EARLY CHECK IN: December 15th, 2007 - Seven night Western - 12/15/07

[TammyAlphabet]

Hey! I made through the meeting with the "ruler" nazi! Not really very bad. Just a few more hoops....Boy am I tired of it. But it is almost over.

I have accepted the job officially and starting the home mortgage and home searching process. I am glad we are renting here in Carbondale. One less thing to worry about.

Stacie--Bring the baby!! You will all have a great time and work out the details along the way. And the two older children can be alot of help.

Christi--After moving, starting a new job and putting the Children in new schools... I will need a drink. When I get a new address and phone number, I will PM it to you. Sometime in July I think I should be moved in.

What happened to kath1210? Is she still cruising with us? (Oh yeah! She is getting ready to cruise!!!)

 

[cristit14]

Tammy, you will have to pm when you know. We may be there earlier than you get there. We probably will fly in on the 7th and then head to my grandmother's for a few days before we drive down to Alabama.

 

[TammyAlphabet]

Christi, I will definitely let you know when I know. That would be great though!

 

[cristit14]

Hi guys, just bumping us off of page two.
I am getting things ready for tomorrow's girl scout meeting. I was having a hard time thinking of anything to do this time. We decided to do the badge about healthy relationships. It has a lot of friendship type things and decision making activities. It doesn't look like it will be too hard. There are a few role-playing activities and my girls love to act!

 

[TammyAlphabet]

Well, the ruler nazi sent me an email, a few more changes, Why didn't she give me those changes the first time. Serenity now!! Serenity now!!

 

[dutch_girl_scout]

Hey guys--glad to see we're on page 1 again. Any badge that doesn't require a lot of "stuff" is a good one to do. We don't meet again for a while. We usually meet on Friday nights right after school. This Friday is the big father/daughter dance for K-5th girls, next Friday there is no school, and the following Friday, we have the Service Unit end of the year award ceremony.

Tammy your'e almost done. Hang in there.

I'm going to the city (Des Moines) today to meet with my TA and get some clothes that fit I might have to "browse" the baby aisle, I'll probably get sticker shock looking at the prices of all the gear like car seats, strollers, etc, etc. I should probably meet with the TA first while I still think I have money left.

Hope everyone has a good day!

 

[lillygator]

Hi everyone - I haven't had a chance to read through all the pages, but we will be joining you,
Me, Vanessa
Charming, John
Princess Samantha (5 at cruise time)
Princess Haley (almost 3 at cruise time).....

and no Cristi...I doubt we'll be having any parties in our cabin!

 

[cristit14]

Hey V! Great to see you will be joining us! I think it will be Stacie's turn for the party, didn't you say you had a cat 3 for that cruise Stacie?
Are you doing one of the Med cruises too?

 

[TammyAlphabet]

Welcome Vanessa! Glad you are joining us.

 

[kath1210]

Hi Vanessa and family! We're glad you will be on this cruise. The more, the merrier!

I'd love to see a Category 3, Stacie!

Well, with the free dining plan, I tried to get my Girl Scout troop to go to WDW for our summer trip. I figured we could stay in a value hotel for 3 nights, with free food, for only $134 each. That's the TOTAL price, for 3 nights, not including transportation.

Alas, for a number of reasons, this will not work out. Oh well, I tried.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

 

[dutch_girl_scout]

Yes, we have a cat 3. I might be willing to have the host room, what all does it involve? Remember, we'll have a darling, sweet, well-behaved 1-year-old along so I hope nothing too wild. I've read about the party trays that can be ordered, I'm all for that!

 

[dutch_girl_scout]

Well, with the free dining plan, I tried to get my Girl Scout troop to go to WDW for our summer trip. I figured we could stay in a value hotel for 3 nights, with free food, for only $134 each. That's the TOTAL price, for 3 nights, not including transportation.

Alas, for a number of reasons, this will not work out. Oh well, I tried.

Kathy-How long of a drive is it for you? Our troop is going to Minneapolis, that's about 5 1/2 hours for us. PLEASE tell me girls can't sing for that long. We are leaving pretty early in the morning, so hopefully some of them sleep on the way up otherwise, I think I would go nuts with girls in the van for that long. We do have two adults for each van though, so at least I'll have another adult to talk to. Usually it's my daughter that has to sit in the front because of the airbag. This will be a nice change. This is our first big trip, usually we do things that the council sponsors or locally.

