New GUIDING YEAR!

I'm scrambling to quickly get a post done before the end of September. Hard to believe tomorrow is October - this morning we had the first touch of frost!

We leaders are remembering our very small group of girls at the beginning of last year, and comparing that to our much larger group now. We are thrilled to have 15 Guides so far this year. Our 'ideal' number would be at least 16, to have 4 girls in each Patrol - but we will do our recruiting in a bit more low-key way this year since we definitely do not want to double in size! Our size now is probably a bit big for our space, but just right for activities and the number of leaders we have.

We have about 5 girls who have returned from last year, and the rest are new Guides - Grades 4, 5 and 6.

Last night we had our first Parent Meeting, and we were very lucky that the weather was nice enough for Heather to work outside with the girls. They chose their Patrol names, and did some brainstorming about badges to work on as a unit and individually. After the Parent Meeting the girls came back in (brrrr! outside) - we talked about what we had told the parents, cookies, etc. Then a couple of songs, a game, closing and home.

Next week - October 6th: we meet at the hall, and then with drivers head up to Cinnabar for door-to-door cookie selling. We took 30 cases of cookies to the meeting last night, and I brought 2 cases back into the house. I will be picking up about 10 more cases of cookies this weekend, as we have several girls who sold LOTS of cookies last year in Brownies.

CHEMAINUS THEATRE VISIT: Thursday July 2nd 2009

Four Guides, two Guiders, and two Rangers (one our Jr Leader, the other a friend of hers from Nanaimo) saw the KidzPlayz presentation of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' at the Chemainus Theatre last Thursday. K's mom picked up D, and I picked up A and T - we met at the theatre, and R (our Jr Leader who had made arrangements for the FREE tickets) also met us there. The play was a sort of mini part from the larger story, but by the very quiet of the Guides, we are pretty sure they enjoyed it. When asked everyone said the play was good. We then drove down to the beach park and enjoyed the bag lunches we each had brought. After a relaxing lunch everyone headed back home.

A note: I now have the Crests for the other two (April and June) camps we had, so we might try and get everyone together sometime in August for a quick visit and to hand out the Crests. OR we might wait til or 2nd or so meeting, to give the new Guides an idea of what fun it is getting Crests.

Year-end CAMP!!!

Camp is over, and a GREAT year of Guiding for 1st Chase River Guides has drawn to a close. All 9 Guides were at Camp, 2 Guiders and 1 Jr Leader were at Camp all weekend, and one Guider were at Camp for Saturday.

Everyone had lots of fun, and the leaders have decided we will probably have our FALL CAMP here also. We will try to have our Fall Camp within 3 weeks or so of the beginning of our Guiding year, to take advantage of nice weater. And we will want it to be a 2 night camp so it can qualify for Camp badges/crests.

So - what did we do at Camp?
FRIDAY: Arrival 6pm, Tent set up, Rules & Boundaries, Outdoor Games, Walk-around-the-Block (1 mile!), Mug-up (lots of fruit!, crackers & cheese), Bed
SATURDAY:
SUNDAY:
more to be added in the next few days = along with photos when I upload them.

June 9th FAMILY POTLUCK

We were blessed with perfect weather for our Yearend Family Potluck last night - June 9th. We reserved the Shelter in the Tent Site at Living Forest Campground, and when I stopped at the office to 'check in' and ask if they could direct any lost guest down to us, I found out that we did not have to pay! Very, very pleased..a BIG THANK YOU TO LIVING FOREST CAMPGROUND to giving back to the local community in this way! We mentioned this 'donation' to the families, and all were impressed!

All Guides were there except K., who had a Baseball conflict - she will get here 'stuff' at the Camp. Families varied from small to large - I never did a count of total number of people, but we did all fit in the shelter. Plenty of food - no one went hungry!

Once everyone was there, we enjoyed eating and visiting. We then called everyone 'to order' and the first 'item' on the Agenda after Introductions was the Skits that the girls practiced last week. The leaders then got 'organized' and we handed out the girls' 'stuff': Each Guide got a baggie with the Beyond You programme badge and the Gold Thanks Badge for Service work (from Christine), the Compass gift from Area (from Karen, District Commissioner), the Certificate (from Gillian), an extra Guide Handshake (from Rebecca) and our Yearend Gift (from Heather).

After the Presentations to the Guides, Gillian presented a Hanging Basket the girls made at our Gardening Night to Karen, and then Karen presented a Thanks gift to N. after talking about our spring cooking selling for District. We then closed our evening with a few final words about our Camp at Christine's on the June 19/21st weekend, then singing of On My Honour, and finally ended with Taps. An excellent 'formal' finish to the Guiding year - tho we still have a very important and very fun Camp in 10 days!

Hallowe'en Bring a Friend Party Oct 28/08

Everyone had lots of fun at our Hallowe'en Party...food, games, singing, crafts...!