So here we are, six sweaty but dedicated moms (I’m second from left), doing what we need to do to help our daughters become confident, well-rounded young women by taking them on a Girl Scout “Camporee.” No one told us that this particular camping trip was going to require more than 24 hours in sauna-like conditions in a woods infested with ticks — we had to pull the nasty little critters off of three out of six girls. The tick-to-girl ratio was not good, but we survived, even if we didn’t always do it happily.
Looking back, it was actually a lot of fun. The moms did a lot of laughing and the girls did a lot of learning. Actually, I think we all did quite a bit of learning on this outing. We learned that no matter how bad it sounds from the warnings on the label, DEET is our friend. And that’s coming from someone who never uses bug spray. I was dripping with DEET by Sunday morning and proud of it.