Leader Dinner

Last night was the Girl Scout Leader Dinner.  As the Service Unit Director I have had to organize five of these dinners in the past.  Some were successes.  Some were admittedly lame.  But the main purpose was always just to gather together as leaders, enjoy a meal and give out much deserved awards.  This was the first one in a long time I no part at all in organizing.  None.  Zero. Zilch.  I didn't even know what was on the menu when I showed up.  I'm lucky I went to the right place on the right day at the right time.

I am humbled to say today that last night's leader dinner was the bomb. The location was beautiful. The food was outstanding. The ceremonies were brief but touching. The awards were presented in a classy manner. There was a table laden with door prizes and I won a nice big candle in a scent that I didn't hate.  (That's actually a bit of a challenge for me.)

And there was wine. Bottles and bottles and bottles of wine.

Alcohol and Girl Scouting are two things that I have never, ever, ever seen before in combination. At least not at this kind of event. Sure, it's wine that makes the day camp planning meetings chug right along, but that's just us and we are at someones house.

Luckily I was standing with my day camp director when we discovered that beside the carafes of iced tea and water there were uncorked bottles of every type of wine you could want to sample. Without much discussion, we each had a glass of Riesling.  Within a few minute I just went back and brought the bottle to live at our table.  Save on steps that way.

It's good to hand over the responsibility to the new, upcoming guard.  One shouldn't be stuck in the same position forever.  And if this is how the newbies are going to throw dinners, then I am all for it.

Mystery Camp Out

Months of planning, dozens of phone calls, hundreds of emails, two trips to camp to deliver food and craft supplies and 120 Girl Scouts all collided at Timberlane this past weekend for our big once-a-year camp out. This is an event I organize for all the troops in the our city to attend. This year I had nine troops come out claiming every available bed and almost taking the dining hall to capacity. A huge leap in attendance over last year.

And I did it all myself!

Okay, no I didn't.

This year I had a quite a crew behind me that took over almost every detail leaving me in the end with the registrations, assigning cabins, providing training and programing for all our teenage Scouts (There were 42 of them this year!), coming up with the schedule for the weekend, hiring the cook and shopping for one meal.

That might sound like a lot, but in the grand scheme of the weekend, it's a drop in the bucket. I had one leader plan all of the program stations (27 of them!) and shop for all of the supplies. Another leader planned our one "nice" craft and hand made all of the insanely cute name tags. One leader and her troop made dinner for everyone Friday night. Another leader and her troop made a huge brunch for everyone Saturday morning. Co-Leader Supreme personally found the program we ran, picked out the fun patch, ran archery, opened the observatory, set up a killer clever trail with her younger troop and tried to keep me in line all weekend. (No easy task there.)

The weather tried to ruin it all. It was cold and it never, ever stopped drizzling. Just this steady, light, freezing drizzle the entire time we were there. We had to cancel boating. Nobody wanted to go to archery. We had our campfire inside the dining hall. It sucked the energy out of everybody ending the day around 9 PM instead of 11.

But everyone says that they had a wonderful time and that their girls had a super-fun-amazing experience. That makes it a success.

And I forgot to take my camera, obviously.

Magazine Time Coming

If you have a subscription to a magazine, you know that you also have a steady stream of renewal offers from the magazine itself saying "Last Chance" and "Makes a Great Gift". Please, do me a favor and never ever order from the publisher, no matter how fantastic their deal is that week. Put that "Buy One, Get One" envelope offer right in paper recycling unopened.


There will always be kids selling magazines. Always. Buy from a kid. It's the very best of fundraisers because you are getting something you already want (unlike kitchen do-dads or candles) and the parents don't have to schlep a product to your door and hound you for cash (there is a certain kind of cookie that comes to mind).


The Girl will very soon be selling magazines for Girl Scouting. All the munchkins from all of the schools will be doing the same thing. Get a new subscription or renew what you've got with a kid. (My kid preferably!)

Oh, and by the way, magazines make great gifts!

Big Dog No More

First, this isn't a post about Marco. Stop panicking.

Last night at the Leader Appreciation Dinner, I made the statement that Girl Scouting will take as much of your life as you are willing to give them. And it's true. I was encouraging the leaders to find some way to promote and support Girl Scouting outside of the circle of their own troop but not to burn themselves out. This was at the event where I was handing over the keys of being the Big Dog.

