It's coming up Daisies!

Subtitle: My niece joins a long line of Girl Scouts!

Yesterday I get a text message from my sister: Invocation @ school @ 7pm. Come. Dinner after.

I was visiting with my Engineer Friend (the one who went on a cruise instead of Mexico). When I read this message, I get a big goofy grin on my face and he asks what's up.

So I tell him. My niece is in Daisies now and that the Invocation (read Dedication or the like) ceremony was going to be that night. I then have to explain how her mother and I met.

Both of us have been involved in Girl Scouts since the first grade. Both of us have been very involved in council sponsored trips and the like.

In our freshman year of high school, Kat took a trip to Mexico through council to Our Cabana. One of my friends from my troop also went. Apparently the entire trip, all she could do was talk to Kat about me. When she got back from Mexico, all my friend could do was tell me about this cool girl named Kat.

As it turns out, we were both going to a council sponsored trip to Space Academy down in Huntsville, AL. There were some pre-trip meetings, but neither of us ever made the same ones. (We lived at opposite ends of the council at that time.)

Well, the day of the trip finally came. I was soooo excited. I'd tried to go the year before, but one of my troop mates got to go, but I didn't. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't! We get to the Philadelphia airport. I see this redhead standing with some old people (her parents are older than average....). I go up and say "Hi, you must be Kat." She responds with "So, you must be Addey." And a true friendship was born.

We were inseparable from that point forward.

We were in trouble 10 minutes later. (We knew which gate we were leaving from so we went there...)

There were 15 girls on that trip and there were 6 girls to a room. I remember hoping like crazy we'd be in the same room. We were. There are so many memories from that trip.

Last night my niece became a Daisy, which is the youngest level of Girl Scouts. The picture above is a blurry picture of her Daisy Pin, which all newly invested Daisies get. (For those of you familiar with Girl Scouts, it's a rounded trefoil with a daisy in the middle.) It was a cute, if noisy ceremony. The Brownies and Juniors were also having ceremonies last night. Normally each troop does it's own thing, but with families having girls in more than one troop, it made sense to group everyone together.

I am so glad to see how excited she was. I am glad to see another generation of girls find out exactly how much the Girl Scouts can do for you. I wouldn't have had half the opportunities, or gone to half the places I did in school if I hadn't been in Scouts. I was a nobody in school, but a very important somebody to my Scout troops.

I'm off to get ready for training. I'm local the next several weeks, so this will be very nice. Peace to all and remember to be a sister (or a brother) to everyone.