Here are some pics from camping this last weekend. I bunked with 21 Girl Scouts from kindergarten to 6th grade. All my 10 were 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades. The girls made God's Eyes, finger knitted, completed 4 or 5 badges, took a night hike, "made" a fire then ate it, roasted hot dogs, made s'mores (in the toaster oven, it was raining and we didn't have any dry wood left), danced, partied, made all their own food, cleaned their own messes, and just had a wild time. We got home on Sunday and the girls were bugging me to take them out to sell cookies. Sometimes we sit at home with nothing to do but have a good time relaxing. Other times we are so busy I can barely keep up.

One of the reasons I really wanted to go camping this weekend with the other troop that invited us is so I could be prepared for camping with just my troop next fall. Some of the things I learned... small groups get more done. We spent so much time preparing food, cooking the food, setting it up, lining the girls up buffet style, getting the food, eating, lining up to clean the plates, then cleaning the kitchen after every meal. It took easily 1-1/2 to 2 hours for this process for every meal. This was just a matter of numbers. It took so long with so many girls. Antoher thing I learned is how important it is to have order. The girls stuff was just everywhere. Even I came home with clothes that didn't belong to my kids somehow. I want to impliment a plan for keeping their things in order so we don't have chaos this summer at TAC camp or this fall camping with just our troop. The girls (mine included) are so used to getting dressed and leaving their clothes on the bathroom floor, dropping their jackets on the floor when they walk in the house, leaving their toys everywhere. I will work on that. That might take a couple camping trips to get into gear. Also I started a list of things I need to bring like rope to hang the mess kits, and clothes pins, laundry bags, dish towels, etc. And lastly I have to come prepared and organized. I was just not organized this weekend. There was no set thing they were going to do at a certain time, so when I didn't have activities going on or I was putting an activity together I had 21 girls running wild. And things like when we made omlets, if we had the bacon cooked ahead of time we could have saved ourselves so much time. I need to plan for that. And last, I think if I am going to take the girls camping ourselves like a troop, 10 girls will be the limit for my troops.
That said, the girls had so much fun. We all met tons of new friends. We had the most wonderful hosts that invited us along on their trip. Big thank you to them. They worked really hard to make this trip a success, and I am able to bring so many ideas home from what they taught me. So a HUGE thanks to THAT troop and their leaders for the opportunity to learn from women who have put in so much time into making their troop's experience great (and ours too.)