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.

Pi day fun!

For the last few years, our family has celebrated pi day! Not sure what pi day is? Well pi is a mathematical symbol, and the first few numbers are 3.14 so we celebrate on march 14th.
We had shepherd's pie and a cherry pi pie for dinner.

And as I have mentioned many times before, we LOVE our local library. This year they hosted a fun pi day celebration as well. The kids ate pizza, chocolate cream pie, raspberry pie, listened to a funny story, made pi-kus (haikus about pie), and played the pie in the face game!

Halloween night

Life has been crazy busy in our house during the month of October, so we hadn't gotten around to carving pumpkins yet. With Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, it worked out perfectly for us to do it the afternoon of Halloween. So we turned on Nightmare Before Christmas, got out the carving tools, and got to work. The only problem was that all the stores were out of pumpkins, except these 3 "ornamental" pumpkins. Oh well, it gave them character!

We ended up with Pikachu, Jack Skellington, and a funny witch.

We then had a light snack, and got in our costumes. D had switched from Misty from Pokemon, to a much more weather appropriate Pikachu costume. The first 15 min of trick or treating was slightly rainy. The temps had dropped the night before, but were not too bad. We just made sure to wear layers, and grabbed umbrellas. Luckily the rain pretty much stopped until the last 10 minutes of trick or treating. We headed to the same neighborhood that we have gone too for the last few years. It really is the best, most of the houses are home and close together. Most years the neighborhood is packed, but this year it just didn't seem as busy. My kids were determined, and made it almost the entire 2 hours!

And of course as soon as we got home, while I was making the pizza, they both had to dump all the candy out and sort it. Both were excited that this was their biggest haul ever.

Halloween Party

The Friday evening before Halloween, my best friend and I decided to throw a kid Halloween Party. Things that week didn't go exactly how we had planned, but we all still had a great time! It ended up being rather chilly that night, but wasn't too bad until the sun went down.  We set up tables with the food: simple taco bar, nachos, jello brain, veggie tray, pretzels, apples and caramel, and of course cookies and cupcakes.

A quick game a catch/football before all the fun begins.

 

There was a table set out with rings, and tattoos for the kids to put on (with a small bowl holding a little water and damp paper towels to put them on with). We also had a jar filled with candy and a guessing game set up. Whoever got the closest kept the jar of candy. Funny enough, 1st and 2nd place were twins, so their family lucked out.

Our first big game was a minute to win it type game. We had the kids split into pairs. Each kid got a paper straw, a plastic cup, and a pile of mini marshmallows in front of them. Using only the straw to suck up the marshmallows, they had to see how many they could get in their cup in just 1 minute. Once the first group went, the second group had to try to beat their partner's score. We did have 1 team tie, so it was a head to head match. The kids happily ate the marshmallows while they counted.

Our 2nd big game was super fun! Since we had kids of a big range, we had the 4th graders and older line up, and then 3rd grades and younger line up. A parent held one end of a ribbon strung with glazed donuts, and the kids had to eat the donut without using hands. Many of the donuts fell to the ground, and were gobbled up by the kids regardless of if there was grass stuck to it or not.

And our last game was tons of fun! My friend had picked up 2 bales of hay, and we had been collecting bags of candy for a few weeks. We threw down 1 bake of hay, then topped it with all the candy and goodies, then spread the 2nd bale of hay over it, hiding all the candy. (All candy was wrapped of course). Each kid was given a paper lunch bag with their name on it. We let the kindergartners go first, we didn't want the big kids to accidentally hurt them. The kids had 1 minute to find as much candy they could and put it in their bags. Once the kindergartners went, we let the bigger kids go. We did have 2 littler ones that saw what the kids were doing and wanted to try too. So after the big kids minute was up, we let the littles have at it. They were so happy with just a few pieces (the big kids uncovered tons of candy making it even easier for the littles), that it didn't take long. We then let any kid that wanted to, back in to find all the rest of the candy that was left. Each kid went home with a handful of candy and a bag with cookies. I think it all went over pretty well!

Fall Beach Day

One weekend mid-October, we were heading back to my hometown for my nephew's 2nd birthday party. We were about half-way there when I got a text from my brother that he wasn't home from work yet, and to take our time. Well, quick thinking while I was driving got us off the toll road, and I headed up to the Lake Michigan Dunes area. The kids had not been to this part of the lake in some time now, and I had wonderful memories of going to this exact beach as a kid, so we headed there. When Adam and I used to live in Valpo, we would often head here to have a quick picnic dinner after work and just relax. Kemil Road Beach is one of my all time favorite beaches to go to. They have a parking lot just across the street from the beach, a clean bathroom, and stairs leading down. It is always the cleanest beach!

I figured our quick stop would be perfect for a bathroom break, a few pictures, and a chance to reconnect with the water. We ended up walking all the way down to the water because it was such an amazing day.

These two, I swear, are often times our own little mini-me companions! They are even standing just like Adam and I here!

D is getting really great at taking pictures of us with my phone. Thankfully now, we are able to have more of just the 2 of us again.

Everything was just amazing that day. The sky, the water, the sand, all the colors, and the warm sun!

Something that I have always felt a connection to, were the Chicago World's Fair houses that were moved to this beach. Growing up I sadly watch them mostly fall to disrepair. But a few years ago, they started to be rehabbed, and they look amazing. I even studied the history in college for a few years. I happily shared their history with the kids, who thought it was really neat, but mostly just humored me.

It was the perfect day for a quick stop.