The Big Dog? That's what my kids call the job I had. My title was actually Service Unit Director. I've been the SUD for five out of the last six years. I took one year off in the middle, but I knew it would just be a hiatus.

The SUD helps coordinate all of the leaders in the city. Cookie sales, the nut sale, camping events, trainings, service project and community events. I ran a monthly meeting and sent out about a million emails.

The first year I did it, my kids were in the fourth grade. The first meeting I had to run I was frantically rushing around the house making sure I wasn't forgetting anything. The Boy asked what kind of meeting I was leaving for.

Me: It's a meeting of just leaders. No girls. It helps leaders be better leaders.

Boy: And you're the president?

Me: I guess sort of. I'm called the Director.

Boy: So you're the Big Dog.

Me: Sure.

But that's the name that stuck with my kids. As I would be packing up the car, they would ask, "You've got a Big Dog meeting tonight?"

Last night was it for me as Big Dog. And no hiatus this time. I've handed the whole thing over to a new batch of leaders. Did I stop before getting burned out? Just barely. It was getting a little uncomfortably warm this past year. I am very grateful to the leader who is taking my place and I know she will do an amazing job.

As for me, I've got a few more years of being a leader and I am happily going to sink into the circle of my own troop.

Kalahari Lock-In

The Girl and I are in a bit of a fog today. Last night (and this morning) we were at Kalahari Waterpark for a Girl Scout lock-in. 11 PM - 5 AM. By the time all of the girls were dressed and had gathered everything together, we finally got out of there around 5:30, which put us back in town at 6:30. Right to bed we went and got up around 1 PM today.

The Lock-In was an adventure but for all the wrong reasons. In the first half-hour we came across a little girl who had slipped down some steps leading up to one of the slides. Her friends weren't sure what happened. Some of them said she fainted, others said she tripped and hit her head. Her friends were guiding her down the steps when she got to myself and some other leaders. She was clinging to the rail taking the tiniest of steps and shaking all over. Her eyes were rolling in her head. And she was green. Literally green. I've never seen anything like it. She was a yellowish-green from head to toe. The other leader I was with grabbed the girl up and I started hollering down the stairs for everyone to move. Another leader shot off head to find a lifeguard. At the bottom of the stairs were two EMTs waiting to take the girl. We went to peek in on her a while later. They had her on oxygen, in neck brace, strapped to backboard and an ambulance was on the way.

A few hours later, I was in hanging around in the Girl Scout cabana when a little girl came over asking if this was first aid. Her big toe was bleeding under the nail. I offered to walk her to the first aid office and the whole way there her toe was oozing blood. We hobbled across the park and the lifeguards fixed her up. Then they gave her the news: She was going to lose the toe nail. The one guard showed the girl her own big toe with the nail only half grown back. The same ride had ripped her nail off a month earlier. That particular ride had a tendency to do that to people.

When I got back to the cabana I was told I missed all of the excitement. One of the leaders wiped up on the wet concrete and broke her ankle or maybe her leg.

Wow. It seems like a lot of disasters but there were 1,600 Girl Scouts there. I think I was just unlucky and kept coming across the bad moments.

Nevertheless, I had an amazing amount of fun and so did the girls in my troop. We all kept our toenails, kept our bones unbroken and stayed one color. I could write a whole post about what happened to myself and three other leaders on the one ride that looks like a giant toilet bowl, but I'm not quite ready to tell that story yet. It's a doozy!

Never Too Late for a Gift

This past Saturday was not only The Man's birthday dinner out, but that same morning it was World Friendship Day for Girl Scouting. This year our theme was Cities of the World. Our troop is involved in a couple of other projects and used World Friendship Day to multi-purpose them all together by creating a Cleveland booth.

But this isn't about our booth, it's about our craft.

For the fourth year in a row, we've done Shrinky Dinks as our WFD craft. We create designs based on our booth, have the girls color them at the table and shrink them down to key chains right in front of their very eyes. It's always a wild time at our booth and we are crushed the entire time we're open. (Four years ago we bought a bulk package of 100 sheets of Shrinky Dink paper. It's almost gone now.)

