Breaking the Rules

Lia's Girl Scout troop has had an end-of-school-year party every year for as long as I can remember; however, thanks to Covid-19, we decided to postpone it until we moved into Phase 3 when gatherings larger than ten people were allowed.  None of us ever imagined that we still would not be in Phase 3 by the end of August when we decided to postpone the party at the beginning of June.  As the summer months progressed, Covid cases increased even more in our area and our governor tightened down on everything and "froze" every county in their current phase.  He also announced that gatherings more than 5 people outside of the people with whom we live with were not allowed.  It all started to look pretty dismal at this point.  Parties and get togethers were never going to happen again at the rate we were going. 
Surprisingly a few weeks ago, the troop leaders sent out a text taking a survey from all of the parents about whether or not we wanted to just go ahead and schedule the party before the new school year started.  Although it technically was against our governor's rules, every mom in the troop texted back and said that she was fine with it.  I offered to host it and suggested that we do not invite parents and siblings like we have done in years past to help keep the numbers down.  Everyone seemed on board with this and so we ended up hosting a small party today with the eight members of Lia's troop, plus the two leaders, and my family.  The girls had a great time receiving their patches and cookie reward money gifts, playing in the backyard, swimming in the pool, and eating a BBQ dinner.  Ella, Logan, and Emmett had a great time joining in with the big girls and it, honestly, just felt so good to be doing something "normal" again like this after so many months...even though it really was breaking the rules! 

The troop decided to adopt-an-animal from the Point Defiance Zoo as their service project that they used some of their cookie reward money for.  Every girl got to choose an animal of their choice and received a certificate, a photo of the animal, and a beautiful stuffed animal.  Here they are all lined up showing off their "adopted animals."  Lia has known four of these girls (Mila, Mollie, Sienna, and Addy) since PreK and has been in a troop with them for almost as long.  It's rather amazing.

Striking a silly pose.

Doing a "Toyota" in the air.

All eight girls lined up in the pool with Ella posing on the ladder in the background.  Logan was in the water somewhere and refused to be in the picture.  Typical. :-)