We Survived ROCK THE MALL

I can summarize ROCK THE MALL in just one word:  CRAZY.

Over 250,000 Girl Scouts descended on the Washington Mall last Saturday.  I know that I am stating the obvious here, but a quarter of a million people is an incredibly large amount of people.  There were Girl Scouts everywhere you looked. I felt like a Girl Scout ant.

You can't capture that many people in a single picture, but here was my widest angle:

Here's a photo of the crowd projected from the stage:

We had a grand time acting like silly tourists and riding the carousel.

Through the magic of cell phones (set on vibrate because it was way too loud to hear a phone ring) we successfully met up with a few of our friends from the Great Valley Service Unit.  I still find this a bit miraculous given how many people were there.  We spent the afternoon with our friends, wandering among the hoards of Girl Scouts trading SWAPs and meeting girls from at least 30 different states and Canada.  The swapping was fast and furious for a few hours, and the girls came home with some amazing treasures, including a hand-painted dessert scene from a new friend from Arizona, a tiny bag of sand and seashells from south Florida, and a beautiful hand-made piece of (foam) birthday cake from Minnesota.

It was over 90 degrees on Saturday, and it was HOT on the mall.  Really, really HOT.  After about 3 hours swapping and sweating on the Mall, the girls and I decided it was time to find some ice cream and some shade.  We paid outrageously high prices for ice cream treats from a DC vender, and I tell you the ice cream was worth every penny.

We made our way back to the Metro, found our car, and started to drive home.  But I was sooooo tired, I knew I needed some coffee.  So we stopped at.....

 

......The WAFFLE HOUSE restaurant, if you're loosely defining the word restaurant.  I asked the girls if they wanted breakfast for dinner, and you'd have thought they won the lottery.  "Breakfast for dinner??  You are the best mom ever!!!!"   Honestly, that might have been the best coffee and bacon I ever ate. Probably also, the greasiest dinner ever.  But, what is a road trip without a greasy diner visit, right?!

To cap off the end to our adventure, Abby lost a tooth at the Waffle House, so here is her new smile, less one canine tooth.

Overall, ROCK THE MALL was a neat experience.  It was hot, crowded, exhausting, and crazy, but we would totally do it again (now that I've had a week to recover and reflect)!

Ready to ROCK THE MALL - S.W.A.P.S.

I am fairly sure that I have lost my mind, but I have decided to brave the crowds and take Abby and Caroline to Washington, D.C., bright and early tomorrow to go to the Girl Scout's ROCK THE MALL event.  ROCK THE MALL is an enormous sing-a-long to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouting held right on the Washington Mall.  The organizers are expecting 150,000 to 200,000 girl scouts.  Streets will be closed and it is going to be a spectacle.

I think this is either going to be an amazing experience or a complete disaster.  I am so worried about losing Caroline in the crowds, that I took a Sharpee marker and wrote Caroline's name and my cell phone number on her belly after her bath.  I'm not even kidding.  She's inked.  

On the less neurotic side, one of the neat things about Girl Scouting events of this type is that all the girls bring along SWAPs that they have made and then they trade their SWAPs with those keepsakes made by girls from around the country. SWAPs is an acronym for "Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere " or, alternately, "Something With A Pin."  Typically the SWAPs are made to be representative of something special from your area of the country or a particular type of activity.

We weren't able to attend the SWAP-making workshop for our service unit, but I stole a few ideas from them, found a few ideas on the web, and created a few things myself.  Abby, Caroline and I spent quite a few hours creating a glittery, beady, glue-gunny mess in the dining room, but their SWAPs are ready to trade.  And, I think they turned out pretty well.

The end results (we made about 20 of each type pictured).  I must say the girls really got into this!  Wish us luck tomorrow and I'll post some photos from the event after I recover.

Philadelphia Pretzels

Mushroom Capital of the World

(Chester County, PA)

Philadelphia Phillies

 

Girl Scout Pins

Magic Friendship Seeds (Magic =Glitter)

Philadelphia Eagles

Happy 5th Birthday to Ben!!

Yesterday was Benny Boy's 5th birthday!  It is hard to believe that my little ray of sunshine is 5 now!

Scott and I asked Ben what kind of dinner he would like for his birthday, and he picked the "restaurant with the fish tank," which (for the locals) is Margaret Kuo's in Frazier. Ben loves the shrimp tempura rolls for dinner and a giant bowl of free spicy pickles while he waits for them.  He likes the spicy pickles so much that he grabs the bowl provided for the table all for himself, takes his fork, and sits quietly eating all the pickles at his place for the next 10 minutes or so while the rest of us just stare at him with our mouths wide open.  I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not that much.  The boy can really put away pickles.  And shrimp tempura roll.  And pot stickers.  And white rice.  And orange slices.  And the "cookies with the words at the end."

Fortunately, everyone in the family loves Margaret Kuo's too, so we had a splendid and tasty birthday dinner. Grandma and Pops joined us for the very festive celebration.  Scott decided to try ordering a Peking Duck, so we enjoyed a special carving ceremony too.  The highlight of the evening, aside from the pickles, was that the waitstaff let Ben ring the gong for the Peking Duck delivery because it was his birthday.  He definitely got a kick out of that.

The birthday dinner was followed by a tasty brownie cake in the shape of a Lego mini-figure (made in a very cool Lego baking mold found by my mom).  There were some presents too, most of which were the Lego variety.  Ben did not want to go to School Camp today because he wanted to stay at home and build Legos.  Mean mother that I am, I made Ben go to school so I could head over to the teaching store to pick-up Summer Bridging workbooks for everyone (see?! I really am a mean mom).  And then, Ben a.k.a. The Lego Taskmaster rode me hard all afternoon to help him assemble superhero Legos.

How cute is this cake mold?!

Memorial Parade Weekend

This weekend our town hosted its 144th annual Memorial Day Parade, so we've been enjoying a FULL weekend of neighborhood fun events, including a Saturday afternoon neighborhood kickball game with an incredible 24 kids participating, Saturday night block party, hosting a Girl Scout BBQ on Sunday, walking with the Scouts in the parade, and even a few post-parade activities too.

One unexpected highlight was that Abby and Caroline were both big winners in the Cake Walk.  I contributed a castle-shaped bundt cake, so the girls were desperately hoping to get the cake I made.  Abby won early on, but my cake was already taken.  Instead, she selected a lemon cake because it was the largest cake still available.  (I love her logic!!)  Caroline won the very last cake of the event, hence she received a pineapple upside down cake.  I highly doubt she will even try a bite, but she was still absolutely thrilled to be a winner.  I wish I had a shot of her sprinting around the cake walk circle raising her arm in victory.

Some shots from the parade (we were lucky that storm to the north missed us)