Tyra – Page 7 – Andelin Adventures

Girl Scout Day Camp

This is Dinah’s first Girl Scout day camp! The big girls (6th-12th graders), led all the younger girls to a circle in the middle of the field where they sang camp songs while they waited for all the other girls to arrive.

I was volunteering all four days, and so Tyra, Dinah and I all got to go. Day camp this year was planned completely by Girl Scouts in sixth through twelfth grade, and so the adult volunteers just had to show up and help at each of the booths. But before they could go to the booths, the girls had to be put in the groups that they would be with for the rest of camp. Dinah got to be in the Pink Ponies group.

Tyra got to be in one of the blue groups. I don’t remember what they called themselves.

On day one, I got to be at the boondoggling booth. I haven’t done this since I was in middle school, and at that time I didn’t know there was a name for it! So it was fun to get to re-learn something I already knew before. A lot of the girls had trouble understanding how to do it, so by the time the end of the day rolled around and we had the Daisy groups last, we decided that we would just have the Daisies braid instead.

When I got home, I finished a boondoggle that I started during the day, and I had to figure out how to tie it off. So I googled it, and found a whole website of different boondoggle stitches! It was amazing! Ethan recently went to Webelos Woods, and one of the projects he started there was a boondoggle to work toward his Craftsman badge, but he hadn’t finished it. He was amazed at all the other boondoggle stitches that there are to do too, and exclaimed that he really wants to do the Cobra stitch. I told him that there is no way I’m going to let him start another one when he won’t finish the one he’s got!

Day two, I got to be at the yarn doll station. This was not very well prepared. I remembered seeing an email before day camp started with instructions for the yarn doll, but they were very small, and I had no idea that that is where I was going to be, so I didn’t think much of it. The email didn’t actually say anything; it just had an attachment. So getting to day camp and finding out that everyone’s attachments in their emails were different based on where they were going to be helping, was kind of frustrating. So at the yarn doll station, there was yarn, and ribbon, and a couple pair of scissors. No instructions, and no other supplies. When we finally found someone that had instructions we found that we were missing other things. Like pieces of cardboard. Step one for these dolls, was to wrap the yarn around a piece of cardboard 26 times, and we had just a few minutes to come up with a whole bunch of pieces of cardboard! It was crazy but we made it work. It was also super windy, so our cardboard, yarn and rolls of ribbon kept trying to blow away.

When we got home from day camp, Ethan proudly announced that he had finished his boondoggle, and asked if we could please go get some supplies so he could try some of the other stitches. Totally amazing to me, he had ZERO interest in finishing that project until he saw that he could do something else with it, and that I wouldn’t let him until he had finished the first one. Then suddenly he is done and begging me to go to a craft store.

Day three of day camp, I got to help at the cow door hanger station. This craft was so involved with passing out plates, and papers and scissors and glue and markers, and bells, that I had NO time to take pictures of anything. The first couple of days, I tried to get pictures of all of my girls in my troop while they were at my booth, but yesterday that just was not happening!

Today, day four of day camp, the girls got to perform skits that they had been putting together the other days of camp.

I was too far away to hear anything of what the skits were about, but my awesome zoom on my camera could get pictures from that distance. After the skits were over, the girls got to rotate to the different stations and today they were just carnival type games. I got to manage the boot toss game. There were eight boots and the girls got to try to toss ping pong balls into them. Again, no pictures because I was too busy chasing ping pong balls before they got to the street. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and my girls can’t wait to find out what day camp will bring for next year. 🙂

And check out the patch! The big girls, that planned everything, also designed the shirt and the patch!

Bridging

As I was preparing for my Girl Scout troop’s bridging ceremony, I went to the shop to rent the bridge that they have there. I was told that another troop was using it and that it wasn’t due to be returned until Monday the 10th. That just wasn’t going to work. I told Kyle of my problem and he decided that for Cub Scouts this week he would have the boys build a bridge. Cub scouts are supposed to bridge from Cubs to Boy scouts too, and building one ourselves it would be available for both Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts. So Monday night Kyle took the van to Home Depot to get the lumber. Tuesday night he came home from work and cut the wood, and Wednesday the Webelos came over to help build it.

They got the main part of the bridge all built, but didn’t have time to finish the rails. Thursday I had a service unit meeting so nothing new happened on the bridge. Yesterday, Kyle came home from work and sanded the bridge down. This, morning he made another run to Home Depot to get some more supplies and he finished the rails.

It came to be time to go to Amy’s house for the end of year party, and Kyle took us all over there and then solicited the help of one of the other dads to help take the seats out of our van and then come back over to our house to get the bridge. I got to stay at Amy’s house and watch the kids play in the yard.

Ethan somehow got a hold of most of the squirters:

Then my Brownies got to bridge to Juniors:

I also got to welcome all of my new Daisies for next year. I am so sad that there isn’t a picture of them, but I gave them a certificate to welcome them to the troop, and they each got a daisy barrette that I made, where each petal was a different color (the colors of the petal awards that Daisy Girl Scouts earn), and I got to give them their first couple of patches. 🙂

Last day of school

Today was the last day of school! I MADE IT! I could not wait for school to end. Now I can breath a sigh of relief and enjoy having my kids home for the summer, and try to get them back in the routine of doing chores! I know that’s mean, but it’s for their own good.

As usual there were only a couple of hours of school today. They were out by 10:30, which seems like such a waste of a school day to me. Also, as usual, I walked down to the school to get pictures of the kids with their teachers.

