Smocks, Cookies and Squeals

Paige attended her first Girl Scout info meeting shortly after we moved. I didn’t think much would come of it, typically it takes a modest amount of negotiation to get her interested in much more than staying home and drawing or reading. But for whatever reason this was different. She repeatedly told us she wanted to go and be a Girl Scout. So we (really I) begrudgingly agreed and she and Rachel went to the meeting. I still figured once they got home Paige would be nervous about doing it and my hypothesis that she’s not settled enough to do this and would back out at the last minute would come true. Boy was I wrong. In fact she was so excited the she got Rachel excited and I guess me too.

Not long after the intro meeting, we all went to Hockley Oil Ranch for a scout day. It was hot. I milked a cow; the kids rode horses and picked out pumpkins. It doesn’t sound like it should go together but it did. One thing Rachel and I both noticed was that there were 12 girls in Paige’s troop and the leader was a bit overwhelmed. She asked for help and Rachel decided that she would like to meet that need. This quickly turned into Rachel decided to lead her own troop. They split the girls up…Rachel took 6 and the other leader took 6. Rachel’s 6 turned into 10 within the next few days. Evidently the news hit the wire and at a book fair that week, moms were coming up to her and inquiring about being in her troop. I told her she must have been “all the rage” .

Smocks…that’s the Daisy Girl Scout uniform of record. It’s cute enough. All their patches just get ironed on anywhere. There’s a big daisy flower patch they get to work on through different activities, which Rachel has to come up with. Thankfully some over-achieving Girl Scout mothers have created websites and blogs to feed ideas. Because you know if I got asked to contribute the girls would be doing yard and housework to earn their patches. There are patches for almost anything you can think of.

Cookies…this is the first year Daisies were able to participate in the Girl Scout cookie sale. The idea of Paige selling things door to door makes me laugh. Halloween was interesting and thinking about her basically doing the same thing again (ringing doorbells and asking for stuff) was funny. But it worked. Of course if she found somebody who wasn’t interested in cookies she wanted to go home, she was done. However if someone bought some cookies she proclaimed she could do this all day..”I could sell 100 boxes mommy.” Ends up I sold some at work, mom sold some over the phone. All totaled we sold 97 boxes.

Squeals…Obviously 10 girls congregated at our house for scout meetings means 1000 decibels of shreaks, squeals and giggles. Jake and I usually take these opportunities to get out of the house and go do something manly: we go to my parent’s house and play video games or watch the news. Where it’s quiet, girl-free (mostly) and we can talk about whatever we like. I would like to say that Jake enjoys it, and mostly he does. But he does enjoy playing chase with the girls. Guess that’s practice for the future.

4greens