A Fun Week

What a busy but fun week. We attended the Annual Scouts and Guides Trivia Quiz.

The theme was the Olympics and Husband Deluxe was the MC.

Fuzzy Wuzzy won 'Player of the Week' for his amazing soccer skills on field.

He played goalie and didn't let anything get past him.

What a star!

Squealy has also been enjoying soccer but invariably he ends up absolutely shattered and freezing after his early morning game.

Poor little guy just crashes out wherever he can!

Charny Carny

Yesterday the family and I attended the Charny Carny. It is a fundraiser for my school, the local catholic school and for Guides and Scouts! Everywhere I went I either bumped into kids/parents from school and girls from Guides.

String Bean and I did a stint on the ice cream van. Performing community service is a big part of Guides and String Bean enjoyed collecting the ice creams out of the fridge.

The kids loved getting up close and personal with the reptiles. They got to pet lizards, turtles, a baby crocodile and a snake too.

Father Daughter Camp

Mr Bump and Little Miss Sunshine.

Our lucky little girl was able to attend a fabulous district camp for Guides. So being a district camp just girls from our Guide hall attended, which meant an age range of 5 - 18 years old!

L: Little Miss Splendid challenged the Dad's to dress up in different themes: Husband Deluxe scored 'Fairy tales'.
R: Oliver and Fuzzy doing the Mr Bump challenge.

The theme was Little Men and Little Miss, as it is the 40th year anniversary of the books. The other unique part of this camp was that it was a Father Daughter camp. So special because Dad's usually would attend camp. There were so many excellent activities and many of the fathers were so grateful for the bonding time with their daughters. The wide game included: making birthday cakes for dessert, making sock puppets, making mini Mr Tickle and Mr Giggles, wrapping each other in bandages etc.

The Mr Fussy challenge had the girls pick 3 random cards. String Bean ended up with a baked potato, fingers and custard. I scored fruit cake, chop sticks and gravy. mmmm tasty!

Was easily the BEST camp String Bean and I have been involved with and we've been to a few over the years. Even the campfire was brilliant fun with one of our senior Guides teaching the younger Guides a new song.

Owls

This year I've lucky enough to be a parent helper in a Guiding unit with older girls, working with a lovely friend who is the leader.

Awhile back we made some owls during a camp. They are so cute, I figured they were worth sharing. Made using felt and hand sewing. A combo of blanket and straight stitching. They are easily made, as all the girls in the unit were able to successfully produce an owl each.

She made the paper!

String Bean and Josie + female firefighters.
Photo Courtesy of The Camden Advertiser.

String Bean and her friend Josie made it into the paper. The girls attended a birthday party being held by Girl Guides NSW. It is the centenary of Guiding, so on the 100th day of the 100th year a massive birthday party was held.

The girls had a fun filled day in the glorious (HOT!!!) Sydney weather.

Full article is listed here.

Race Around the Corner

String Bean and I attended the bi-annual District Camp last weekend. It was held at Majura Primary and practically all of the Murrungundie girls attended ( 60+ girls and 20 leaders and unit helpers).

The theme was a 'Race Around the Corner' with the girls doing a scavenger hunt, following clues, answering questions and taking photos as evidence. My Patrol, Northbourne Avenue, won the Scavenger hunt! String Bean's patrol, Floriade, came second for collecting points.

The weather was crap. It rained and blew a gale but the girls had a ball. They had to catch buses around the place and the first destination for us was King Edward Terrace. We walked all around the area (thankfully we all had raincoats) and ended up at the Sculpture Garden at the Art Gallery.

The race ended at 5.30pm and we all joined up to have a meal out at Dickson. Was a fabulous camp, great idea and venue. Glad I wasn't organising it: huge amount of work!

BP

Congratulations to Pip and Rach on achieving their BP award. We all celebrated by eating out and sharing a donut cake. Great achievement. Hopefully Stringy will one day achieve hers as well.