To shrink the dinks, you need a toaster oven. The problem was that Co-Leader Supreme also needed a toaster oven for her younger troop. They were making tiny pizzas on crackers for New York City. "We could share the oven," she suggested. The more I thought about it the more I knew it wouldn't work. First of all, Shrinky Dinks don't smell that great while they are baking. No one would want to eat a Shrinky Dink flavored pizza. I also had a fear of things getting really crazy and someone eating a key chain or wearing a pizza. Nightmare! Finally, when we do this craft we are just slammed with customers. There would be too much of a traffic jam at the oven if both things were being made at once.

I was going through people who I though might want to loan us their oven when it occurred to me that I have a toaster oven of my own! (Stay with me here. I'll explain.)

My pots and pans cupboard is oddly shaped and too deep. It invites chaos and gets it. I take everything out and re-stack it up beautifully about once a month. Within a week it is completely wrecked again. And it's all me. The other three in this house don't dare even try to do anything with that cupboard.

To fight the chaos a bit, I keep a large box in the back of it, just to keep things from getting pushed WAY back. It's been there since we bought the house, that big place holder of a box.

And what is that box?

What do you know? A brand new toaster oven! My last unopened wedding gift!

Here it is all sealed up and...dusty.

It's been waiting for seventeen years to be wanted and needed. Now is its time!

Ooooooh, shiny.

This lucky little machine made its debut at World Friendship Day on Saturday and shrunk about 120 key chains to delight and amazement of little Girl Scouts.
I don't remember who gave us the toaster oven but I'd like to say thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved the day.

The oven is sealed up in the box again and in the awful cupboard doing the important job of holding back the tide. See you next year little guy!

Halloween Adventures

Let's start with the obligatory shots of our jack-o-lanterns this year.

Here's the whole group before they headed out to the yard. That monster in the back is The Man's that we got at a clearance price because we always wait to the next to last minute to buy our pumpkins. It isn't carved yet here, but it is cleaned out (the hole is in the back). Even empty it was still a crippling weight.
Here's what it ended up getting carved into. Spooky!

I went for a way too complicated design. It actually says Happy Halloween around the edge, but it wouldn't photograph well. And, yeah, it took me a long time to do!

Here's The Girl's sweet little creation...

And The Boy's creepiness.

The crew did go trick or treating this year, but instead of collecting candy, they collected canned goods for Trick or Treat So Kids Can Eat. The Girl, Boy and Other Girl in Our Lives went out two days ahead of time and put fliers on around ninety houses in our neighborhood about it. On trick or treat night, they decorated a wagon and went out collecting. They were so successful that they had to come back to the house and unload the wagon so they could go out and get more.

Here's our do-gooders.


Is The Girl a basket of laundry for Halloween?

Yes, she is.

She even smelled good.


But even bigger than trick or treat was the Halloween camp out I planned out at Timberlane right on Halloween. It was a huge day filled with archery, dipping candles, making caramel apples, creating trick or treat bags out of duct tape, a scavenger hunt, cabin to cabin trick or treating, a spooky hike in the woods, star gazing at the observatory and a costume dance. It was an amazing weekend and the weather cooperated beautifully.


The girls of my troop were in charge of the spooky hike: Explore the Lost Trail of Timberlane. This is an actual trail that nobody takes because it's not very interesting and doesn't go anywhere. A lot of Scouts aren't even aware that it's there. But we jazzed it up, Singing River style, by building a little cemetery in its depths.

It's doesn't look like much but it was much more spooky by flashlight, I assure you. My girls, donned head to foot in black, were supposed to creep along the path alongside our hikers making scary sounds. Unfortunately, the moon was unbelievably bright, the trees are very skinny and all of the leaves were down in that part of the woods. It didn't take much for the hikers to see "the ghosts" ducking around trying to stay invisible. Their blood curdling screams though were very impressive though.


I didn't take very many pictures of the weekend. With this event being my baby, I spent the majority of my time running around like a madwoman making sure everything was going off as planned. I hope the other leaders took pictures of the indoor archery and Pinecrest covered in caramel. I hope there are shots of our flag ceremonies and the table settings. I saw cameras out at the dance, but there was also a fog machine (that set off the smoke detectors!), so they might not have come out. And the food! I hope someone got a picture of the meatballs with the cheese and olive slice eyes! So cool!

