Cookie Craziness!

This is Abbey's first year of being in Girl Scouts. My goals for her joining Girl Scouts were not to become an expert camper, or to collect a million iron-on patches for her vest. I just hoped she would make some friends at her new school, and give me direct access to Girl Scout cookies. Both of those goal have now been accomplished! Abbey does enjoy going to the meetings and being with the other girls, and has participated in a few activities outside of the meetings. And of course her troop leader got them all very excited about the bazillions of cookies they would all sell. Abbey's original goal was to sell 300 boxes of cookies- so that she could get a small stuffed giraffe that I could get for less than $10 at any store. I suggested she set her goal at a more reasonable 100 boxes and we talked about how hard she would have to work to meet that goal. She started her sales with a neighbor who is also a friend from church and is the mom of two former Girl Scouts- the perfect customer! Abbey was a little nervous, but talked to her and sold her first two boxes. Then Chad took an order form to work with him... and sold nearly 100 boxes. So much for teaching Abbey about working hard to meet goals! We still went door-to-door in our neighborhood, and I sold some cookies to friends who didn't know any other Girl Scouts. A few family members even gave their phone orders to Abbey. All in all, she sold over 200 boxes of cookies! We are proud of her. Here are the girls with all the cases of cookies before we started eating delivering them.
  

Those cases of cookies had to be split up into about 60 individual orders. Because I am a little OCD, I separated each customer's order, wrapped it in rubber bands (or put it in a bag or box) with their name on it. For the customers that Abbey could not deliver to, she signed a note thanking them for buying cookies from her. All this took a while but kept me from feeling like the cookies were taking over the house! Of course we did order several boxes for ourselves. Everyone has a favorite. Mine are Samoas, Chad's are Tagalongs, Abbey's are surprisingly not chocolate, but are Trefoils and Dulce de Leche. Elliott likes most of them. Here she is demonstrating the right way to eat a Tagalong (also known as Peanut Butter Patty).

Hold cookie in both hands- you don't want it to get away! 

Take a BIG bite.

Smile and enjoy!

So thanks to all our friends and family members who helped Abbey meet her cookie goals. She is looking forward to getting two patches and some small prizes from Girl Scouts, and her troop will do something fun this spring with the cookie money they earned!