Ethan’s teacher was Mrs Cunningham.

Tyra’s teacher was Mrs Nelson.

Jeremy’s teacher was Mrs Peterson.

For some reason, my camera wasn’t working properly and took some pretty blurry pictures. So these are the best of what I got, and it makes me sad that they didn’t turn out as nice as I would have liked them to. Later I figured out that one of the kids messed with the camera settings and I had to figure out how to change it back.

Eagle Mountain Pony Express Days Rodeo

My girl scouts got to do the flag ceremony to open the Eagle Mountain Pony Express Days rodeo tonight!

We asked the girls to be there AT 5:00, so, as luck would have it, WE were the ones that were late. However, it wasn’t entirely our fault. Debby came over and I was just finishing getting the kids ready and so I told them to get in the van. The button for the van didn’t unlock the doors…not a good sign. I got the keys and manually unlocked the doors, and while Debby loaded the little kids in the car, I got in and tried to turn it on. The van wouldn’t start. I panicked. It wasn’t even making a sound like it was trying to turn over. It was just dead. So after trying to jump it with Kyle’s car, and trying to jump it with the neighbors car, out of desperation, we split the family in half and half went in Debby’s car and half in Kyle’s car.

The girls did a practice run, and we got to go sit in the stands to watch the pre-show while we waited for the rodeo to start.

We took the girls back down behind the stands to get ready for our turn. I felt like we just stood in the way most of the time because nobody told us where we were supposed to be standing. Amy took Afton back to the box where the microphone is because she was supposed to call out the flags. However, that never happened. The speaker in the box had his own narrative to read and we just had to go with what he was saying. I wish there was some better communication between the rodeo people and our troop so that we would have had a better idea of what to expect. All things considered, the girls did a good job. They didn’t understand the announcers cue for them to walk out of the arena so they stood there a bit longer than they should have but that’s ok, they are cute second, third and fourth graders, so nobody minded.

Next time maybe we will get the girls to all face the audience, instead of looking all over the place.

Then we got to sit back and watch the rest of the rodeo. This is the first rodeo that we have ever taken our kids to, so we weren’t sure just what to expect. But there were guys trying to stay on bucking horses, kids trying to stay on sheep, guys trying to lasso calves and tie them up. There was barrel racing, interestingly, there weren’t any men competing in this; it was mostly women, a couple of teenagers and a couple of younger kids.

The kids seemed to enjoy watching the rodeo, although the girls made several trips to the bathroom (I don’t understand their fascination with porta potties).

Jeremy would make a very cute little cowboy. 🙂

There was also a rodeo ‘clown’. He did some random funny things like sing songs to people in the audience, he hid in a big barrel in the arena while the other guys were riding their horses or chasing the cows. The act that we took pictures of though was when he took two cowboys and laid them on the ground right next to a ramp.

Then he got on his little motorcycle and proceeded to ride up the ramp.

Those poor guys on the ground must have been freaking out. That ramp wasn’t anything more than a folding table, and totally could have broke or fallen over…

To me the scariest part of the rodeo was watching the guys try to stay on the bucking bulls. They didn’t stay on long, and once on the ground those guys had to get up and get out of the way fast. There was one guy that got thrown off and the bull, jumped on him about five times (at least it looked like the bull jumped on him). Thankfully the guy was able to get up and run away and jump onto the fence to get away from the bull.

We stayed to the end. The fireworks at the end of the rodeo really spooked the horses. The horses in the corral behind the arena ran back and forth in the corral as if they were trying to run away from the loud scary bright light, but there was nowhere for them to run.

When we left the rodeo there were officers directing traffic and they directed Kyle towards the city center and they directed Debby and myself toward the highway, so we had to take the long way home. We got home, and unloaded the kids, and I just love seeing them all tuckered out like this:

Tyra’s ninth birthday

Today is Tyra’s ninth birthday. Eve, a friend of hers, came over after church to wish her a happy birthday, and that turned into inviting her and her family over for dinner. Her family declined this time, but said that she could stay. So she stayed, and while our kids were whining about how they didn’t like what I made for dinner, Eve liked it very much and was looking at the others like they were nuts for complaining. Also when Kyle imitated the kids exaggerated whining, Eve laughed out loud so hard. I guess her parents don’t act like that. But perhaps, her parents don’t have to act like that because their kids don’t act like that, I don’t know.

Tyra requested strawberry shortcake for her cake again this year, and so that is what I made.

Eve shared a chair at the table with Tyra. We have other dining chairs, but they are buried in the garage at the moment.

After dinner and just as we were getting ready to serve the cake, Eve’s brother and a couple of her sisters came over to collect her and take her home. We invited them to stay just a few minutes to eat cake too, and so they did before heading home again.

Brooke, another of Tyra’s friends, came down the street to wish her a happy birthday and bring her a birthday present, which was exciting for Tyra as well. Brooke couldn’t stay long enough for cake, so she dropped off the present and headed back home.

Tyra opened the present that I got her first.

It’s an owl shaped small purse that I saw at the Girl Scout shop, and (without planning) it actually matches a t-shirt that Tyra earned for selling 500+ boxes of Girls Scout cookies.

Next she opened a present that Kyle asked me to pick up while I was out grocery shopping last night. Tyra had been asking for a watch, and so I picked one out for her.

Watches, in those funky shaped packages are difficult to wrap, by the way. 😛

Last, she opened the present from her friend Brooke.

And she finished up the evening by reading the card that Great Grandpa Tom and Great Grandma Kathy sent her.