Swimarathon and Mother's Day Service

29/03/14
 
Today was the annual swimarathon at a local school pool. Every year we enter a team or two of Brownies. This year we had 16 who said possibly, 12 who eventually took sponsorship forms and 8 who actually showed up on the day... We got there for 12:45 and met the girls. Brown Owl collected in their one day activity forms while I took their sponsorship forms and then Brown Owl registered them while I took them all to get changed. They were pretty quick at changing because most of them were wearing their swimming costumes under their clothes and we went through to the poolside. 

We had to wait a few minutes for the previous session to finish and then we went and lined up by our lane. They get 45 minutes to swim as many lengths as they can so we get our girls lined up so they each get to swim the same number of lengths (although they can choose to sit out if they want). We always aim to beat our previous records as opposed to competing against the other lanes as most of them are senior teams (one year we were next to a syncro swimming team!) so our aim was to beat 56 lengths. We eventually got 70 lengths which beat 10 of our previous years, I believe, and was 2 short of last year. The most lengths we've ever swum was in 2006 when we did 80. That year was the year I was an older Brownie and our team was pretty much made up of my friends and no younger girls and we were all very good swimmers and extremely competitive so I'm not sure we'll ever beat it! The girls were pleased with it at any rate! 

When we were done we all went back to the changing rooms. Brown Owl went out into the foyer to meet the parents and I stayed in the changing room with the girls and sent them out to her as they were dressed. Two of the girls decided they wanted to have a shower but another girl was complaining she was feeling ill so I helped her to put her tights on and then took her out to her parents and left the other two to mess around in the shower (I can only do one thing at a time!). When I got back from taking the ill girl out, the two who'd been in the shower were running around the, now nearly empty, changing room in their swimming costumes playing with the hair dryer..! I then spent the next 10 minutes trying to get them to get dressed which resulted in them just running around with no clothes on until one of their parents (who's also one of our leaders) came in to see what was taking so long and they finally got dressed. We had a small hiccup when one of them lost her T-shirt but it had just fallen down the back of a bench. Finally the last girl finished and we could go home!

It was good fun, as usual, if a little tiring because we only had the two of us to look after all the girls.

30/03/14

This morning was the church parade for Mothering Sunday. I couldn't go but Brown Owl did. 7 of our girls showed up which she was really pleased with - we thought we'd maybe get 3/4 maximum. One of the girls went up and helped out with an activity and they all helped give out flowers after the service too. The other thing that really surprised her was that the girls who went were all ones who came yesterday so they'd done two events on two consecutive days! We were very proud of our unit this weekend.