My Penguin Patch

Kim, Missie, Kara and Sherri at TCL Training freezing their hineys off!

As a Girl Scout leader, I am so excited to show my girls everything there is to do in the organization.  Especially the experiences of camp.  Well, in order to take your girls camping you have to get training to do so.  So a few weeks ago, I took a four hour course and learned some basics.  These were the ladies that I sat around, so these are the ladies that I was grouped with for the big camping weekend portion of our training.  And let me say, I am so glad - I think if I had been paired with anyone else it wouldn't have been as great a time as it was.  These ladies taught me so much about what to bring and ideas on activities with the girls.  Over the weekend, I learned how to tie knots, how to do some orienteering, found out about some creepy bugs and poisonous plants.  We also took a hike through the property out there by Utopia. I've been out to Camp La Jita before, so I knew the area was beautiful. But I missed so much, because this time, I was shown a whole other side to the camp. We went to the Green Chapel - a gorgeous outdoor chapel. There are dinosaur tracks out there - actual dinosaur tracks! And we went back to one of the most beautiful areas of the campsite - out by Storybook Tree. It's this awesome tree that is humongous! The opening in the tree is really small now due to the roots shifting or something... but used to, you could get in there with a bunch of girls and read them a story. I'm so excited to plan our girls' first camping trip.

The opening in Storybook Tree

A view of Storybook Tree from the roots.  This tree was massive - it took 18 people standing around it stretching out their arms, to wrap all the way around!!!

We also did a lot of cooking this weekend.  I can start a charcoal pit like nobody's business now.  I always thought that if you went camping your menu consisted of hamburgers, hot dogs and sandwiches - for breakfast, bring honeybuns.  But no, oh my gosh, there's so much more that you can do!  I ate better out at my camping weekend then I typically do here at the house!  We had breakfast burritos one morning on the propane stove - learned how to work one of those too!  Then for lunch we fired up the charcoal pit and put together a quick and easy chicken and rice casserole.  It was so delicious, I still have to hunt Sherri down for the recipe.  Then, for dinner we wrapped up some hamburger meat, onions, cheese and tater tots in some foil and just threw them on the hot coals for about a half and hour and voila!  I still think it was just the neatest thing, and wish dinner at the house could be that easy.  

This is Green Chapel.  When we first started out for Green Chapel, I was looking for a building - I had no clue.  This picture does it no justice.  This site was absolutely gorgeous!

I really didn't think it would be that cold while we were out there, I mean it's only an hour and a half away from San Antonio and it hadn't been that cold around here.  Oh no!  It's a world of difference in temperatures between here and Utopia.  I had ear covers, a scarf and some cheap gloves that cost me $0.50.  I was fine with that stuff in Arizona - surely I'd be fine with it here.  Uh... not really.  Thankfully Sherri brought extras - turns out she's done this before!  She let me borrow that adorable blue/green hat on my head which really helped out as far as staying warm goes.  It got done to the low 20's the first night out there and the second night wasn't much better!  So we all earned our Penguin Patches this weekend for camping in below freezing weather.  I think I'm going to start putting all these patches on a tote bag or something, I'm rackin' 'em up!