2/28/15 Weekend

This weekend is a desperately needed relaxing one. Friday night, Paige had a birthday party so a couple of us moms decided to go out for a little while to unwind a bit. I was only out for a couple of hours, but I felt human again! It was just what I needed. 

Today, Paige had another birthday party to go to. My best friend was taking her son to the same party so she took Paige too. I stayed home and had all the best intentions to get things done - but of course, I did not. The couch was too comfy. I will just have to do all of those things tomorrow :) 

Tomorrow, we were going to work a cookie booth but opted not to as we will be doing those for the next couple of weeks. Instead, we are going to head over to Mom and Dad's so that Abe and Paige can work on the pinewood derby car for the race that is happening on March 7th. Paige had a great time at that last year and even won a trophy so I know she has high hopes again this year. While Abe is using the power tools, Paige and I may take a walk around the neighborhood to see if anyone wants some girl scout cookies :) 

I hope that all of you are doing well and keeping warm in this nasty winter we've all had! 

*All She Wants To Do Is Dance*

Well, that is not entirely true, but she loves it just as much as she loves gymnastics. She currently does a class called "Kiddance." It focuses on both ballet and jazz. She is not old enough to be in a graded technique class, which is totally fine. She is loving this. Every month, during the last week of the month, parents are invited to come in and watch the very last 10 minutes. Parents are a HUGE distraction, so our only viewing opportunity is typically through gauzy yellow curtains that you can't really see through. Everyone always looks forward to these days because we get to actually see what our kids are up to! 

They changed things up for us this last week. Parents could participate! It was so much fun! Then, for the last 10 minutes, we were able to watch while all of the dancers showed us a little bit of the dance they will be performing for the spring recital in May. It was a lot of fun! 

Level 2!

We are so incredibly proud of Paige and the strides she has made as a gymnast. We signed her up in September after months and months of her begging. She had done a couple months of tumbling when she was 3, but that was the extent of her "training." Within weeks, she had caught on so quickly that her instructor suggested competition. We were hesitant because we didn't want this fun activity to turn into something she stressed about. We talked to her about it. We watched some videos on youtube of gymnastics competitions...she loved it and wanted to do it. So, we signed her up. She is an official competition gymnast. She's an active athlete in the AAU and everything! Pretty serious business for a 6 year old it would seem! 

So, let's fast forward 5 months. She is nailing her Level 1 skills. Her routines are still a little wobbly, but the skill is definitely there. Well, at practice this past Tuesday, she was on the bars and did a back hip circle all by herself. I won't attempt to explain it but suffice it to say that for a 6 year old, it's pretty awesome. It takes a lot of strength to complete it. She got it! 

She ran over to me with this excited look on her face and she said "Miss Savannah wanted me to tell you that I can go to Level 2 now!" Of course, I was super proud. She's been working so hard on the bar and she did it all by herself with just a spotter keeping an eye on her. As of that very night, she became a Level 2 gymnast. I completed the paperwork and voila! Her practices are the same nights (Tuesday) but they are 30 minutes longer. They also start at 4pm and go to 6 vs starting at 6 and going until 7:30. Those were late nights for her and I'm glad that those are done. 

She is very excited to start on this new journey. Her routines will get a little harder and she'll have to practice harder too but she's so looking forward to it. We went to open gym this morning and she surprised me by doing a back bend into a backward bridge. Before I know it, she'll be doing kick overs and then flips! 

World Thinking Day 2015

World Thinking Day was on Sunday, Feb 22nd. It is an event in which girl led groups from around the world learn about and celebrate countries from all over the world. Each year, troops choose a specific country and then set out on a mission to learn all there is to learn about it, and prepare to teach everyone else about that country. Each family prepares dishes related to the country their daughter's troop chose which then creates a really nice international potluck. 

This year, our girls chose Madagascar. As 1st grade Daisies, they have had a lot of focus on animals as part of their Journey this year. Madagascar fit in really well with this! They did a dance and had a lot of fun. Paige had been sick for the meeting that week so she didn'thave to opportunity to try and learn the dance they did, but she tried her best! They were able to sample foods from all around the world. We have some really great cooks in our area!  Part of attending was bring school supplies to donate. All donations, and there were a TON of them, went to support Youth Action Without Borders and specifically Dakar, Senegal. 

2/21/15 Flip For A Hero Meet

Paige had another gymnastics meet! She didn't really appear to be on her game at first, but I think she was tired. She ended up taking 2nd place on Beam and her Level 1 group took the 3rd place team trophy! She was so excited to have her hands on this big trophy! 

This particular meet is a charity fundraiser. All of the proceeds went to local emergency responder groups like the fire department, first responders, police, etc. 

