Cookie Rally

Yesterday was the Cookie Kickoff for Girl Scouts. I happen to be in charge of it, again. We start selling cookies next Saturday (Jan. 17). To rev up the girls and help them learn about the cookies, we hold a rally. As usual the girls took home a bunch of paper products. They made ribbons for a cause, thought of ways they could package cookies to sell more, tasted cookies (including the new one Dulce de Leché), sang a song about the safety rules, set a goal for what incentive they planned to work toward, and listed ways they could donate. This year's theme is "Imagine If …" and philanthropy is a strong part of the cookie program.

I had four of my girls at the rally. Deirdre worked with a Senior PA (Program Aide) to help her earn her hours toward becoming a Junior PA. Girls who have finished sixth grade or are 12 can become Junior PA's. These girls are a big help to running events. It also helps the girls to learn how to deal with younger girls. Some groups need a lot of help and others don't. This was D's first event as a PA.

Malynn Christensen, Sarah Jacobson, and Samantha Olsen pose with Gayle Jensen, our SU treasurer, after making the cookie chains for booth decoration. D came up with the station title "Imagine If … you could chain-ge the world". Gayle was going to retire from GS after this year, but Uleda talked her out of it. With Lynette, our current SUD, leaving as of this week, I am now SUD and I barely know what I am doing. I know for a fact that I can't or won't put the time into being SUD that Lynette has. I just can't.

As you can see from this picture D spent most of the time alone as a PA. Amanda is a junior in high school and this was her last event as a PA. D said that she (D, not Amanda) found being a PA pretty boring. She flat out refuses to be a PA at day camp. It's okay, she has to have even more training to do that. But in a few years she might not want to go around doing things at day camp; we'll see when she's 14/15.

Here is Uleda Westland, our Girl Services Volunteer (basically a liason between the Utah GS Council and the local Service Units), taking a picture of D being a PA. Also pictured are Malynn, Sarah, and Samantha. The other three girls are from Marysvale. The troop down there brought 12 girls to our rally because they didn't have one in the Fishlake Service Unit.

This is Malynn, Sarah, and Samantha making their elephants. After tracing their fist and coloring the resulting elephant, each girl decided what she wanted to work toward in cookies sales.

Here all four of the girls with their paper chain that Sam, Sarah, and Malynn made. They are standing on the stage after the rally had ended.

Of course we have to have a silly picture to go with a "nice" one.

FYI:Because of school starting, I will probably only post once a week on Saturday or Sunday.

The new "sitting" room is drywalled.

This is the from the new room into our living room. This end of the room used to be D's room.
This will be the door to the bathroom. Right now, since the sink is still on the other side of the wall and to give D some privacy, the bathroom side drywall is still in place. This picture and the one below used to be our sitting room, where the TV was.
Behind the cabinet is the other window. This is the south/west area. All the leftover drywall is stacked here. The cabinet used to be our linen cabinet. It is solid birch and extremely heavy. We haven't figured out where to put it yet.

We spent three days hanging 20 sheets of drywall. I'm exhausted and now have to go back to work tomorrow. It's pretty amazing how fast the drywall is up though. We haven't even ordered flooring yet. Plus, there's the taping and mud to do. The new sitting room is a ways off still. Probably because I didn't grow up with a television in my house until I was 13, I just have a problem with having a "TV room". I enjoy just being able to go and sit and read in a room that has a door. So even though a lot of television viewing will be done in this room, it will still be called a sitting room.

The latest on the remodel

This is where we started today. Insulation, 2 x 4's, and electrical. First we did the closet. Closets are a pain, because they have all of the same amount of work, but no space to work in.


Here is Jeff nailing the bottom on the west side of the closet.







This is the top piece on the inside. This was a challenge to get into place, but we finally got it all figured out. It's been a long time since we hung drywall. In this picture you can also see the front and closet doors in the entry area. The wall the front door is on won't be drywalled for awhile. We are getting a new front door and will install all the drywall for that wall at the same time.

And here is where we finished for today. The entire north wall is finished. I have two pictures so you can see the jog the wall makes. The jog allows for trim around the window. We have a few places now that have no space for trim and the paint job is awful, because of the small area. Besides the trim, we are putting wainscoting on the bottom part and wanted enough of it to show in the corner as well.
Tomorrow we are hanging the window (west) wall and the south wall. Both are pretty straight shots. It's the east wall that has a bunch of cut outs and doors.