Ideas 3 Comments 
ceremonies, councils, girl led, songs, troop stuff, volunteers
Many moons ago, the Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council released something called KARAT Kards. What are KARAT Kards, you ask? KARAT stands for:
Keep
Adults
Returning
All the
Time!
Troop Leader Resources 5 Comments comics, gsusa, journeys, juniors, leader issues, printers, serenity now, stem, sylvia acevedo, UNOFFICIAL guides, vtk
This time last year I was up to my eyeballs in national governance and great excitement about the October 2017 G.I.R.L. National Convention! I have no idea how I juggled service unit and troop responsibilities for the new troop year on top of becoming a national delegate late in the game, how I prepped for the National Convention, and how I kept up with the blog discussion about membership dues. This year I’ve only (I say ONLY – ha ha!) had just troop and service unit responsibilities, and I’ve still been completely swamped along with my life outside of Girl Scouts going nuts. I’m squeezing this blog post in while I have a few moments to myself. Calgon, take me away!
But back to the World According to Girl Scouts. Summer before last, GSUSA released a set of three STEM Journeys for the Daisy, Brownie, and Junior levels called Think Like an Engineer, Think Like a Citizen Scientist, and Think Like a Programmer. The activities for these Journeys can only be found in the Volunteer Toolkit (aka VTK). The Cadette, Senior, and Ambassador levels each received their own set of three STEM Journeys this past summer. Continue reading
Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me 2 Comments gsusa, OFFICIAL scarf, swaps, uniforms
Today I came across the 2018 GSUSA catalog, and before opening it, I felt a disturbance in the Girl Scout Force. As if millions of navy blue uniforms suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened. And it has.
The Polka Dot OFFICIAL scarf has apparently been discontinued and is no longer available.
Continue reading
Traditional Stuff No Comments big boy mountain, camp wabak, city slickers, greenville sc, history, lois, old 96 council, outdoors, patches, upstate sc
It’s WaBak time again, y’all! Here’s an update with all sorts of WaBak tidbits!
If you haven’t seen the WaBak patch collection I’ve got going on, take a peek! I add new ones (or old ones!) when I run across them, so be sure to visit the page every now and then. I recently added the 2018 camp edition:
Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me No Comments
If you received an update that I had published a post about WaBak, just ignore it for now. I accidentally clicked Publish when I meant to click Save Draft. I knew I’d do that one of these days! Sorry about that!
Experiences as a Leader, National Operations 3 Comments gsusa, leader issues, pet peeves, printers, volunteers
On the heels of my last complaint report about how printing one of the Journeys found in VTK clear cuts forests in one fell swoop, a fellow leader from my council brought to my attention a random file that she found while searching for something else. It looks like a catalog published by GSUSA, and it’s called Girl Scout Essentials 2018-19.
She also pointed out that this catalog includes a resource that’s related to something I have been complaining about researching for a while now. In fact, one particular post from last December about my frustration with the lack of printer friendly resources has the most views of any post on this blog, so it’s definitely struck some kind of nerve with volunteers. It’s called Twelve Page Pet Peeve and it details how aggravated I get when I see something published by GSUSA that I want to print, but doing so would eat up an entire ink cartridge. But I try to be one of those people that brings something to the table if I criticize point out an issue, so I wrote a follow-up that includes a mock-up of a Brownie awards log so that someone – anyone – could see what I was talking about. Continue reading
Troop Leader Resources 7 Comments cadettes, farthest north council, gsusa, journeys, juniors, printers, stem, troop stuff, UNOFFICIAL guides, vtk
I’m beginning to get ready for the new troop year and so I’ve been browsing through the available programming that’s out there. As you probably already know, GSUSA released a slew of new badges and Journeys in July. So between what they released last summer and this year, I have a lot to go through. Admittedly the only thing we earned out of the new material last year was the Brownie’s Cabin Camper. Technically we started on the Cadette Outdoor Journey (made up of the Night Owl, Trailblazing, and Primitive Camper badges) by earning Trailblazing, so I guess that counts too. Continue reading
Experiences as a Leader, Ideas 1 Comment activities, brownies, cadettes, journeys, leader issues, leadership, llamas, multi-level troop, swaps, thinking day, troop 2562, troop stuff
I was thinking about this blog the other day, and I realized I should highlight my experiences as a troop leader more often. I’ve shared what we’ve done as a service unit with our annual summer camp in previous posts, but I should step back from the big picture on occasion and show what’s going on in my world at the troop level. I have to state for the record that this was best troop year I’ve experienced in my eight years as a leader. We had a smaller troop this year, but we more than made up for it with activities, service projects, meetings, and trips. I was very blessed to have a great set of co-leaders, parents, girls, and a very supportive service unit. I’m going to share a couple of the highlights from this past year in future blog posts. This one will feature the Peruvian Brownie Quest Journey LiA Weekend from this past January! Continue reading
Traditional Stuff 1 Comment camp wabak, greenville sc, history, outdoors, summer camp
In addition to random write-ups about Camp WaBak here and there through the years, I’ve been detailing its history in a series of posts. The first two were Camp WaBak’s Beginnings and Camp WaBak’s Opening. This one will discuss what camp life was like at its beginning!
A year after the successful inaugural summer of 1949, Camp WaBak expanded so that it could host 40 girls a week instead of only 30. In 1950, a May 18th article in The Greenville News noted camp improvements included an expanded staff area, an enlarged dining porch, new campfire areas for outdoor cooking, a paved road leading from the main road to the camp, and a bridge over Gap Creek. Continue reading
National Operations, Opinions 5 Comments councils, gsusa, leader issues, service unit, volunteers
You might remember a storm from this past winter named Grayson that caused quite a bit of concern. I live in South Carolina, so we weren’t really affected by it like they were up north. To be honest, I doubt I would have even paid much mind to all of the attention it was getting on the news. Except this wasn’t just any ole winter storm – it was a BOMB CYCLONE! I guess naming winter storms a la hurricanes wasn’t sensational enough, so we’ve got to come up with attention-grabbing terms like BOMB CYCLONES! Next thing you know, we’ll have SHARKNADOS!
A friend of mine and I were chatting during that time about the upcoming bomb cyclone. We both agreed that it would be an awesome name for a band. And a thrash metal one at that! So what does all of this have to do with the title of this blog post? Nothing really except I think Death Spiral would also be great thrash metal band name. Continue reading