My parents came up to watch the meet with us and they brought a surprise! They brought our nephew Tayden with them. Paige was SO excited to see him! It's becoming a regular thing to go out to breakfast/lunch when Mom and Dad come up so that's where we headed after the meet was over. The diner was pretty crowded so the adults sat in a booth while Paige and Tayden sat across the aisle from us at the counter. They loved it :) 

Ahhhh!!

Let me just say....I really underestimated the stress that comes along with being a "cookie mom." HOLY MACKEREL! Between that and both of us starting new jobs...in addition to everything else we normally have going on, it has been nothing short of crazy around here. Busy is good though - keeps us out of trouble :) 

Our first booth was at our local grocery store. It ended up being really fun! The girls were really well behaved and the employees even commented on it. That's always a great feeling! 

The night of the 20th, we had another booth at the Shopko in Onalaska. It has originally been scheduled at Wal-Mart, but they have a policy that doesn't allow the girls to sell cookies within the building...even in between the doors where the carts are. It was uh....REALLY cold that day and because of Wal-Marts seemingly unbendable policy, we cancelled with them and went to another store that was very happy to have us inside. Not just inside the doors, but actually inside the store next to the pharmacy. The traffic walking past was great and it has been our best booth to date. We definitely plan on doing more there! 

Cookie Sales Are On!

Cookie season has official kicked off as of the 13th. If you would like any cookies, please let us know. We will ship or deliver them! The kinds we have available are: 

Thin Mints

Carmel DeLites (Samoas)

Peanut Butter Patties (Tagalogs) 

Peanut Butter Sandwich (Do-Si-Dos) 

Cranberry Citrus Crisp - healthiest by far. Whole wheat and cranberries

Lemonades (Shortbread w/ a lemon icing)

Shortbread (Trefoils)

Thanks A Lots (Shortbread w/ chocolate layer) 

We also have a gluten free option this year, but in my opinion, they are not very good. I wish they had stuck with the ones from last year. Those were amazing! 

Boxes are $3.75 each! Please don't feel obligated to purchase any, but if you are interested, we will happily oblige :) 

2/10/15

The 10th was cookie delivery day. Not just to our troop, but to our entire service unit. Our service unit ordered about 3000 more boxes of cookies initially than they did last year. So, we hauled and stacked about 15000 boxes. They come in cases so this is equal to 1,250 cases of cookies! It was crazy! I assisted with this from 10:30 to 5 pm. I was ready for bed by the time I was done. Of course, blizzard like conditions had set in by that point so my typical 10 minute drive home from Trempealeau to Galesville was nearly 40 minutes. Figures, right! 

The first picture is of all the cookies stacked and organized by kind. The 2nd picture is of the cookies for our troop. Between booth sales and 14 girls participating, we ordered 309 cases of cookies! Do you need any cookies? :) 

2/8/15

 This particular Sunday was busy, busy! Paige attended a birthday party at the Best Western Hotel...they have a fun little water park inside. That was from 1-4, but we had to leave at 3 because there was a father/daughter bowling even that our Girl Scout troop hosted. The last time she had been at that pool was when Russ, Heather, Luke, and Jenna came to visit. That was in 2010. I found a picture of her coming off the slide. Surreal to see her on that same slide and be SO much bigger! 

She had just turned 2 the month before in this picture :)


The girls had a lot of fun! The girl's aunt was more than willing to take turns with all of these girls going down the big slide with them. The slide empties out into a 3 ft 8 inch deep area. Just a little to deep for Paige to feel comfortable navigating on her own, so she was especially thrilled with this!

Next up was the father/daughter bowling event put on by our Daisy Troop. It was a huge success! Abe and Paige had a lot of fun. 

2/6/15

As part of the cookie season, our local Girl Scout service unit always puts on an event to get the girls and parents excited about cooke time. There are always lots of fun games and they usually make something that they can use throughout cookie sales to assist them. Last year, they decorated clip boards, this year, they made lanyards that the girls can wear. They list the kinds of cookies, and a list of prices for various amounts of boxes. Since they are just 1st graders, these really help them be more independent in a sale. Granted, they are not allowed to handle money, but they are able to accurately tell someone how much x amount of boxes would cost them and that is a great start! 

2/5/15

On the 5th, we found out that Abe got the job that he was really hoping for. He is now a locate technician for USIC which is United States Infrastructure Corporation. He will be locating utilities prior to any digging on sites. So, when you call Digger's Hotline, it is a company like that that is called out to mark out the utility lines. He's liking it so far. It has been very informative, so much so that he's needed to study every single night for the tests that are given on a daily basis. He's passed them with flying colors though so I'm sure he will do his job incredibly well. He's one week down. He gets his company vehicle tomorrow. I am loving the idea of not having to pay for gas in a vehicle that is driven all over the place on a daily basis! 

We celebrated by having a quiet night at home. Those are few and far between. We watched a movie and played go fish. 

