Cinco de Mayo Themed Guiding Event

Last night  my daughter and I attended our Girl Guide Area Annual General Meeting at a local community center. It is an event open to the adult volunteer Guiders in our local section of Manitoba. Last year our Grand Pines Area membership was over 3300 women and girls.













I had an awesome time. They had a great Cinco de Mayo theme for the event and they carried it through from the decorations, food to music and even more. The organizers had us shout out answers to Mexican themed trivia questions to choose the order in which tables of guests went up to the buffet .

We got festive drinks,  pulled strings on piñatas and enjoyed a great taco dinner.

 There were door prize draws and my daughter got one of them. There is an outing at a trampoline facility in her future.

I have been to lots of general meetings for volunteer organizations over the years but it is always feels  so different at Guiding ones. You can feel the passion, energy, and yes- fun in the room. We are part of the largest association in the world for girls and women and we have so much to be proud of. The annual report is a joy to read because of the great ideas and experiences shared in the reports and as you look at it you can see the impact that our organization has on our members and those we come in contact with.

There were lots of awards given to members and we heard about some wonderful achievements that happened in the past year of Guiding in the Grand Pines Area.  I got a chance to visit with people I don't see too often and it felt like a family reunion. It is great to be part of the sisterhood of Guiding!

#GrandPinesFiesta

Just a Little Heart Attack- video

I think this is a great video.
Would you recognize the signs that someone might be having a heart attack?

Remember to take good care of yourself~

Do you watch "Ted Talks"?

Do you ever watch TED talks? It is a wonderful way to hear some amazing experts and inspiring people talk about a subject for 20 minutes. TED is a non-profit organization that uses the tag line-- Ideas Worth Spreading.  It began about 20 years ago with a conference to bring together people involved in the disciplines of Technology, Entertainment and Design.

Janine Shepherd, a former cross country skier suffered serious injury when hit by a truck during an Olympic training ride. She decided if she might never walk again she might as well learn to fly!  Her message is that you are not your body, and giving up old dreams can allow new ones to soar.

I hope you enjoy this talk. I found her to be inspiring and entertaining.

Spring Camp

Dawn reflecting off the frozen surface of Lake Winnipeg

I went camping with my Girl Guides of Canada - Pathfinder Unit last weekend. We went to a district camping event with about 70 girls and women at a beautiful camp about an hour and a half north of our city. It has terrific grounds and indoor facilities including a pool, meeting spaces, and dining hall. The food was wonderful and we really appreciated having the staff prepare it for us instead of us cooking over a camp-stove! Camp was not exactly roughing it. 

Our small cabin for the weekend

This was supposed to be a winter camp but the unusual warm weather we had this past week made a lot of the cold weather activities we  planned  impossible.   

Snow shoeing and spraying colored food dye on snow won’t work without a reasonable amount of snow. The ground was "crusty-icy" and "slushy-muck" with several areas deeper than our rubber boots.  It was by far the worst walking conditions I have experienced in many years, and of course my little cabin was the furthest from the parking lot and the mess hall.  I stayed in a small cabin with my daughter who is also a leader, another leader, a parent volunteer and 6 teenage girls.

Solar S'mores and yucky wet slippery ground

The theme for the camp was environmental awareness.  We did activities about water filtration and keeping our waterways clean and we planted little seedlings into containers.  Our girls helped run a couple of sessions such as making s’mores (graham crackers with melted marshmallows and chocolate) in the snow using a solar oven and wide games and a scavenger hunt about recycling.  Some of my girls are still very young 12 year olds and these were huge task for them but the pride in their accomplishments was undeniable. The younger girls, ages 5 up, looked up to the BIG girls and that encouraged the big girls to try all that much harder. The 12 to 17 year old participants ran an amazing campfire for the whole group on Saturday night. They led an hour of songs by memory and the 12 to 13 year olds even made up the cutest little skit about what the animals want us to do to take care of the environment.

The main activity hall in the early morning light

I had a really hard time moving around in that miserable snow. Sleeping on a strange, squeaky bottom bunk - with a wiggly young lady on top was pretty tough too. I did have fun though. I visited with the other adults, I played in the pool and I sang my little heart out even when I had trouble remembering the lyrics. My unit made adorable no-sew, green fleece hats. I walked back and forth to see all the girls who were dispersed all over the campgrounds doing their volunteer jobs. I spent a lot of time helping the girls prep for the activities they were leading, debriefing them afterward and I even helped work on some extra program materials that were appropriate learning for the older girls. 

I got around wonderfully this year in comparison to last spring at camp. Last year I needed a walker and could barely move, but this year I was in the thick of things despite the tricky conditions!

 I must admit that Sunday morning did not go well. It was enough strain over the weekend that my affected side started to spasm and I was in a tremendous amount of pain for the last few hours at camp. The muscles in the left side of my back contracted from shoulder blade to hip and I was pulled right over to the left side and unable to straighten. Every time I moved it triggered a whole new wave but I was too uncomfortable to sit or lay down and eventually my hip and left leg started to spasm as well. The car ride home was pretty long and miserable too.  It was a bit scary for the girls to see me in that much pain and I feel pretty bad about that.  I am feeling better today, but the episode was long and severe enough to leave me feeling pretty beat up.

I was feeling pretty happy with how I am moving lately and I have become pretty lax about doing my exercises. This incident was just proof that I still need to do a LOT of work on strengthening my whole body.

Our next camp will be tenting in May. I am not sure if I should go or not. I don’t want to miss anything, but I also don’t want to risk a repeat of last Sunday. 

Thinking Day around the World

This is my 20th year as a Girl Guide Leader. When I joined Guiding it was simply in order to have a unit for my then 5 year old middle daughter. I thought it was something my daughters needed and would enjoy but I had no idea what an adventure I was getting myself into. I can truly state that being a member of Girl Guides of Canada has helped me grow into the kind of woman I am today.


Thinking Day is a special day for Guiding and Scouting where we remember the people who began the Guiding and Scouting Movement but more importantly it is an opportunity to think of all the other Girls and women around the world who are part of the "Sisterhood of Guiding".

WAGGGS is short for the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts which is made up of member organizations in over a 144 countries. Please read the quote below or visit the WAGGGS site and search for more information regarding Thinking Day activities in your own country.

About World Thinking Day 2011

Millennium Development Goal 3: girls worldwide say "empowering girls will change our world"

Girls and women of all ages in many countries do not have the same opportunities as men. They do not have the same access to education as men - around 54 per cent of out-of-school children are girls. Women are underrepresented in the world’s parliaments and in the labour workforce, and earn far less than men.

The World Thinking Day theme for 2011 is ... girls worldwide say “empowering girls will change our world” and the aim is to raise awareness of the situation for many girls and young women and empower them to take a stand against inequality.

Gender equality and empowering women is the third of the eight areas of focus made by 189 world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000. It is part of the WAGGGS Global Action Theme, which encourages girls and young women to make a personal commitment to change the world around them by linking to an important global agenda: the United Nations Millennium Development Goals