I recently received an email from Bella Online, most likely automated, informing me that I hadn't posted an article in awhile and that my subscribers may believe that I had lost interest in my topic. Far from it, Scouting is just one of the activities that can keep me rom writing. Part of the problem is that I suffer from volunteeritis, which I suspect is a common malady among Girl Scout leaders.

This year I have a first-year Brownie troop and a first-year Junior troop. The Brownie troop has kept me busy with new girls joining, but, since this is my third time around as a Brownie leader, I generally feel like I know what I'm doing. The Junior troop, on the other hand, has me spending a lot of time planning and re-planning. I've never been a Junior leader so I have to go waaaaaay back to when I was a Junior to find any references.

In addition, for the first time, a group of us went to our neighborhood encampment. Phew... what a lot of work for the mom/leaders, particularly since it was out first trip. We packed enough food for at least a week, and the trip was just two days. What makes that even funnier is that our meals were being provided in a dining hall.

This bounty of snacks occurred in part because of our cooperative manner of leading. Just two girls attended without their mom/leader. As a result, even thought we divvied up the supplies we needed to bring, each moms/leaders brought those emergency supplies that every mom always has on hand, and, of course, when packing, each mom packed enough for everyone. It worked out great though because when half the girls didn't care for the Mexican meal served in the dining hall, we were able to go back to our cabin, build a fire, and fill up on S'mores and hotdogs. I admit to being the mom who brought hotdogs and buns to serve everyone.

The girls were ready to go again the next weekend, but the adults were more than willing to wait a few months or years until our next camping trip. We went cabin camping and our group represented three age levels, including two itty bitty first graders. (My little one gets all the best breaks by virtue of being a sibling of an older Scout. She got to experience her first camping trip at the age of 6 because the older troop [age 9] was going on their first camping trip, and that meant mom was going and hence she went along as well.)

The camping trip also highlighted to me once again how much I really like our cooperative format for leadership. Unfortunately, one of the girls was hurt as we walked to a late-night campfire. Two girls and their mom/leaders left the camp late on Saturday night to seek medical treatment, but the rest of us were able to stay behind. As we loaded them up in their SUV, it occurred to me that under a traditional style of troop leadership, the whole troop would have had to leave or the injured girl's parents would have had to make a horrible late-night drive to retrieve her (we were a few hours from home).

I'm always evaluating, but I still have very few complaints about our mom-and-me format of troop organization! As a footnote, our injured girl was fine in the end, but, of course, she went home under the principle of "better safe than sorry."

I'll try to be better about writing more regularly. There's no chance that a lapse in writing indicates a lack of interest though!