2/2/15

Sunday came with a visit from Grammy and Grandpa. We put on a  movie and hung out for a couple of hours. 

Afterwards, we watched the Super Bowl. Of course. Go Patriots! It pains me to say that but ya know what? I will never root for the Seahawks. Ever. EVER. 

Nothing much has happened so far this week. We did have a Dr. appt for Paige on Monday afternoon. For the first time ever, we took her out of school early, by only an hour. She thought that was pretty neat. We took her in for some lung function tests to determine whether or not she actually has asthma. It has been a question for several years but she was never old enough to do it. There is no set age, but it definitely requires effort so having the discipline to do it is key...otherwise it's pointless to do. 

There was an image of a birthday cake with candles on the computer. Paige had to blow into this tube and blow out all of the candles in ONE breath. She had to do it 3 times for the first part of testing. It took her 13 times to get the minimum 3. Then, they gave her a single dose of albuterol and had her wait 15 minutes. After that, she needed to do the test again, with 3 more successful attempts. She did all 3 consecutively after that. 

I got a call about the results today and her lung function was normal, per the pulmonologist who read the results. That doesn't mean a whole lot though to us because she only has issues when she is exercising, and the dr had guessed that this might happen. So, based on symptoms alone, she came home with 2 albuterol inhalers. One for home and one for school. She will use the one at school 15 minutes before her 1st recess in the morning and then again, 15 minutes before, on the days that she has PE in the afternoon. 

Paige has noticed a big improvement already in the last couple of days. Now we are discussing whether or not she needs Flovent (a steroid) to take morning and night. The albuterol is a rescue inhaler and isn't meant for constant use. It is possible that the Flovent could help reduce the use of albuterol. I am to get back in touch with her doctor on Friday to discuss this more. While I'm not happy about this diagnosis, I am happy that she can get help and not have to quit the activities she loves so much. 

I hope you are all having a nice week! 

Saturday Fun

Before the STEM Soup program, Mom & Dad came up to Galesville and we went out for breakfast at the little cafe up the street. They came for the first time about a month ago and really liked it. After the STEM Soup program, we stopped at home quick and grabbed a few things before heading over to my friend Nicole's house. Her daughter is Melanie, one of Paige's best friends. Nicole is president of the PTO that I'm secretary for and she is also my assistant cookie coordinator for our Girl Scout troop. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time together. 

A few of us decided that we should make some table cloths for the upcoming booth sales. So, Nicole and Amanda went shopping for the fabric on Friday evening while we were at gymnastics with Paige. They picked to some awesome fabric! So, we all met up at Nicole's house last night for some pizza, wine, and sewing. It was a lot of fun. I was able to snap a few cute picture of the kids. I love that they get along so well. 

The final product is a surprise so I can't post that yet, but rest assured that it is awesomely bright and fun, just like our girls!  We will be submitting a picture of our first cookie booth to a contest that our Girl Scout council is putting on. The booth that gets the most "likes' on Facebook (I think that's how it works) wins $500 for their troop. So, we thought we would give it a shot. We were there pretty late and so Nicole invited Paige to sleep over, which she did. She stayed up pretty late last night and woke up even earlier this morning - about 30 minute before she normally gets up for school. This afternoon should be interesting! It's a super snowy and cold day so lots of rest for her, and us :) 

STEM Soup 1/31/15

We went to our local Girl Scout Camp yesterday for a program called STEM Soup. STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The goal of this program is to get girls interested in typically male dominated subjects. 

The camp is about 25 miles away and we carpooled with friends. In the pictures is Melanie, Tori, and Paige. They are best friends! 

Their first project was to make a volcano. That was their favorite part! 

Their next stop was to make Oobleck. This one would have been really cool but they had ran out of ingredients by the time our girls got there, so they ended up just playing in sloppy water. 

Next up was Math. They used M&Ms to do the project. Of course, they loved this because they got to eat them afterwards. 

Next was a trip around our solar system. There were individual stations with beads and the end result was a neat necklace. It started out with a yellow bead for the sun, then black for space, then mercury, space, venus, space, earth, space, mars, space....etc. The girls really liked that too. At each station for a planet, there was a lesson that they learned. Funny thing - they learned all about Pluto, the dwarf planet. They thought it was crazy that when I was a kid, Pluto was the 9th planet. 

Finally, it was time for some engineering. The girls were set up at tables with lots of dry spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. Their goal was to make the tallest building the could. That got interesting because they were paired with 3 3rd grade brownies and they were a bit pushy. There just wasn't enough room for 8 girls to be working on this project together, especially hard for the little ones as they couldn't really reach into the center of the table very well. Out of all of them, this is the one they liked the least. I think that had we been able to do that project with just our girls, it would have gone much better. 

Overall, the program was great. There were a few hiccups that hopefully they work out prior to the next one, but this is something I can see Paige wanting to do again.