Just out of the woods....

My Mother's Day was spent in the woods. My oldest daughter's Girl Scout troop wanted to camp and wouldn't you know that the ONLY weekend we could include ALL girls would be Mother's Day!! Not really my idea of a pampering experience, but I did want to take them camping and if this was the only way, then so be it.

The girls decided that since it was Mother's Day myself and my co-leads would "sleep in" while they all cooked us up a big breakfast. It was a good theory.

I woke up at 6 am, had to pee - I passed one of the girl tents and heard talking so I'm thinking this is good, I may get to eat before lunchtime!! I did my business and climbed back in the sleeping bag.

After an hour, I couldn't lay there any longer so I got out of the tent expecting to find a flurry of girls preparing food. NADA. Not a one of them were out of their tents! I grabbed a Diet Coke and set myself up to 'nap' in my hammock.

The girls finally got moving about 7:30, they spent about 45 minutes trying to get a fire going (perhaps we should re-visit the firebuilding technique?). I was getting LOTS of questions about what to do, so it ended up that the leaders did a lot of the cooking - the girls really were not ready for this big of a meal on their own (maybe in a kitchen, but not over a fire). They were also all really bickering A LOT about who got to do which station. Aye yi yi! So, I'd say that the whole Mother's Day breakfast was a bit of a bust. They also did a really crappy job at cleaning up after the meal! I wasn't in the mood to be a bitch about it (I'm usually the one to enforce the chores in the group) so I let it go - something I have NEVER done!! Hope I haven't ruined my reputation there! I did not do the cleaning though, I got back in my hammock. One of the other leaders who REALLY does not let the girls take lead cleaned up the whole shooting match. I think this is the WORST possible thing she could do for these kids, but like I said, I was not in the mood to be The Enforcer.

Though the breakfast didn't happen, the rest of the day was really good. The girls wrote a play and acted it all out for us. They worked on it all weekend and did a lot of practicing. It was actually a very clever play - one of the girls wrote the entire script (three scenes) and then she did all of the directing. It was very funny and the entire group worked together on it, and HAPPILY!! I was very proud of them for coming together - something we have had a lot of issue with. I can say that the one girl who causes a lot of strife had left early - I realized how much the group dynamic changed without her there.

I then introduced them all to Geocaching. They loved it! We went on a hunt for two cache boxes and were successful at finding both of them. Both of the boxes were filled with swag and they happily swapped some stuff and we found a Geocoin to boot. It turned out to be much more exciting for them than I ever imagined!

When I got home, Hunk made lasagna for my dinner and I dropped I was so exhausted from the trip. The girls wore me out!