Eclipses, Patches, and Swaps (Oh My)

So who caught the total solar eclipse a few weeks ago?  I was lucky enough to live in the totality area, and we also had completely clear skies for it.  I had been looking forward to this event for a year and a half, and it completely lived up to the hype and then some!  My youngest daughter and I went to a leader friend’s house with her two girls and watched it there complete with a pinhole camera, solar glasses, white poster paper (to see the shadow bands), and even a recording of Total Eclipse of the Heart to play during the totality!  We all screamed when it hit 100% like it was a big rock star!  And it was! 

And during this same time, my oldest daughter participated in our council’s first ever Destination called Eyes to the Sky!  She had a great time and talked about it the entire way home from Camp WaBak.   From all accounts, it was a great success!  It was filled with visits to the Challenger Learning Center and the SC State Museum and Observatory in Columbia, SC and meetings with women in NASA – just to name a few of the activities.  They viewed the total eclipse up at WaBak.  Apparently there were cloudy skies up there leading up to a lot of it, but the clouds parted just as the totality hit!

If you know me, you know I’m a big patch fan.  Here’s the Destination’s AWESOME patch!

Each girl was instructed to make 100 swaps to take to the Destination.  I questioned the number, especially considering only 48 girls would be in attendance, but I was reassured that she should make 100.  So Katie and I got to work making 100 of these star swaps:

She made the star body, and I glued on 200 eyes using a toothpick and Locktite glue.  Fun.  We both stuck the tags on the safety pin.  But we knocked out 100 of these suckers.  And then… she came home with 40 of them.  Yep.  So they will be coming with me to the upcoming convention for swap time and to our leader weekend called Mountain Magic this November.

Speaking of swaps, the NorCal council puts out an excellent newsletter and blog called The Trailhead which features all sorts of advice and ideas.  It’s a great resource and you don’t have to be a member of their council to receive email updates.  So yesterday afternoon, the latest article called SWAPS Inspiration: Girl Scout Convention Edition showed up in my inbox.  I opened up the email and followed the link to the article itself, and as I read along, I came across this:

What!  Et tu, NorCal?  Well… if someone else also decides to create an OFFICIAL scarf swap, it will not be THE OFFICIAL Scarf swap as shown in this post from June and this one from a few weeks ago.  I can’t call it an OFFICIAL OFFICIAL Scarf swap because that would insinuate that it was approved by GSUSA.  So if you run across an OFFICIAL Scarf swap made by someone other than me, then it will be thereby be denoted as AN OFFICIAL Scarf swap whereas mine is THE OFFICIAL Scarf swap.

Speaking of THE OFFICIAL Scarf swap, someone in the Convention Chat Facebook group suggested bringing 300 swaps.  300!?!?!  I will be lucky to make 100 of THE OFFICIAL Scarf swaps because they are extremely time-intensive to make.  So if you are coming to the convention and want one of THE OFFICIAL Scarf swaps, you had better bring your best swap forward ’cause they ain’t gonna be traded for just any ‘ole swap.  I will have some others featuring the OFFICIAL Scarf cat comic and the star one from above.  Maybe even some featuring the Blue Book!  I’ll save a few of those for the members of the National Board.  😉

Addendum 9/7/17:  There seem to be certain councils that I keep having encounters with on my blog and the NorCal council has become one of them.  Between this post, the multi-level troop reference, the llama patch program our troop earned back in 2015, and the sweatshirt I ordered from them, they’ve now earned their own tag on this blog!   I’m sure they are thrilled to know I now have a connection with them (even if it’s only in my mind).