I can't believe it's broken

Ok so Wednesday big A goes to dance class (moved from Monday for the holiday) and she comes home and decides to practice in her socks on our hardwood floor. BOOM, AAAHHHHGGGG!, sobbing... what's wrong? I run in and she's on the floor crying and can't walk. We move her to the couch and check it out. Not swelling, no bones sticking out. Ok so we ice it and send her to bed. Thursday she's walking, sort of, on it so we send her to school. She's still complaining after school so we schedule a doc appointment for Friday.

Still thinking it's a sprain I have her leave her stuff at school, we'd be back soon right? Nope... doc orders x-rays, and when the tech comes to talk to us she's got the travel envelope, oh no, I've been a bad mommy! Off to the ortho for a cast and 4 hours later we finally make it to the in-laws to get the rest of the kids. Ya we were at the doc offices for so long all her stuff is still at school, and my MIL had to get the kids for me.

So her cast is purple (love the color) they let her keep her toes open (originally they were going to cover them!). She's got to keep it on for 4 weeks. We had a scout program that night so I had to call the other adults that I was working with and let them know we'd be late. She decided that she wasn't going to let this stop her from going either since the program was inside.

A little cast never stopped anyone... Of course being that this is the second cast in 2 months... I'm wondering if she's going to take after her father and break a bone or 3 in every limb!

Its' official!

The girls finished their Bronze this week. According to the person I talked to the paint we used will stay on the clay tags for the garden. I figured that if it doesn't then we can always re-write them in another type of paint or dye. The girls were so proud of themselves for finishing it, especially since it morphed from this little part in the beginning to some very major work by the end (at least that's how they see it)
See this link on the way to bronze regarding some of what they did.

Here is another part.

After they dried we put them in the garden. Hopefully they are still there and in one piece when we go back next month.

With this finally under their belt they got to receive their bronze awards. And about 10 minutes after that ceremony we had the bridging ceremony. Now everyone is at the cadette level. I feel like the girls were some how cheated out of a year at the junior level, but really there wasn't much left for them to do at that level.

This year we are going to try this new thing that national has called Journeys. I have to admit that it's a good program for the cadette level, but for my girls specificly I'm not sure they'll like it since we do character education at school and this year it's the same as what is in the cadette journey. Oh well, we'll find out on Thursday at the meeting when they all get their books.

Frazzle dazzle day

I am forcing myself to stay home today and work on the class the I'm suppose to be teaching next week. It's program aide training for the cadettes in our service unit.

The material that I've seen so far is way out of date so I'm trying to get it up to date and fun. Who wants to sit there and listen to somebody talk for 4 hours! Yuck! But I must say that it's a lot more work trying to get the program interesting then I thought it would be. I definately won't open my mouth next time... or maybe i will... it could be fun.

The real frazzle of it all is while I'm getting this class all set up I'm also getting the first aid, cpr and babysitting classes set too. ANd not jsut for the scouts, I'm getting this for the adults that volunteer at the church and for the youth at church that are volunteering in the nursery. Lots of work with very little time to do it.

Now the dazzle is the SU campout. That looks like it is going to be so much fun this year!! My girls are signed up as helpers (PAs) this year so they get to help teach and lead all the activities. And the great part for me is all I have to do is make sure the girls get trained, then supervise!! I won't have to be "in charge" of anything (as of right now). Someone else is cooking and planning all the activities.

That's all for today. For now anyway since we all know that my schedule changes quicker then Ohio weather!

the rock hall

Today was a fun and interesting day. Friends from Virgina were in and we made a little GS troop and took a trip. We are notorious for this, we always find stuff to do as a troop when we are together. Today was no different. you see, today we took a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If you've never been I recommend it, lots of really neat stuff to see and read. Of course we had the obligatory scavenger hunt... Do you know which president Les Paul played for? Or how much Joplin paid for her porche? These girls do!! They even got the patch to prove it!! Ok so part of the reason that we decided to go the to rock hall was to finish the Ohio Badge and IPP for the girls but for the most part they did have fun.

The best part though was afterwards at the park. We ate lunch there and then went for a walk on the rocks and took pictures. lots of fun!

I just have to vent!!

ok so I'm at a little fair/fund raiser at the park today. There's a few girls from a local troop volunteering. I see one have a Bronze pin on so I ask what she did for her project... this is the conversation...

me "what did you do for your project"

girl #1 "ummm"

girl #2 (now she doesn't have a pin on) " We make some books for a day care center."

me "umm Ok."

girl #2 "ya, we had to do like 5 hours of community service for it, but I have more then that."

me "Really? The girls in my troop have over 30 hours each and still aren't done with their project."

girl #2 "I haven't finished mine yet..."

me "so your going into the 6th grade? Have you bridged yet?"

girl #1 (finally finds her voice) "No we're going into 5th grade."

me "Wow! you finished your project in less then a year?"

both girls "ummm"

I finally just walk away. Little man was done with is art project that the girls were helping him with. I never did see any leader type person there.

