there we were talking and Amy said that her uncle called her, and asked if we had heard anything about a bear while we were up at the cabin the last time. She told him the story of how Tyra thought she saw a bear and how freaked out the girls were over that. Then he told her that a bear was actually just caught, up in the same area as where their family cabin is. Now we are thinking that maybe Tyra did see a bear….but we aren’t going to tell the girls that!

Girl Scouts Trip to the Cabin #1

This is our second year taking the troop to Amy’s family’s cabin in Strawberry. We invite the moms to come with, as it makes for a nice mother & daughter overnighter. Last year we had nine girls, and this year we have thirteen. There was no way we were going to get all thirteen girls, with all their mothers, into the tiny cabin, so we planned two trips to the cabin. This trip was for all the juniors. To have enough seats, we borrowed our old van from Granny, so that I would have plenty of seats to get my girls and their moms to the cabin. Kyle ended up taking all of Friday off so he could be home with the rest of our kids, and borrowing the minivan made it to where he was able to keep the megavan home in case he needed it.

As all of the girls that went up this trip were the ones that went up last year, we had requests from several girls to go up to the water tower as soon as we got there. So we had the girls grab their water and their binders and we hiked up to the water tower, and the girls worked on the scribe badge.

When we came back to the cabin, the girls got to get dinner started in the crock pot to work on their simple meals badge, and they actually did most of the cooking for the whole trip, leaving us moms to sit back and watch. 🙂 Then we worked on the detective badge. We had the girls take their finger prints and write some things that are unique about them. They also got to make necklaces of their names in morse code. I know it sounds crazy, but they used one blue bead for a dot and two blue beads for a dash, and they had clear beads for spacers. They also got to play a game of clue.

This morning after breakfast, we tried to take a longer hike on a trail that Amy remembers using when she was a kid. Tyra looks so small next to the other girls!

Apparently the trail has been purposely blocked off, and so we weren’t able to finish our hike. So we came back to the cabin and finished up some requirements for the badges that we were earning and then we cleaned up and made our way home.