It's that time of year again - pack holiday weekend! I've done the same thing this year as previous ones, and split my blogs into the 3 days which will be published on Wednesday and Friday this week, and Monday next week with the usual Monday post coming on Wednesday instead. Be prepared for some long posts too - sorry not sorry! The theme of this pac holiday was the Olympics - the girls voted to do the Artist and the Healthy Heart badges and that was the only way we could think of to combine the two!
This pack holiday we went to the same place as usual, Campwood House in Macaroni Woods near Eastleach. All of the leaders arrived at around 4:30 and started setting up. We stuck up all of the posters, organised the craft room, put away the food, and had our dinner. While we were eating dinner, the doorbell went. Brown Owl sent me to answer it and said "if it's your other half let him in, otherwise tell them to go away for a bit, they're too early". I opened the door and it was our Young Leader, much earlier than we had anticipated. I let her in and shouted down the corridor that it was her and Brown Owl shouted back "oh yeah, you can let her in too!".
At about 6:10, the first of the Brownies started arriving. A lot of them haven't been before and so the parents were all wandering around and seeing what it was like. Quite a few of them got a bit confused as to where to park too and just drove slowly around the house until we flagged them down and pointed out the parking area under the trees. Surprisingly this year, none of the parents were late - we often have one or two who get lost and are really late. We did have one say that her phone had taken her to a pub called Macaroni in Cirencester and she thought she was going to be late but then they found us. Just as the last Brownie arrived, my other half showed up too, having come stright from work. He is a Beaver Leader and came to help us out as an extra pair of hands. I helped him set up his tent as the light was quickly fading while Brown Owl did the welcome for the girls and gave out booklets and told them all the safety info
- Don't go outside without an adult
- Don't go in the leaders rooms
- Don't touch the fire in the living room (not that we light it!)
- Don't trip over the tent guy ropes,
- And most importantly for this year, keep the bedroom door closed while you're getting dressed as we have a man here this year and we often have a few girls who run around in their undies (or nothing...) while getting dressed...
Once they had done that, we set up the first activity of the weekend for them - Olympic Village Building. We had bought loads of cardboard and plastic recycling which we piled up outside, having set up some lights. We also gave each six a roll of packing tape. They were then given two pictures of athletes from their sixes sport (Horse Riding, Gymnastics, Swimming) and then had to build a village for the athletes which would be judged on style and also how well it survived the elements. The girls really went to town on their designs, we had full on swimming pools, changing rooms, stables, and more! We took a short break in the middle of making to have a supper of hot dogs. We then gave them a 5 minute warning (which sent them into panic mode!) and then stopped them. We went round each group and rated their design out of 10. We then tested their resilience by squirting them with a water pistol (one of the ones you can pressurise) and then tipped a bit of a bucket of water over them. The girls extracted their athletes from their village and we rated them based on how dry their people were. One six managed to have one completely dry athlete and the other two sixes' athletes were completely drenched and one of them somehow ended up getting ripped in half! We then gave out stickers for their charts - 3 for the winning six, 2 for second, and 1 for last place. The girls really seemed to enjoy doing this, and we were very impressed with their ingenuity - my other half had done it with his Beavers building castles and said our Brownies were much more creative than his Beavers!
The girls then got ready for bed and had hot chocolate before all disappearing into their bedroom. We leaders sat in the living room and chatted for a while before deciding we were tired too. Brown Owl and I got ready for bed, lay down, closed our eyes, and... heard crying coming down the corridor! One of the other leaders was still up but Brown Owl went to investigate too and there were two girls who were tired and feeling a bit ill. They had a drink of water and we settled them again but by then a lot of other girls had woken up and started talking. Brown Owl gave it a bit of time to settle down but it didn't so she went in and told them to shut up and go to sleep. She came back to bed and we both fell asleep. We both vaguely remember waking up and hearing one of the other leaders going in and saying "Brownies, I am not impressed" and we found out in the morning that it was 2:30 and the two leaders in the room closer to the girls hadn't slept much at all before then!
It has been a fairly straighforward start to pack holiday this year, here's hoping the rest of the weekend goes smoothly too!
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