 

[kath1210]

Stacie - We were actually going to try to get the parents to chip in for airfare - hopefully $49 each way through Southwest. We could have done more fundraisers to offset that cost, but some of the girls' families could not really afford to chip in a dime. Flying would have been our cheapest option - The drive for us is about 16 hours, so we would have to stay in 4 motel rooms (12 girls, 4 adults) on the way down. Another problem was that a couple of the girls' parents would not let them fly - so no WDW GS trip for us.

Our troop leader (I'm the "co" - we merged our two troops this year) went to New Hampshire with her troop last year. That was an 8 hour drive - and she almost went nuts! She said never again. I think we're going to try Ocean City, MD. It will be about 3 1/2 to 4 hours, so I think we'll survive. I hope! Oh, I hope they won't sing for that long, either. I'll bring the portable DVD player and hope that works.

BTW, I hope you don't feel pressured to have us all over to your room - who knows how big this group will get! I'd just love to see how Category 3 rooms look. We can get together in another space quite easily, I would think.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

 

[cristit14]

Stacie, I wasn't trying to pressure you into a party.... Vanessa had one last time since she had upgraded to a 3. Several different Diser's had brought bottles of wine from their home regions and Vanessa had all of the cheese/fruit/dessert trays there (a ton of food). We made it be an adult activitiy (except for her beautiful baby princess). It was a lot of fun and it wasn't really big. Here is a picture of all of us in her room and you can see there were only about 12 or so of us.

 

[dutch_girl_scout]

I don't mind if we use our room for a get togehter as long as there isn't a ton of people (the 12/09 cruise thread has something like 50 adults). I wouldv'e loved to see different categories, rooms, last time we cruised (like the sideways inside rooms, and a porthole room) just so I'd know what they looked like. I think it would probably be doable.

 

[cristit14]

Wow, it sounds like you guys do some bigger trips with your troops. The farthest we have gone is about an 1-1 1/2 hours into the mountains for a weekend camping trip. And the only times we have done that is either as part of a Unit camping trip or a Rendevouz. We haven't actually done one just our troop yet. I am thinking about one for the fall though. Neither my co-leader or I have done the overnight training for the longer trips. I don't know about where you are, but if we take a trip that is over 150 miles away you have a different training that you have to take. Actually this year is the first year that one of us has done the first aid training too.

We had a good meeting the other night. We did the badge about Healthy relationships and got into a good discussion about peer pressure too.

 

[cristit14]

Stacie, for our cruise in Dec we had a lot more people on our meet thread than what showed up at the cruise meets. I think we had something like a total of about 90 people (including kids) on our cruise website, but we pretty much had the same small group of people that got together... ususally 10-20.

 

[kath1210]

Wow, it sounds like you guys do some bigger trips with your troops. The farthest we have gone is about an 1-1 1/2 hours into the mountains for a weekend camping trip. And the only times we have done that is either as part of a Unit camping trip or a Rendevouz. We haven't actually done one just our troop yet. I am thinking about one for the fall though. Neither my co-leader or I have done the overnight training for the longer trips. I don't know about where you are, but if we take a trip that is over 150 miles away you have a different training that you have to take. Actually this year is the first year that one of us has done the first aid training too.

Cristi - Our troop may be a bit older than your girls. Ours range from 12 (7th grade) to 16 (10th grade). Plus, the leaders LOVE to travlel.

We have different training requirements. One requirement covers any kind of outdoor trip, and involves learning safety requirements, how to make a fire, etc. The other one is the camping training, which requires going to a nearby GS camp for an entire weekend. I've never had the time to do that one when it's offered.

There are no specific requirements based on whether we do an overnight trip, or whether we go over x number of miles away. Those kinds of trips require service unit approval, though. We do need a first aid trained person for any troop trip, even going to the local mall.

 

[dutch_girl_scout]

To take our trip we had to do a two-part trip and travel training. There is a lodge/overnight training for the simple overnights (camping, sleepovers, etc) We try to go camping at least one night in the spring with just our troop and always have a service unit campout in the fall to get things kicked off.

I think we could handle hosting the DIS meet. Just know up front that we're not drinkers, not saying anything about those who do drink, we just choose not to. It will be nice to meet some fellow DISers. I feel like I'm going throughwithdrawl from the other thread, I'm still reading it and posting occasionally but I'm a little bummed that I won't meet everybody though.

 

[cristit14]

Kathy, your girls are older. We have 4th graders all of them 10 or getting ready to turn 10. I could see us going more places once they are a little older.

Stacie, it would be fun to have a room dismeet. I would offer to do it, but I don't think very many people would fit in our cat 9. Not, everyone who came to our meet last year was a drinker either. I think they had some pop there too for the non-drinkers.