Four Day Weekend

A four day weekend, smack in the middle of October, is a beautiful thing.

We spent Day One doing absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. We didn't even take Marco on a walk. The highlight of activity was watching three episodes of Fringe back to back. I think I did a load of laundry...maybe not.

Day Two was a bit more active. The Girl and I experimented making mini stuffed french toast pockets for an outdoor cooking competition. The Boy and Man suffered through the taste testing for us like champs. They both kept coming back for more and more. Later, The Boy left for a weekend camp out with his troop. It was cold and rainy. I'm so glad they had a cabin and not tents like they were originally planning. The Girl and I spend the evening watching Once Upon A Time in Mexico because even though there's lots of guns and blood and explosions, that movie is a chick flick. Big time.

Day Three was another Cross Country meet for The Girl. This one will be remembered for the mud and the cold. It was a big sloppy mess the entire time. Kids had mud kicked up their legs all the way to their faces. This is a teammate of The Girl's who really got covered.

This is The Girl. Her shoes were entirely caked and then filled with mud. I thought they were ruined for sure, but a trip through the washing machine brought them back.

After a long shower and a rest, the three of us along with The-Other-Girl-In-Our-Lives took off on a Sweetest Day adventure. We went into Coventry to have dinner at the Mongolian BBQ. The wait was lengthy so strolled (More like sprinted. It was really cold.) up the road to Big Fun.

As I was taking this picture, someone knocked on the window. It was my sister and my BIL Jim in the neighborhood for the exactly the same reason as us! As Professor Horrible would say, what crazy wacky happenstance! (The reason shall be revealed soon.)

We tried to convince The Man that he should buy this fez, but he talked himself out of it.



It was still a bit of a wait at the restaurant when we got back. The girls were losing all hope.

Eventually we got our table and ate and ate and ate until we could eat no more.

Finally it was time to go the theater which was our true destination for the night. In honor of Weird Al's 50th birthday, the Cedar Lee was showing UHF. There was an accordion player who knew every Weird Al song and took requests.

There was a Wheel of Fish that everyone got to spin to win a prize. Here's The Sister with the soundtrack she just won.

When UHF first came out, we sat in practically empty theaters to see it. Seeing it in a room full of people who all love it and sing along was such a fun experience. And there was birthday cake too!

On Day Four (Damn, this is taking forever!) The Girl and I went to the before mentioned outdoor cooking competition. The cooking had to be done in a fire circle and you had to bring all your food and cooking supplies. We choose to make stuffed french toast, in little bite sized pieces, served with bacon and fruit. We wanted to do a tropical theme, so the fruit was kiwi, pineapple and strawberry.



Table setting to your theme was part of the competition.



Our dish doesn't look like much just sitting in a big pile, but it was tasty, even cold. That's powdered sugar in the coconut cup.

We didn't win the grand prize, but we did win the Yum-O Award which includes a giant bag of butterscotch chips and a huge box of Nilla Wafers. Strange prizes but better than the troop that won the over-sized bag of Cheerios.
Back to reality today. For the kids at least. I'm going for the five day weekend!

A subscription in begging

(It's that time of year again...sorry.)


You know all those magazines you get? And you know how each magazine bombards you bi-monthly with their friendly reminders about your subscription expiring in seven months? Please just throw those letters in your paper recycling bin as soon as it hits your hands and instead renew your subscriptions with The Girl.


For the past three years Girl Scouting as taken on magazine sales to go along with the silly nut sale. This sale ends just in time to dovetail nicely with the cookie sale starting and for me overlaps Boy Scout popcorn. Fun, fun, fun!


Adding magazine sales to the mix has been a bumpy road for Girl Scouting. I didn't get to attend the Kick-Off this year, but I'll never forget the screaming voices bouncing off the rafters from last year. Many leaders I've personally met have told me that they just don't do the magazine part of the fall sale and focus only on the nuts. But those nuts are a rip off, I tell them. Just go after magazine renewals instead of new subscriptions. It's so much easier, I plead.


No, they say. Not going to happen.


Come to find out that I personally love the magazine sale because a giant pile of product doesn't end up stacked my dining room waiting to be delivered. If I have to be stuck in the non-stop world of fundraising (which I am), then at the very least I would like to support the one product that inconveniences me the least.