I know, I know the Bronze is done when the Leader says it's done, but really, how can you justify giving the pin to a girl or girls that #1 can't tell you what they did and #2 didn't even know the requirements for the pin and #3 got it done in less then a year??? NO WAY!!

My girls have been working on it for 2 years now and will be done before Oct. 1 which is when they will officially be cadettes thanks to the new allignment of levels (Not a gripe, just really glad we'll get it done before bridging!!)

And don't get me started on the fact that these girls vests weren't even put together right!! I know that I harp on this with all the troops I help with (including day camp) but really, if you are going to volunteer as a Girl Scout then you had better make sure that your uniform is correct!!!!

Scouting

I've been reading lately. Ya I do that a lot. I've been talking to people too. Something else I do a lot. But the subject is a relatively new one for me since it's a "new" subject in general. It's about the scouting program and the coming changes.

It all started about 3 or 4 years ago when I first heard we were going to be changing things in how we ran the troop or badges they could earn or whatever. Back then national came out with Studio 2B. It was new and different and it held some girls in that would have left the movement. Similar to when they started with the Brownie try-its or the Daisy movement or even the Daisy petals. ALL of these changes were to help INCLUDE others to get more girls involved and stay involved in scouts.

I read somewhere that people think the asterik next to God in the GS promise is negative. It's not... It was done with the intent to include girls of religions that were not Christian in the orginaization... the word God can be filled with Yawah, Allah, or Father. The orginizaion may have been founded by a Christian but like our country it isn't religion. It's what's so great about scouting... you can get to know people from ALL walks or life and ALL religious backgrounds. But I digress...

Scouting has always strived to stay with the times in that it wants to keep girls active, involved, stimulated, and educated. Looking back on all the changes that have taken place just since I was a Brownie and I can see why each and every one of the changes happened, and I can see that they were for the better of the orginization.

Did some people complain... maybe... but I'm really trying not to be one of them. Do I have questions on these new changes? Yes, of course I do, it affects my troop(s) and the better I understand it the better I can explain it to the girls and the better the program will be.

I guess what I'm saying is that this... GS is for the girls, it's here to help them learn and grow and lead.

Only a few months to go

That's hopeful but if all goes well we will have our Bronze Project done for scouts before Oct. 1!!!

We have to go and buy clay sisnce what we thought was clay was really mud, but we had lots of fun getting it!

You may be asking what we need clay for... we they girls decided in Aug. of 2006 to work with the butterfly garden at camp as their project.

They learned origami specifically the butterfly and taught it at the garden opening to everyone.

They made cement stepping stones and thankfully the method we choose had held up and all our stones are still in one piece.

The last part of their project has taken the longest... They are making clay tags for all of the flowers and trees in the garden. Since it may actually be fall before we can place them the girls will need to make a map of the garden to mark out what flowers are what. Thankfully they have identified all the plants and trees so all we have to do is make an acurate map, figure out how many tags we need to make, make, fire, and place the tags. YA!!!

Vacation, day one

We left on Wednesday at 9pm. We got to Savannah GA around 11am. This is such a beautiful city. All the wonderful old arcetecture and streets. Our first stop was the Juliette Low Birthplace.

We took the tour. We got to see the dining room, the library, the parlors, the bedrooms and the restored bathroom. It was really neat to see where it all began and where Daisy grew up. We got to see some of her sculptures and paintings. She actually did a portrait copy of her mother that she wanted to take with her to England but that her father wouldn't part with. She got her paints out and did an exact copy of the painting and we got to see it in the formal parlor. We got to see some of her iron work too. And the sculpture of her neice that she did was really neat and very life like.

The garden was amazing the plants are huge!! Take a look at this one...

After the tour we decided to drive around and see the city a little and ended up at the river walk area. We saw all sorts of shops some with cloths others with nic nacs and soveniors. But the best shop was the candy store. Savannah Candy Kitchen. They were making taffy when we were there and were throwing pieces into the crowd as it came out of the machine. If you've never had warm taffy let me tell you it was great!! The youngest two had ice cream, the oldest marshmellow chocolate bark and Jer had peanut butter gelato (I can't remember how to spell that!). I have a praline, it melted in my mouth. it was so rich I actually had to save half of it!! I bought some orange vanilli fudge for later. Still haven't tried it actually. Maybe I'll try some tomorrow.

We got down here to Jacksonville around dinnertime and have been relaxing. The kids are all sleeping already, even after sleeping most of the drive to Savannah and then to Jacksonville. I can't get over how hot it is down here. It feels like 100 degrees, every time I step outside my glasses fog up. It was so hot earlier that our a/c in the car stopped working, it just couldn't get the moisture out of the air!! We'll be here for a few days and then it's off to Destin for fun in the sun (or not if it's still this hot!). Great people, good food, ocean view... really can't beat it.

One last pic of the girls signing the guestbook....