Investiture

We did our Girl Scout Investiture/Rededication & Bridging ceremony on Friday.

I got off on the wrong foot by not leaving the house soon enough. I decided that a last minute stop at Wally world was necessary to purchase some flowers to decorate with. We were only about 6 minutes later than we said we would be, but one family beat me there.

As luck would have it the lady who comes in to change the eternal candle showed up just as I did and I didn't really need my key to the Church as she let us all in! Oh well, saved me from fiddling with the door.

I needed to get the chairs set up
the candle lighting area set
the programs out
the girl's law/promise fans
and cook my pot luck dish

The room (a former sanctuary) was perfect for the occasion. We set an old altar table up on the old chancel, covered it with a green table cloth and put the candles up on it with some of the flowers (Daisies of course!) It looked really good.

One of the moms agreed to help me make my Mac & Cheese since I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. (reminder: next time get my ducks in a row so I can delegate more of this stuff!!!) She and her hubby had set up the chairs for me. And then I just needed to get the programs & fans out.

Then we waited for the bridge to arrive. See our service unit has a bridge that we can borrow for ceremonies. Well it arrived...oh my was I disappointed! I was expecting to see something pretty...you know, for a GIRL SCOUT ceremony. Instead we got something that resembled a bicycle jumping ramp! The sad thing is that last time we had a bridging we did use a bicycle jumping ramp...but since we knew this we covered it with cardboard and decorated it up nicely. This time we didn't know until it got there what we had. Luckily I had bought extra flowers at Wally World and we were able to decorate it a bit. Darly did an awesome job at putting the flowers on it!

Next we set up the Brownie pond...a mirror with some fabric around it to simulate water. I set the mirror beside the bridge to try to make it seem as if the water flowed under the bridge.

In the end it all looked okay. I think next time I'll look for a better bridge. Of course when I bridged (as a kid) we used an overturned kitchen chair! So I shouldn't really be grumbling about the bike ramp, huh?

So now it was time to eat! There were tons of Yummy foods to choose from. The kids mostly ate Mac & Cheese! The adults had lots of stuff to choose from. Goulash, Sweedish Meatballs, Lumpia, Chicken Pot Pie, Ham & Egg bake, brownies and Candy Bar pie. Yummmmm!

The ceremony started off with the Bridging as we wanted to have the girl be rededicated at her new level. Unfortunately she was a bit nervous being up in front of everyone. But it was really low key. She just crossed over the bridge and put on her new vest.

Then I read the Brownie Story to them and had the Brownies do the "Twist me and turn me and show me the Elf; I looked in the water and saw _________" So they all looked in the "water" to see themselves.

Now it was time for the Investiture/Rededication part. We have a multi-age troop with Daisies, Brownies & Juniors. There are 3 Daisies and the Girl Scout Promise has 3 parts so I thought it would be cute for the Daisies to light the Promise candle (a 3 wicked blue candle)...well only two of the Daisies showed up... and then we didn't have enough of the older girls to do all of the other candles. So I had one Daisy and her sister (a Brownie) help me to light the Promise candle. Then the other girls all took turns lighting a candle for each part of the Girl Scout Law. That all went really well. I think that only one girl got hot wax on her...and I still don't know how that happened. But many girls blew out the Law candles when trying to blow out their lighter candle.

After all the candles were lit, I invited all the girls up to blow them out (like a huge birthday cake.) But then I got smart and remembered that the parents might want some pictures. So I had them wait for a bit and let the parents snap as many pictures as they wanted. Then when the flashing died down I told the girls to blow out the candles! They enjoyed that.

Next it was time for the girls' presentations. They could get up in front of everyone and do anything they wanted. We had silly songs, serious songs, a story and some scripture. It was all very nice and everyone seemed to get over their stage fright very well.

Now it was time to clean up. Everyone chipped in and it all went very well. I think that we were all cleaned up and out of there in 20 minutes. Which was awesome! I was worried that I would be there for an hour after I heard all the stuff I had to do from the building manager. And he even left the lid to the dumpster open for me so I didn't have to walk all the way around to open it...YAY.

Oh and while we were cleaning up Darly got invited for a sleep over, so DH & I went out to dinner on Saturday night to a place that Darly hates. hee hee!

In other news: We got our first snow fall of the year last night/this morning...I don't know for sure...just that we woke up to snow. At first it didn't seem like it would stick to the roads, but by the time we got ready to leave for Church we had to shovel and when we came back, you couldn't tell we had shoveled. *sigh*
The sad part is that our trees weren't expecting this and all the brances are hanging down with snow. DH just shook off my apple tree (the one that produced over 14 dozen apples this year) and he says it's broken. My cherry tree was bent all the way over and touching the ground. boo hoo Hopefully they get ready for winter fast. I may go rip the leaves off my cherry tree (I did that last year and it was fine.)