So if you have any magazines that you are considering for renewal anytime over the next two months, you know your hook-up!

Singing River- One Last Time

The camping trip this past weekend has taken a toll on me. Between sleeping on those camp bunk and the non-stop hiking, I feel like I have strained and tweaked every muscle from my neck to my arches.


And that includes my heart.


Good bye Singing River. We'll miss you.

More picture on my Flickr later today...

Another one in the books

Day Camp is over.

I said I would be back with pictures, but I guess I didn't mean it because I not only didn't take pictures, I didn't even take the camera

In a nutshell, it was hot. I still have a tiny bit of yellow dye under two fingers but the majority of my Easter Egg-ness has faded away. Tuesday night I was a big colorful mess starting with my tie-dyed hands and shoes and ending with the sunburn on the back of my neck. Right now that burn is pealing and it is SO pretty.

Wednesday I shopped in three different grocery stores spending around $400 buying cookout food for 170 people. It was crazy but it also went super smooth. I only forgot 3 bags of carrots and a bottle of ketchup out of all of it. When you go in a store and buy 23 pounds of ground beef most people would stop and stare. My two overflowing carts barely caused a ripple in the store though. I was surprised how NOT surprised people were at my shopping.

The theme of the week was native Ohio animals but the actually underlying theme was, "It is so damn hot out here!" Groups of girls would go down to the river to observe nature and come back drenched head to toe. A little dip in the river never hurt anyone and probably saved a girl or two from heat exhaustion.

Everyone wants another duct tape craft for next year. Thank goodness I have a whole year to come up with something.

Day Camp and Duct Tape

Day one of Day Camp went off with many hitches. Many, many hitches. But being true Scouts that we are we made the best of it by begging leaders to be flexible and drinking lots of tea.

Monday is always the day that we tie dye all the camp shirts. That's my big job, overseeing the tie dye station. Unfortunately the shirts didn't come in. So scrambling around we flopped the Monday and Tuesday schedules and instead I led the making of duct tape lunch bags. Now I've taught tie dye for years and I have it down to a science. But I've only taught duct tape once before and that was to three girls in an air-conditioned room. My first group today was twenty-seven strong and everyone wanted the pink and lime green tape. I only had twenty cutting surfaces and eighteen knives. Luckily, their leaders jumped right in cutting tape and helping the girls who were clueless. It was chaotic, but we got through it.


By the end of the afternoon almost everyone in camp had been through the station and emerged with tape covered bag. My giant mountain of tape is down to a small hill. Some of the bags were works of art. Others were a piece of work. But not one girl complained that it was stupid craft and when working with that many girls, that equals success.


The shirts are suppose to be in tomorrow so when you see me my fingers will tinted blue and red. If I'm lucky and careful it will just be my fingers though and not my arms, legs and face!

Mall Lock-In 2009

My head is still a bit foggy from this weekend's Mall Lock-In. This was our fifth year to attend a Lock-In, which is a 12 hour long event. The first two years were at our own mall here in town. The last three have been out at the giant mall in Strongsville. The Strongsville mall is better for all kinds of reasons. It has a multiplex movie theater, indoor glow-in-the-dark mini golf and enough space for giant inflatable toys to bounce on and slide down. Plus there's a Panera Bread open all night. My tongue is still burnt from my extra hot soup that just wouldn't cool down.

This year's Lock-In had the biggest crowd yet. 2,000 girls and 700 adults.

A little frightening, isn't it?

Once you get to the mall you have to pick out a camp site to park all of your stuff. We had a cherry place picked out by the escalators in a little corner. We had just set up all our chairs and blankets when a security guard shooed us out. He had some lame excuse that we had set up in the lane they were reserving so non lock-in theater goers could get out of the mall. We lugged everything down to the entrance to the Indians Team shop and parked it there. Not long after that we noticed that another troop had set-up in the spot we got bumped from and they had pitched a tent, a real tent, in that spot!

The Girl is still not much for having her picture taken.You can't hear a thing on your phone at a Lock-In. It's just way too noisy everywhere you go. Texting is the only way to communicate. Here's one of my girls yelling "What? WHAT?"

And big girls know that when there's nothing left to do you go to sleep.