I know I talk alot about Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, but rest assured, I have a Girl Scout too! I used to be her leader but after a run in with a parent spreading lies about me( I still have no idea why) I quit and now I only help out. and Boy do I help out!
Twilight Camp. A week long camp held in the evening 5 nights a week with a campout/lock in for the Jr's and up on the last day.
Its a wonderful wonderful time, despite those mom's who are just plain cranky and try to ruin it. You know exactly what I am talking about. We all have at least one of those moms!
My job at camp is the MCL. That is the Mean Craft Lady. This was bestowed upon my by the PA's. I am not quite sure why they call me mean. Over the past 4 years Only one girl has ever cried under my tent. and yes, I did feel bad about it! Last year, they called me CCL, Crazy Craft Lady. That one I understood.
How did this happened to me, how did I become the CCL or MCL for a GS Twilight camp which averages near 300 girls each summer? I answered the phone. I bet there is at least one of you reading this that knows exactly what I mean. 4 years ago, my phone rang...I answered and next think I knew, I was a committee member and in charge of crafts!
Our meetings start in January for a June camp. And theres never enough time to get everything done. And trust me, GS's have the same problems with getting volunteers as BSA. Camp was almost canceled this year due to the lack of a chair person!
My job is to come up with the swaps and then one or two other crafts that they can do. We also do scrap book pages, but a good friend puts those together for us! (THANK YOU) Swaps are the hardest. This year our theme was Mystery. Each group was named accordingly.
Scooby do made scooby snacks
Goosebumps made ghosts
Blues Clues (PA's) made little paw prints on paper
etc etc
there were 11 groups total..each member of each group makes 10 swaps. this year we only had about 200 girls, so that was 2000 swap!
So with scooby, each girl received a zip loc with 10 pieces of clay and 10 pins. (they were the youngest group) as the girls get older, their swaps get more complicated. The pink panthers made pink panther faces, so they had bags with 10 pink pieces of foam. they had to cut out the pre draw shape then color it and add eyes and pins.
Can I just say that crafts takes over my house in April and doesn't leave until the day after camp! That would be today! Its insane and annoying and frustrating and I dream about crafts, about miscounting or forgetting something at home etc etc, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Ok, maybe some days I would, some days I stop my feet and say 'I will never do this again' but every year in January we have our first meeting and there I am.
On top of being the craft lady, I am the only one with a trailer...so, I get 7-8 coolers that I prepare with koolaid and water, the two giant wagons and the giant ice cooler. oh and this year two fire pits, first aid, and a giant box of swim noodles, and more things that I can even think of right now.
its exhausting!!! I do 99% of the crafts myself, that is putting them all together. most of the crafts have pins pre hot glued to them. They have to due to lack of electricity at the sites and time constraints. I can tell you that before I discovered low temp hot glue guns, there was a lot of cussing in my house as I did this!
This year was a new experiment. The older girls made borax goo! I actually dreamt about this one! It didn't quite turn out perfect, but the girls thought it was disgusting so it must have worked out ok!
The last night we did a lock in instead of a campout. I HATE LOCKINS! I like sleep. I need sleep, I am getting to old to go without sleep! I stayed up with most of the other adults and way to many girls, all night. Its not fair for the camp director to do it herself! I made my daughter to lay down around 3am as she was a walking zombie. Most of the other girls did pretty good. We had one medical/exhaustion/kickball to the stomach around 4am? enough that we had to write up a medical. and we had one temper tantrum at 6am but it was not a surprise and I have known this child since forever, so I just kicked her butt so to speak :)
Wow, I'm rambling...well, I did come home and sleep for a couple of hours, but I am looking forward to bed time!
Overall, it was a wonderful time..200 girls plus parents, some whom we would have rather not volunteered, a monster storm that shut us down 1 hour into camp on Tuesday, cold and rainy the rest of the week, one anxiety attack, one exhaustion attack, one twisted ankle, one blood sugar issue(I'm fine now, a midnight run to Taco bell fixed that) I have cleaned out my house, taking everything back to storage...and am already looking forward to next year...I think I have a theme idea suggested by my daughter already!
Oh..one more thing...if you dont like something VOLUNTEER!!
