The kids could have played all day on the bars by the bridge. It was all we could do to get them off the bars and over to the bridge for the ceremonial walk.
When it was her turn, Ever took a really long time to walk across the bridge, and when she finally did, she was holding hands with another girl. I wasn't sure what happened and thought maybe she was helping the other girl, who I think was pretty new. Turned out Ever was just nervous. They did some sort of pledge at the end, but I couldn't hear anything.
Back in the picnic area, the girls did a little skit about becoming Brownies.
It took them a while to get their hands all set up for this:
They said the pledge and did a few more cute things.
It was all very lovely, and Marin and Sara did an amazing job. They put in so much work.
After everything was over, Anna and I had a brief chat with Sara about cookies. She'd sent out e-mails the night before telling some of us that we owed money for cookie sales. Cookie season had been over for months, and she sat on the accounting forever. Sara said I owed $124, and Anna owed $56. That meant our combined balance equaled exactly 36 boxes of cookies - three entire cardboard boxes (they come a dozen packages of cookies to a box). Anna and I had pretty much pooled our cookies, and Ever and Leela did all their door-to-door sales together. I tried to keep careful track and make sure we collected money for every box sold. (Sales at Jim's office were confusing since his nurse took around an order form and collected money over a period of time). Anna was meticulous. We knew we had not stolen cookies or embezzled money. (I also realized later that I had made sure that the total amount of money I turned in exceeded the value of the cookies we sold [since we got some donations].) We had no idea how Sara had figured out our balances or how she had known what to attribute to me and what to attribute to Anna. I paid the entire $180 Sara thought we owed collectively, figuring that if anyone had messed up, I had. I told Sara, though, that if she told me I was off $5 or $10, I would've believed it, but I certainly didn't sell that many cookies and not collect money for them. Anna was not pleased about how it was all handled, and we were both bewildered. Nevertheless, during our unproductive discussion about cookies, wherein Sara just said, "I don't know what to tell you; the math all worked out," the girls enjoyed the playground equipment. I had a heck of a time getting them out of there.
Fast forward to August, when Anna figured out why Sara thought we had underpaid. She found a text exchange between her and Sara detailing the exact cookies we returned at the end, when we decided we wouldn't do any more door-to-door sales. I remembered taking all our extra cookies to a troop meeting and setting them on the side of the room. I asked Sara if I needed a receipt, and she said no, she had Anna's text. Leela and Ever weren't credited for all those cookies we returned. I have no idea how in the world Sara worked out the accounting. It's all very confusing. She ended up not being able to be at the meeting at the beginning of this month (September) when we explained to Marin what happened and showed her the texts. Marin believes our account and thinks we should get our money back, but I haven't heard anything further. In any case, Sara has a full-time job with the Girl Scouts now and can't be in charge of cookie money, and Anna and I volunteered to be the cookie people this year. I hope we can avoid anything screwy. It is really hard to keep track of everything, and I don't think Sara stole money. Somehow, though, she messed things up.
1 comment:
That's all quite the production with the ceremonies and such. Good work. And best of luck to you with cookie sales this year. That sounds intense.
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