My Girl Scouts are the Best!

Today we had a Juliette meeting at our house.  Guess what those crazy families did?  They showed up with a giant card thanking me for leading their group!  And that's not all.  A $40 gift card from Amazon to get myself something special!! Can you believe it?  That was so sweet of them (the girls and the moms).  I was caught completely off guard!  They are so sneaky!  And super!

We've been together most of our homeschooling careers.  Sometimes one of our families have drifted off for a bit, but we always get back together.  The drifting is just due to overcommitments, that sort of thing.  We've never had a falling out.  We respect each other family's beliefs, interests and oddities.  They have been a great support group, and probably why we've never gotten involved in a big group.

So, today we painted Christmas cards.  Here are Violet's:

Their challenge was to use sponges and Q-tips for painting.  The Juniors are earning their Drawing and Painting badge (I'm going to get the Cadettes some sort of arts and crafts fun patch).  At the end of the meeting the other girls were saying how great Violet's were and how her art work is so much better than theirs and to "stop doing stuff so nice!" (with a laugh, of course).  I thought that was a nice complement.

We also made popcorn chains (Violet and Butterfly hung the ones Violet and I did out on the trees while waiting for Butterfly's mom to come.  Now it is raining hard.  So much for the popcorn.  Sigh.) 

Last Friday we met at the nearby town square where Mr. Incredible has his office (and where the outdoor scenes of Groundhog Day were filmed, which I've only mentioned a gazillion times, but you name drop where you can).  We visited an art gallery, looked at the community decorated Christmas trees on display in the Opera House, browsed a great boutique filled with Christmas decorations (which we later returned to and bought ribbon candy - something I couldn't find last year!), got hot chocolate/coffee from Starbucks (crashed Mr. Incredible's office and drank it at his conference table), and finally went on carriage rides around the square:

The city has free carriage rides on select days throughout the holiday season.  The driver and horse take you on a spin (a very slow spin) around the square.  It is so awesome!  I feel like I have the Christmas spirit for the first time in years.  We voted today that this will become a Juliette tradition.

In the photo, the building with the dome on it is the old courthouse.  It houses the art gallery we went to.  It used to have a Dick Tracy Museum too, but sadly that closed due to lack of funding.  If you look just to the right of it, behind the trees, across the street, and on the second floor, that's Mr. I's office.  See him waving?  Okay, you can't see it and he is probably at his computer working.  But he was there.  The photo was taken standing on the Opera House steps.  (The Opera House played the part of the hotel in the movie.)

In two weeks we have our last meeting of 2012.  We'll make some Christmas crafts and fudge.  I'm looking forward to it as much as the girls!  Did I mention they are the best!