How has it been almost a year already?

Where has the time gone? It was almost a year ago the last time I posted, and boy has so much happened in that year.

L had his last 2 camp outs as a Cub Scout, D transitioned to a Junior scout, we celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary, Adam was in an accident where it was him on a bicycle versus a car (I would say he won, because he had minimal injuries considering he was hit by a car), I had a road trip to Michigan for a girl's weekend where our car decided the transmission was done, the kids and I took our first flights in an airplane (mine to San Diego with my best friend), the kids and I took a 10 day trip to Maui to visit my mom and her husband, Adam had to have hand surgery to correct damage done from the accident, I took another road trip to Ohio to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday, we had to buy a new car, school started again (4th and 5th grades), many many afterschool programs, I started to work at the school, science fair projects, Girl Scout cookie season, Circle the State with song choir, pinewood derby, and so much more!!!!

Here are a few pictures from the past year. I hope to be better about posts this next year.

L running in the Running is Elementary Race

May the 4th celebration at the library

 

Mother's day winery hopping

My first ever flight, with my best friends to San Diego

D's 9th birthday party

L's 10th birthday party

Scout night with the South Bend Cubs

12th wedding anniversary

D dressed as Hermione at a Potter library event

My girls weekend in Michigan

Kids first ever flight, 10 days in Maui

On top of the volcano

 A shark sighting at the beach

First day of 4th and 5th grade

Seeing Ruth Bader Ginsberg talk at ND

I was able to meet the wonderful author, Jen Lancaster, at a local event.

D had Girl Scout archery camp

It was a very Potter Halloween this year for our family.

We took our annual Christmas trip to Chicago.

We both got to go on the annual 4th and 5th grade ski field trip.

L's science fair project.

L won 3rd place in the entire pack for Pinewood Derby this year. 

D was able to sing in a multi-school choir

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.

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.