Girl Scouts, mothers play pajama game
Kayla Frails was so excited Thursday night, she couldn't sleep.
She was awake anticipating spending the evening with her mother at the Girl Scouts Mamas in Pajamas Mother-Daughter Sleepover and Cookie Kick-Off on Friday night at the Evans High School gymnasium.
Organizers of the event wanted to get troops excited about cookie sales, which begins Saturday and gives mothers and daughters a chance to dream big together.
"It brings us closer together," said Sylvia Frails of Harlem, as she made dream catcher ornaments with her daughter, of Troop 722, at the sleepover.
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Event organizers Dorothy Gunder and Jennifer Crow of the Martinez-Evans Service Unit Team worked hard to center the event around dreaming big, this year's Girl Scout theme. Gunder is the service manager and Crow is the recruiter.
They set up activity stations that centered on that theme including allowing participants to silkscreen their own Girl Scout T-shirts, making dream catchers and making model sleeping bags with tiny Girl Scouts sleeping in them. But Pretty Hands, the manicure-pedicure station, seemed to be the most popular.
More than 60 volunteers, made up of the Evans High School Interact Club and Cadette and Senior Girl Scout troops, did much of the setup and running the evening's events, including activity stations.
Nancy Crawford of Evanswas easy to spot in the gymnasium filled with about 450 mothers and daughters from 82 Columbia County troops. Her daughter, Molly Lee, 8, of Troop 199, brought glow-in-the-dark polish for the Pretty Hands station. Molly wanted the whole treatment, toes included.
Nancy Crawford gets her nails done by her daughter, Molly Lee, 8, at a Girl Scouts' sleepover Friday at the Evans High School gym.
Photo by Valerie Rowell
"At the Pretty Hands station, we hoped mothers and daughters would relax and talk about their dreams for the future and their goals," Gunder said.
The gym's sleeping areas were divided into areas named after the famous Girl Scout cookies including Thin Mints, Do-Si-Dos, All Abouts, Tagalongs and Samoas. The girls and their mothers rushed into the gym to find their designated area and set up sleeping bags, air mattresses, camping lanterns and stuffed animals before enjoying dinner provided by Baldino's Giant Jersey Subs.
A Safety and Manners station prepared the Scouts on how cookie sales manners including how to politely handle a customer who does not want to buy cookies.
After dinner, activities and snacks, girls chose between the moviesShrek and Monsters Inc., both showing at midnight.
Despite a night filled with not much sleep and lots of giggling, the Scouts and their mothers were treated to 600 breakfast biscuits from Bojangle's Famous Chicken and Biscuits, which were delivered at 6:30 a.m. The girls needed their energy to get started on the two-month cookie sales drive.
The Scouts learn valuable life skills from the sale including setting goals, keeping records, handling money, meeting and greeting people, fulfilling obligations and the satisfaction of personal achievement. But the sale also supports troop activities like trips or charitable donations, scholarships and council-wide events. The Scouts individually earn money that go toward uniform purchases, summer camp or other activities.
The Central Savannah River Girl Scout Council has lots of talented salesgirls as over 16 million cookies, which equals to 48,000 cases or 10 truckloads, were sold last year.