The plan was for an group playdate at the park for my Girl Scout troop after school yesterday.

Despite my saying we weren’t going to continue once they left their elementary school, they all asked if we could please do Girl Scouts again this year.  They have so many other activities, I hesitated to say yes, until I realized that what they wanted was the social aspect – they wanted to know that they had time set aside here & there for their old pack of friends in the middle of making new friends at a new school.  So I said yes.  I’m a sucker for those girls.

We’re not officially starting it off until they are more settled in school, but I thought a get together would be good for the girls.  I thought they could all walk down to the park, I’d have a nice snack and they could play together until they had to run off to their other activities.

I knew there was a chance of rain in the forecast, as there has been all week.  But for the first time in days, the sun was actually out yesterday.  Until about 10 minutes before the girls were due to be released from school.  The clouds rolled in, but I perserved, having packed my little red wagon with a cooler of bottled water, tablecloth and napkins,  a big bowl of grapes and a very special treat, what we call “Uncle George’s O’Henry Bars” – named for the fishing buddy of Pat who gave me the recipe after I downed about half a pan of them at his house one night.  One of the very recipes in my repertoire that isn’t completely from scratch and super healthy. 

Normally, I ask that parents send a healthy snack.  I specifically request fruit, no sugary treats, because I don’t give a rats behind what any study says, you put sugar in that group of girls and get ready to peel them off walls.

As the some of the girls came up the street, thunder boomed.  I had the girls break down the park set up and bring it back to the house.  I ran around my house, totally unprepared for nine 10 year old girls.  I moved the coffee table out of the living room, spread the tablecloth and declared it a ‘floor picnic’.  They devoured their snack, piled on my sofa and started crawling the walls. 

My living room is exactly eight and a half feet wide by eleven feet long.  It is not big enough for 9 girls.  It’s definitely not big enough for 9 girls who are crawling the walls thanks to the sugar I had just fed them because I thought it’d be nice to give them a treat and because I thought they’d be running it off at the park.  Rain plans are never my thing and usually, it works out for me.  Not so much here.