Fractured Fairytales

String Bean with the Slippery Pole in the background

Last weekend (gee I've been slack on the blogging front) String Bean and I attended Fractured Fairytales. A statewide Guiding event held in Goulburn with over 460 girls attending. Each district had to run an activity with a resulting 20 different activities being run.

Pillow fight fun on the Slippery Pole.

I got to help out on the Slippery Pole! Lots of fun and not one broken bone.....bonus :-) Other activities included cooking marshmallows over the camp fire, making fairy wands, playing croquet with the Queen of Hearts, making card houses with the Mad Hatter etc.

Ended up being a really fun day even though the rain kept threatening and it was bitterly cold.

Update: String Bean

Sleep Over fun for Girl Guides

String Bean's Girl Guide unit had a sleep over on Friday night at the Guide Hall. Not much sleep was had but the girls had a ball, with the older girls planning and organising a rotation of activities for the younger girls in the unit. So 7 years olds running activities for 5 & 6 year olds. Suzi was our QM (quarter master) and did a great job of providing the girls with the menu that they had designed!

I love the leadership opportunities that the girls are given and the choices that they are allowed to make. String Bean is thoroughly enjoying her Guiding experience and developing excellent skills along the way. She has nearly completed her Pets badge, with one small task left to do. She also sold Guide Biscuits at the Charnwood shops on Saturday....so a very busy Guiding weekend!

Today we hit the pool having finally changed the kidlets swimming time to a reasonably well timed weekend spot. After the pool we ventured out to the Bus Depot Markets and then out to Gunghalin to purchase some much needed items.

By the time we got there the kids were starving!!! I guess swimming will do that to you, so we went to one of my favourite restaurants: Ginger & Spice.

While waiting for the food String Bean had a melt down! Pretty weird really. Probably over tired from the sleep over and def. too hungry.

She got over it but not before we took some photos! She was so annoyed that we did! hehehe.

ANZAC Day.

Today was ANZAC Day. String Bean and I attended the event in a Guiding capacity. String Bean handed out rosemary to those in attendance and then participated in the march with the veterans. She was thrilled to carry a placard during the march.

The weather was unbelievably bad and she said afterwards that she "hated it because I was so cold" and that her "heart was frozen" poor bubba. We had no sun and mostly drizzly rain for the entire event. Numbers were apparently down on previous years, where it's usually so warm people faint from the heat!

A Teddy Bear's Picnic

We attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to go to the Teddy Bear's Picnic in the park. We tried but gave up. It was so crowded by the time we got there that lines for rides were unbelievable. All the rides and activities were free so half of Canberra must have been there. Guides were running a stall: sausage sizzle and ice creams, so we thought we'd pop in and visit. Was a good fund raiser with everything selling out!

A ride on the Merry Go Round.

When we gave up on the picnic we decided to head into the city instead and gave the kids a ride on the Merry Go Round. They had a ball. String Bean then decided that she'd have a Teddy Bear's Picnic anyway. When we got home she collected every teddy in the house and set them up with rugs and cloth place mats. She ate her dinner on the floor and had so much fun, till Squealy trashed it all!

Mad Scientists Afternoon

Making chemical reactions using lollies. Volcanoes: using vinegar, bicarb and red food dye! Sweet.

Gee Stringy gets to have some fun! Scouts ran a mad scientists this week and invited our girls for a shared afternoon of science fun. Was extremely hands on in a good way. They had 6 different rotations. You can tell from the photos that Stringy had a ball and actually learnt heaps!


















Making green slime from scratch. Testing the battery power of a grapefruit.

Tying Knots.

Fantail who consumed her body weight in snakes.

Tying knots Guides style: with jelly snakes! Fantail and Quokka were teaching the girls how it's done. I have no idea at all. Kookaburra, having grown up through Guiding, could tie a reef knot behind her back.

I did get there in the end. The snakes were an excellent teaching tool, esp. if you chose different coloured snakes. But def. not up to tying one blind, behind my back.


