Spring Break 2016

Our spring break this year had horrible weather sadly, so we had to alter our plans. We spent every weekday of break with our best friends.

Monday: Learn how to Geocache! If you haven't given this a shot, I highly suggest you do! While using GPS coordinates you find little hidden treasures. The kids had a blast and we ended up finding 7 around town.

Tuesday: Imagination Station in Toledo Ohio!

Wednesday: Bowling!!!! Our local place was running a special. For $25 6 people got shoes, 2 hours of bowling, a large pizza, and a pitcher of lemonade.

We then made a frozen yogurt stop at the local Sweet Frog!

Then our last stop for the day, the local library! They set up a bunch of life size games to play. We loved playing kerplunk and Candy Land.

Thursday: Curious Kid's Museum in St. Joe Michigan

Friday: The AG days fair! Our local 4h likes to put on a fair where kids can come and meet the animals and farms for free. We have gone every year since L was in kindergarten.

Sugar Camp Days 2016

I'm not sure how this didn't get posted a month ago, but here it goes.

We really enjoyed going to the Sugar Camp Days last year, and when I won a free pass from the local radio station, we needed to go again!

We always love seeing what sculptures they make out of ice.

And of course D wanted to take a ride on the horse drawn wagon, she even got the top spot up by the driver.

The guys opted to walk along side the wagon.

Got to check out how the pioneers gathered the maple sap to turn into maple syrup.

My intrepid tree climbers.

L was super nervous to do this again, but braved it anyway and got higher this year than last.

D stopped halfway up to have a good swing before climbing all the rest of the way up.

We then headed in for crafts and some maple cotton candy, the best!

2016 World Thinking Day for Brownies

In Girl Scouts we all celebrate World Thinking Day on Feb. 22 every year. This is a way that Girl Scouts/Guides all over the world can feel connected. With this being our troops first year, we decided to skip our council's awesome party to celebrate, and opted to have a smaller party with just our Brownies. A few weeks prior we had the girls vote on 3 countries to learn about, and they picked Mexico, Ireland, and Germany. So I printed out these great little passport pages about each country for each girl, found neat rainbow books in the Dollar Spot at Target, planned a craft/activity for each, and had a food from each country.

We started our journey on the globe and headed to Ireland!

The passport in the rainbow book.

The girls made shamrock wands by gluing a foam glittery shamrock from the dollar store to a green colored popsicle stick. To snack on, I found these malted candies, and an Irish cheese for the girls to try.

Next stop was Mexico! The girls made maracas out of plastic Easter eggs, rice, and 2 plastic spoons duct taped to the sides of the egg. Clearly all the girls had a blast making music when they were done.  They tried Arcoiris cookies and all loved it!

And our last stop was Germany!

The girls tried this fun German Chocolate bar.

I made each girl a German Schultüte, a traditional first day of school treat filled with new school supplies. 

The girls all had so much fun that they asked if I could do 1 country per month for the rest of the year.

St. Patrick's day festivities!

Every year we have lots of fun celebrating St. Patrick's Day! We have friends come over, have a few big meals, and visit a local pub. I started this year by making a fun wreath for the front door.

My "Irish Twins" dressed and ready for school. I know that it doesn't look like L is happy, but he is in this "I don't smile for pictures anymore phase".

To decorate I also crocheted a bunch of shamrocks for us to wear, and then I made a garland with rainbow colored shamrocks. Lots of fun, and super easy to do.

Our traditional breakfast we make for friends: soda bread, thick cut bacon, scotch eggs, baked beans, fried tomatoes, fried potatoes, and a big mug of coffee.

At the pub, after we were interviewed for the news. My fish and chips came right after we took the picture!

And then our traditional dinner: slow cooked corned beef, fried cabbage, soda bread, potatoes, carrots, and onion, and of course green pop for the kids!

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Brownie Kindness Project

We had read about a kindness project that took place at a local middle school. Schmucker Middle School had worked on notes of kindness and hid them in lockers to surprise the kids the next day.

My co-leader and I thought this would be a great project for our Brownies. This is our first year having a Girl Scout troop at our school, consisting of 3 kindergarten Daisies, 2 second grade Brownies, and 5 third grade Brownies. We have a small school of only 130 students, so we had the Brownies write a nice note for each and every student in the whole school. The girls had fun doing this month and a half long project, and were finally able to place the notes on students tables during last week's meeting.

I was able to come in and visit in the morning when all the students were discovering the notes left for them. There seemed to be smiles all around, and made that Wednesday just that much brighter.