The Jones Girls

Today was Savannah’s 1st day as a Daisy Girl Scout.   We have 14 girls in our troop.   Some are Kindy Kids from Savannah’s class and the other Kindy class, some are 1st graders and some are from another school, Jordan School.  

The meeting began at 1:30pm, right after school.   We all met in the multi purpose room and then at 1:45pm we all moved outside and enjoyed the nice weather.  Today it was 77 degrees and sunny.

Since I don’t have a babysitter, I brought the triplets to the meeting with me.  It made it fun and challenging to have the triplets at the meeting while I was co-leading the troop.  The other co-leader, Lyn, is AWESOME.  She was a girl scout for many years and remembers all of the girl scout songs, the Girl Scout Promise and all of the fun activities the troops do.   Our troop is so lucky to have her!!

Today the girls made and decorated daisy necklaces with their names on the to help all of us get to know every one’s name.   They also traced each other’s hands, cut out their traced hand and glued it to the Girl Scout Promise Poem that they need to learn to earn their first patch, which will be in a month at their Investitute Ceremony.   

We had snacks, sang a song, learned what makes a good Daisy and then finished the meeting with a friendship circle squeeze of each hands.  

We will meet 2 Mondays a month.

If I wasn’t busy enough, I have taken on the position of co-leader for Savannah’s Daisy Girl Scout Troop #7274.   I will be working with Lyn, the mother of  Tess, who is Savannah’s classmate and friend in Kindy.    The beneft with being a leader is that I can bring the triplets with me and I won’t need a babysitter – yay!!

We had a meeting today to familiarize ourselves with starting the troop and get things under way.   I really like Lyn.  She is an event planner for the city of Whittier and I really appreciate her organizational and planning skills.   She and I are very similar…very detailed oriented with great imaginations.  I believe we are going to have a blast with our new troop.

The Daisy troop will meet 2 Mondays a month at Savannah’s school, El Portal at 1:30pm right after school in the multi purpose room.   There will be 11 girls in the troop, most of them Kindy and a couple from 1st grade.     We have our agenda all put together and our first meeting with our troop is on Monday January 11th.

All of the girls will be earning petals patches.  Our goal is to earn 10 petals by January to make the daisy on the girls smocks.    The Daisy troop will be for 2 years. Then I will be the leader when the triplets start Kindy and Lyn will be the leader for the Brownie Troop when Savannah becomes a 2nd grader.

Daisies don’t sell cookies and we don’t do fundraising which is really nice.  We have snacks each meeting, sing a themed Girl Scout song and Girl Scout Promise and do our activity.

One of the most beautiful and festive things to go do during Christmas time is go to Disneyland. 

I took the girls to Disneyland this afternoon.   It was a little chilly and we were all bundled up warm sweaters and it felt like something out of Norman Rockwell.

We started off at California Adventure and we saw Mickey Mouse Club House Live!  Afterwards we had some lunch that I had brought with us and then we ventured over to see Crush which is an interactive Nemo show.  Then we saw the Pixar Parade and the girls went crazy over all of their favorite cartoon characters such as Nemo, Buzz Light Year and Woody, etc.  

We left California Adventure and went into Disneyland Park.   We saw the beautiful Christmas Parade.  It was so beautiful!!      We all ate marshmallows and drank Hot Chocolate that I had brought with us.    It was lovely.  We took a stroll through the crowds and saw the beautifully decorated It’s a Small World.   It was a 2+ hour wait so we decided not to go on the ride.  We had something else more important to see!!  We will go back and see it after Christmas when the crowds are shorter.

After the parade, we went back to California Adventure, bought some Gingerbread Cookies and enjoyed them with hot chocolate and sat down to watch the Electric Light Parade.    This is the most magical parade ever!!     They don’t have this parade often, only during limited engagements so we were delighted to watch it.

It was so crowded that day that I parked on the very last lane of the uppermost level of the parking structure.  We had arrived at about 1:00pm.   Shortly after we arrived, they said Disneyland was sold out and the parking lot was full.  They were not accepting anymore patrons. We got there just in time.    Thankfully when we got on the tram it wasn’t too busy because pretty much everyone was already in the park.     Even though it was a little crowded at Disneyland park, California Adventure was only half as crowded so I am glad we spent a lot of our time there. 

This day really got all of us excited for Christmas!!  Yippee!!

We had our La Habra Moms Children’s Christmas party at Oeste Park.    We were a bit worried that the weather would be unpredictable, but we lucked out and it was 70 degrees – a beautiful day!!

Valentina’s husband, Morris, was Santa Claus.  He made the PERECT Santa.    All of us moms brought wrapped presents for our kids.   I brought the girls Mickey Mouse back pack purses for their present from Santa.   Inside the back pack was playing cards.     Each child got to sit on Santa’s lap and receive their present and tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas.  We got some great pictures of the kids with Santa!

We also had pizza, I brought rice crispy treats and Angie brought the most delicious 7 layer dip.     I also brought candy canes with an attached story about the candy cane.  It read:

Many years ago a candy maker
wanted to make a candy that would
symbolize the true meaning of
Christmas-Jesus.   

The hard candy was shaped like a “J”
to represent that Jesus 
is our rock of all ages.  

The candy was made of white
to stand for the pureness of Jesus. 
The red stripe represents the blood
that Jesus shed to save us from our sins.

So the next time you see a candy cane
take a minute to remember
the real meaning of Christmas.

I organized a fun cupcake decorating event at Michelle’s Bakery for La Habra Moms club.  We had a huge turnout and about 45 showed up!!    My sister Rosanne came with us to join in the fun. 

Michelle’s Bakery was so gracious to us.  They had a private room set up with tables full of all kinds of decorations, icings, chocolates, etc.   We each got a cupcake kit and all of us had a blast decorating our cupcakes.   Each table had an attendant to help us.  There were candy canes and chocolates for us to enjoy while we were decorating at each table.

They had cocoa and coffee for all of us as well.  What a wonderful experience!!

I have to say the city of La Habra had the cutest bugs for Halloween!!  Savannah was the queen bee, Amanda was a butterfly, Miranda was a bumble bee and Maryssa was a lady bug.  I made all of their costumes.  They had cute too too’s.   They looked so cute!!

We took them trick or treating in the neighborhood at about 6:00pm.    I went with them for about 20 minutes than I ran home to give out candy.  They were with daddy and got back at about 7:30.   They came back with boat loads of candy!!

I would say we had about 120 trick or treaters visit our house.    There were some awesome costumes.  Some teenagers came to the door and one of the girls was a pick and was holding a shot.  She said she was “Swine Flu”.  I cracked up and had to take a picture of her.  Too funny!!

Today was Savannah’s costume parade at school. She was so excited to wear her costume to school.   The school parade started at 10:30am, just 20 minutes after I dropped her off to school.  

I didn’t have time to dress up the triplets so I dressed them up in the car the 20 minutes before the costume parade started.

The Farina’s parked beside us.  They were their to see their 2nd grade twins in the costume parade, they were Fairy and the Frog characters.

I think the triplets got more attention than the costume parade did.   No one at our school have seen triplets before so it was fun!!   Thanksfully everyone moved their attention to their kids in their costumes.    Savannah’s Kindy class was the first class in the parade.  All of us waived and said Hi to Savannah.  She had so much fun.  I took lots of pictures of the parade and  of  Savannah with her classmates.   I also took pictures of my girls with the Farina girls in their costumes. 

It was a lot of fun!!