Our Newest Girl Scout

Olivia joined the Girl Scouts!

Back in January, Olivia asked to join a local Girl Scout troop with a few neighbors and school friends. They meet every other Monday afternoon to have activities, earn patches, do service, and have fun together. Her leaders are so dedicated and they do an excellent job with these girls!

Of course being a Girl Scout means that Olivia gets to sell cookies! We've just barely finished Cookie Season and it was a huge success. Our troop sold about 1700 boxes. That sounds like A LOT of cookies to me! A couple Saturdays ago, we had the lovely opportunity to sell cookies at our local grocery store. It all sounded fun and sweet... until there happened to be a SNOWSTORM that day, and we suffered for 2 hours in miserable cold and wind. The store won't let Girl Scouts come inside (since we'd be competing for their cookie business) so we had to brave it out in the entry way. This photo doesn't nearly show how bad the weather was- the wind and snow were blowing directly into the doors- it was a real test of our dedication!

 I felt a little guilty when a few of my training clients and other gym members walked by and I was pushing cookie sales! It's ok, it's all for a good cause, right?

The following week we got to join the Girl Scouts for another activity at BYU- a gymnastic meet. All the Girl Scouts went in commemoration of the Girl Scout Birthday. We all got in for $1.00. I was really excited because I love gymnastics and I thought my kids would really have fun being there and seeing it all firsthand.

Here's Olivia with her friend, Anna

I couldn't have been more wrong! They barely sat for 5 minutes! All they did was run around the track and bleachers with their friends, and ask for goodies and soda. Argh! It felt like it went on forever. It didn't help that I wasn't feeling well and it was VERY loud in there. 

Here's Austin and his friend, Josh, showing their BYU spirit to Cosmo (the mascot) who was running by throwing t-shirts.

BYU competed against Arizona State and Boise State. BYU defeated both teams to take first place. Little did we know it was the last home meet, so we got to sit through another 30 minutes of slideshows and farewells to the seniors.  (By this time I was half asleep and dying to leave)

 I realized that we don't take our kids to enough BYU events. Here we are, just 30 minutes away from our alma mater, and we haven't tried very hard to show our school spirit. Actually, Jared has done a good job of involving Austin with BYU Rugby. The past few Saturdays Austin has been the "ball boy" at the games while Jared announces. I guess as the kids get older it will get easier. So, this time it didn't turn out the way I hoped, but it was a good experience anyway. I was glad that the Girl Scouts gave us a reason to go out as a family. Hopefully, there will be more family nights like this in the future... but maybe just a little more kid-friendly.