Knot tying is part of earning the Frog badge as is canoeing. In the next couple of weeks Stringy will be out on the lake again for a paddle. Lucky girl.

Quokka and String Bean

World Thinking Day

String Bean (the model) and Fuzzy Wuzzy (cracking himself up) visited Egypt and were dressed up as Mummies!

Sunday was World Thinking Day and Guides held a day long activity at the lush and very beautiful grounds of Government House at Yarralumla. Each Guiding region set up an activity to do with an international Country. The kids visited: Egypt, India, Japan, Africa, Papua New Guinea and a few others that I can't remember.

Each country was well set up with activities (mostly craft or a game) and the kids had an absolute ball. It helped that there were so many Murrungundie girls there for Stringy to hang out with and good family friends to share lunch with as well (thanks Bel & Alex).

Fuzzy and the gorgeous grounds, view of Government House in the background.

Canoe and Friends.

We had such a busy day today. My brother came over and did quite a few odd jobs that we've been waiting years to get done! So happy. It is amazing how a few small changes can make such a big difference. So once Squealy was busy eating lunch and Chris and Ant were back into it, I decided to duck out with String Bean and Fuzzy Wuzzy.


String Bean & her friend Katie.

We went to join in the canoeing that was taking place at John Knight Memorial Park. It was a Girl Guides activity and it was so much fun!!

String Bean loved it but then she is a real dare devil. Fuzzy on the other hand was cautious and worried he'd end up in the water. Some of the older Guide Units were doing canoe skills such as solo canoeing and were actually being capsized to practice emergency situations. They also had to tread water for 3 minutes and then tow the canoe back to shore. This, of course, freaked Fuzzy out big time. He really is a very cautious child.

Fuzzy Wuzzy in the canoe!

String Bean has Sparkles: the Rainbow Fish Guides teddy. He goes to the girls homes every week and then they have a go at writing about what he got up to at their homes. So far he's been to JJMH, on a canoe and grocery shopping. I do know, for a fact, that he will be visiting our washing machine before he goes back to Guides next year!!!

A beautiful day, spent with family and friends.

String Bean and the lovely Honeyeater having a paddle.

Picnic in the Park

Here is String Bean having a lovely day out at the Girl Guides: Picnic In The Park. The picnic was held in Goulburn and had a theme of All Thing Magical.

They all had a fantastic day. Some of the activities String Bean did included: temporary tattoos, making grassy heads, face painting, jumping castle, a magic show, bubble blowing, biscuit decorating etc etc.

The girls got to go around in small groups and choose which ever activity they wanted to do. I think the Face Painting was very popular. Argh that was me and one of our Junior leaders: Quokka/Emily. Oh well. I sure did get good at doing love hearts, butterflies, princess crowns, shooting stars and rainbows by the end of the day!

Mini Olympics

Crab Walk between activities.

String Bean had a mini Olympics night at Guides last night. As it is Father's Day on Sunday all the Dad's were invited along. It was so funny watching them slog their hearts out doing the activities.



String Bean and her Daddy were representing New Zealand and won the third place in the Long Jump event. Pretty good going considering we still don't quite know what is wrong with his foot.



Throwing the Javelin.

The four rotations consisted of:

• Javelin (using a skewer)
• Discuss (using a paper plate)
• Shot Put (using a pom pom)
• Long Jump

Gee I wish I had been involved in Guides as a child. String Bean has so much fun. Tonight she has a Guides Disco to go to! Lucky for me I am training to become a Leader, so I get to join in. Better late than never ;)

Indoor Rock Climbing

String Bean and I were in the lucky position of experiencing our first Indoor Rock Climbing session. We went with the rest of her Girl Guides unit. She was quite adept at the climbs, especially once her confidence in the rope kicked in. She made it right to the top of the gray wall! She was so fast that my arm ended sore just trying to keep up with belaying.



There was also lots of rolling around on the mats with the other girls, while waiting for a wall to become available. She also found the boxing bag and gloves. She loved that!