Once a year our Girl Scout council has it's annual meeting. This is for the purpose of having our elected girl and adult members vote on governance issues for the upcoming year. This year the primary issue was electing our new board members. Since they make the decisions on our behalf, this is a pretty big deal. We also have our adult awards ceremony.
I have had the privilege to serve as our area association chair for the last 2 years. In addition, 3 of the 6 eligible girls in my troop serve as voting members. These girls are all 15. I have to leave for the meeting at 7 am on a Saturday. If you have a teenager in your house, you can do the math!
I felt that it would be a good idea to have the 2 girls who normally don't live in our home spend the night. This would reduce my pickup time in the morning. I considered having them sleep in the car, which would have further reduced the time...but somehow it seemed unwise. We were 15 minutes late leaving, which wasn't bad considering the girls did not crawl out of bed on the first call.
When we arrived at the meeting place--USF in Tampa, the university had not opened any extra lanes for parking fees...which meant all 500 of us had to go through the same line... However, we had made up some time in travel so we were only 15 minutes late. I "casually mentioned" to...OK, I threatened...the girls that I had expectations that they would represent themselves, and our troop, well at the meeting. They responded by asking what expectations they could have for my behavior? Cheeky things! They got very involved in the issues this year. They asked me later why the council would keep open camp properties that were losing money. Did the camps have any special amenities that weren't discussed in the meeting that would make them more valuable?
Two of the girls want to work as program assistants at resident camp this year. They introduced themselves to the camp directors, and asked more questions of them.
At the end of the meeting, they wanted to change out of their uniforms. We were going to have lunch and walk around the campus before we headed home. After all, they are in high school and ready to begin touring campuses. They asked me for my keys and headed to the van to pick up their clothes to change. I assumed (an error on my part) that they would bring their clothes back to a public restroom, change and return their uniforms to my car. THEY apparently decided that they could save time and energy by changing IN my van, which was parked in a public parking garage. Apparently one of them provided a passing car with a "lunar experience".
We had lunch in the dining hall, kissed the bull statue
and visited the library, bookstore 
and student union. Classrooms weren't open and we weren't able to visit a dorm room (I tried to set it up, but apparently all my son's friends have lives).
I was operating on only 2.5 hours of sleep (reaction to an antibiotic), so I'm glad to be home! It was a wonderful day though!
Feeling blessed, how about you?