More about Girl Scouts and DI

GIRL SCOUTS
Well, the girl scout cookies are in! Thank you to those of you who ordered some. The troop held two cookie booths where they sold over 400 boxes. Ashlyn sold over 60 boxes through her order forms. The troop will be using the funds from the cookie sales to go to Massanutten, VA where they will be staying in a suite for 2 nights and enjoying 2 days at the indoor water park there (http://www.massresort.com/). They will also use some of the funds to enjoy a dinner and show at Medieval Times (http://www.medievaltimes.com/mdhomepage2.htm). They are all looking forward to making some great memories before this Girl Scout season ends!

Ashlyn is also registered for girl scout camp. Her camp of choice is called Art Du Jour - (Description - Explore your creative side as you create an art project each day! Make clay pots, jewelry, sculpture, mosaic, duct tape wallets and more! You'll even get the chance to turn a plain white T-shirt into the latest fashion trend.) She loves anything to do with art, so she should really have a great time this year. She will be at camp from July 20 - July 26.

DESTINATION IMAGINATION
Well, the DI competition was held on March 15. We were there from 830 a.m. till about 6 p.m. It was a long day that didn't go anywhere near as well as we had hoped and/or planned. All of the kids were there and used their prep time to practice their play. The problem came when their actual time started. They had 8 minutes to set up the scenes and complete the play. They had a really tough time taping the backgrounds up. They had painted three scenes onto large sheets of paper that they then had to tape up. They decided to tape all 3 up at once and then tear down the one in front when they were done with that scene. First they had a tough time getting the tape to stick and to actually hold up the paper. Once they finally got all 3 sheets taped up they then proceeded to pull out their puppet props to start scene one, at which point one of the background sheets started to fall. They were trying to fix the background when the timer went off. Poor babies! They were so disappointed that they didn't get the chance to do their play. They had worked so hard on it over the prior weeks.

The judges were really great with them though. They asked to see all their props and asked them all about what the play was going to be, and told the kids that they thought it sounded really great and wished they would have been able to see it. In the end the kids got zero's across the board on the score sheet, but we were given a sheet with judges comments and they all said they thought the puppets were really creative and that the kids worked really well as a team and never gave up or got upset. Everyone was really impressed with them.

After the team challenge came the instant challenge. During this challenge they were in a room with just them and a judge. They were given a challenge and the point is to work as a team to figure out how to solve the challenge according to whatever the rules are. I still don't know what the challenge was (because the kids are asked to sign a paper saying they won't talk about it because all of the competing teams are given the same instant challenge), but I do know that they did REALLY well. The judge came out with the kids and gave a double thumbs up, saying they did a great job on it. And I might add, there were middle school teams who had problems with this challenge!

So overall, it was a bit of a low and a bit of a high for them. They weren't disqualified, which they could have been. We don't know how many points they were given for the instant challenge, but because of the zero for the team challenge they didn't place. The top 4 teams go on to the state level to compete again. Ashlyn was a little upset about it all, but she says she wants to do it again next year anyway. She really enjoys DI and with 2 years under our belts we hope to do an even better job next year!