100 Years of Girl Scouts

Last weekend was the Girl Scouts' 100 years celebration that I'd been looking forward to since last fall. We could not stay the whole day because of a family baby shower event in the afternoon, but our Daisy troop got a little sample of what a large scale Girl Scout outing means.

We took the metro into DC, crossing Independence Avenue just as a thunder of Harleys rolled up to the light. 

Since I was holding hands with little scouts, I did not get a photo of the Daisys waving merrily at the huge biker guys, who grinned back.


Down the Mall to the Washington Monument,

and we took a short break near the main stage. The aisles of metal fencing reminded me of World Youth Day, as did the assembling crowd.

We wound around one of the walkways around the Monument, and scouts started giving out "swaps," little decorated tags and pins identifying where they were from, and chatting. We met scouts from as close as other parts of the DC metro area to as far away as Texas. We met a couple of grandmas who came without a troop; their Girl Scout daughters were all grown up, and the next generation not old enough. Monkey1 was excited when she met a troop from Vermont. Later when sorting the swaps, we found one from Singapore.

This picture the Monkeys insisted is for the next 100 Years celebration, so they can have another picture of them in the same place... when they are 107 and 105 years old.

I was wearing Monkey3, "the littlest Girl Scout," in a wrap and had my hat over her most of the time so she would not get sunburned (so I did). She was given a few swaps as well.

While Monkey2 expressed disappointment that we did not get to all sing the camp songs we had been practicing, the novelty of the swaps helped make up for it. 


I hope that the politics of church and scouts gets ironed out. This gathering reminded me of so many special times that I had as a Girl Scout, and the promise of what it can still hold for girls.  I think the short song, sung as a round, says it best:


Make new friends
and keep the old.
One is silver
and the other gold.