Giving Girl Scouts Another Try

          Shortly after we moved, and I could sense that Jenna wouldn’t be going anywhere with her new school (where she finished kindergarten) I decided to enroll her in girl scouts.

          We’d been invited to attend a meeting for an introduction.  The theme was on culture with an added service project for the food bank.  Eleven booths were set up to represent various countries.  We sampled food from United States, China, France, Mexico, India, Scotland, Austrlia, France, England, South Africa and Switzerland

          Jenna enjoyed learning and making crafts such as origami mask and cutting out shapes for the Chinese puzzle.  She also enjoyed decorating boxes for the food bank. By the end of the night she was fired up.  She had earned her first patch and that was awesome!  That alone made her want to join.  A desire for more patches.

          At the end of the night, Roland and I signed her up to be in a troop – I thought it might give her more exposure to finding friends.  Only the leader of the troop we had signed up for had health issues and after only a couple of meetings and six cancellations (not having learned this until I had literally driven out of my way) we dropped our attempts to be included in the troop – which turned out to be okay – as Jenna still wasn’t comfortable with the girls in her assigned troop.  She felt like an outcast.

          I signed her up for activities as a Juliette but still used the troop number. After Tony returned home from his mission, he and Roland helped Jenna plant a tree.  Her second badge.  And it was fun.  She loved meeting new girls and climbing hills with them.

But when it came time to renew her membership, Jenna just didn’t seem interested anymore.  And because I had transferred schools, I was hoping to find a troop near where she goes to school.  But it didn’t work out for us.  So we went an entire year without girl scouts.  And last month she decided she’d like to start back up again.

And so last night we went to our first girl scouts activity for over a year.  Jenna made crafts for St. Patrick’s day: a badge, a hat (visor) a wand and a finger puppet.  She had a great time.  We learned a song and steps to an Irish dance.  In the end Jenna received another patch to add to her collection and a t-shirt advertising 100 years in girl scouts.