by Mary | Apr 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
I am so proud of our little Brownie troop. We started out this year on a Girl Scout “Journey,” one that required us to tell our story — and to change the end of someone else’s story, or at least make the story better for them. After going through a series of ideas, everything from book drives to food drives, our girls voted to make Mother’s Day gift bags for the almost-two dozen teenage mothers who live at Albany residences run by Community Maternity Services, an agency of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany. (more…)
by Mary | Jun 11, 2008 | Olivia, Original NSS, parenting
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.
by Mary | Jun 9, 2008 | Nature, Original NSS, parenting
So we made it through our brief camping trip none the worse for wear. OK, maybe a little the worse for wear, but that was to be expected. Considering the fact that the temperature was in the 90s and we had to sleep six girls and six moms in a smelly, dirty “nature center,” complete with a dead mouse found upon our arrival, the trip went amazingly well, at least from my perspective.
I went into this trip with only two previous camping experiences behind me, both of them Girl Scout trips and both of them horrendous in my memory. They are the reason I have declared on more than one occasion that my idea of camping is staying at a Motel 6 or its equivalent. Visions of mud-covered sleeping bags during that rainy tent trip still dance in my head whenever I hear the word “camp.” But I knew when I signed on to be a Scout leader that camping would be in my future, so I decided to go into this with a let’s-wait-and-see attitude, and it served me well. (more…)
by Mary | Jun 4, 2008 | Nature, Olivia, Original NSS, parenting
Olivia and I went out tonight on a quest for a camping “dunk bag,” which, if you’ve never gone camping — and unfortunately I have — is a mesh bag that allows you to allegedly “clean” your dishes by dunking them first in a bucket of cold soapy water and then in a bucket of cold un-soapy water. Not quite the same as the super-sanitizer setting on our dishwasher.
So we headed back to the dreaded Wal-Mart once again, the second time in one week, in search of the required dunk bag for our upcoming Brownie camping trip. As much as I hate the store, I am always drawn there by the promise of finding weird stuff cheap while also being able to pick up fresh strawberries and bananas. When Dick’s Sporting Goods Store starts carrying produce, I’ll shop there instead. (more…)
