– girls should print boarding passes and bring them with them, they can be printed starting 24 hours before the flight. Mom will print a full set as back up

– everyone can signup for frequent flyer accounts if they haven’t already and get the information entered on-line before coming to the airport. If you don’t get this flight credited online, bring you confirmation with you and you can have a gate agent assist

– Meal allotment is $15 per scout per meal (lunch and dinner) including tip, no snacks, no airport food or drink included in this. If finances look good towards the later part of the week, girls may decide to use allocated food money to go out one night for ice cream or a treat.

– we will not have hard feelings with one another if someone orders something that costs $5 and someone else uses the full $15 allotted per meal but the expectation is that we’re eating what we order and not wasting food.

– looks like we have time and depending on what we spend at Navy Pier, finances to do some sort of guided tour. Kirsten and Kirby are looking into options.

– I am making reference cards for everyone that have cell phone numbers of everyone on the trip, address and phone information for the places we’re staying, and flight numbers. Everyone will need to have one of these with them at all times.

– Lesli is in charge of making sure we have designated meeting locations at each destination in case of separation. Girls are not to roam any of the locations on their own. We will use the buddy system for things like trips to the bathroom.

– On Wednesday, Lesli will bring Kirby and Karen through security. Beth, Kirsten, Mom, Ben and I will go through separately and meet up at the United gate for the scout flight.

– Once in Chicago, we’ll talk by cell phone to arrange meeting location in the airport. Mom will try to catch up with everyone when we land at the United gate but it’s only a 10 minute arrival difference. Please DO NOT leave the secure area until we’re all synced up.

– Lesli is checking with the hotel on adjoining rooms and a possible early check in or storage of our bags before check in time. If we can get adjoining rooms we will bunk in one and the adults in the other. If not, we’ll figure out bunking arrangements when we’re all together.

– The art project turned out great, I will store it in my suitcase

-Katelynne

We discussed our trip in great detail, and finalized the itinerary. We talked about packing, security checking, and rules on what can be packed. (TSA link: http://www.tsa.gov/) Reminder: We need to be able to carry all of our own luggage through the city streets and train stations, and possibly stairs. We asked the Assistant Troop Leader to get the New Cuisines badges for us from the GS store. We ate some fabulously homemade cupcakes with creative icing butterflies. We talked about our First Aid and Babysitting badges and the Service Bar award. We decided to purchase a 3-day transit card and buy travel for the last day as needed. We asked the troop leader to order those. We also talked about doing other things with more troops, because we don’t all have the same interests anymore, and should connect with other girls who do. We discussed fundraising opportunities other than GS cookies and fall products for future trips and fun experiences. We need to decide what to do before we fund raise. (We found a lot of exciting trips on the GS Destinations website that we think we may like to do).

The itinerary was completed today. It will be updated shortly. We were discussing to bring some of our own money, to go shopping for Chicago souvenirs.We calculated our budget, and figured out that we were under-budget by $378.62. This is good. That leaves us with $94.66 for each Girl Scout. We decided that there would be a $15 dollar budget for each girl for lunch.

We have 4,534.34 before we allocated the money for Chicago. After Chicago we will have 2,977.14 not allocated.

We decided that we would meet at 2:30 at Laura’s house for the cooking badge. We will eat pizza at 7 pm. Bring your own ingredients!

We got our cookie prizes, and cookie dough, and we are bringing home a detailed cash record of troop

(7/18-7/22) Chicago trip notes:

We created our packing list, looked up the weather in Chicago, and we started the budget for the trip. Packing list is on website and the budget will be added shortly.

New Cuisines Badge (May 26, can everyone make it?) 

We did the research for each of the different dishes and each person is responsible for their assigned dish. They are to bring the ingredients needed for their dish and their plan of how they’re going to divide the work to make sure it counts for everybody.

Sweet Berry Farms (April 7, 2012)

We will meet and pick strawberries, and possibly other fruits that grow on vines. Then we’ll come back to Katelynne’s house to make Strawberry Preserves.

We’re having scheduling problems since everyone is doing so much extracurricular things so please do your best to avoid any conflicts. we would swim and jet ski fun times and lesli will take us to lunch with a minimum budget of $40 total ($10 per person). We are going to take two cars because not everyone doesn’t want to go swimming. We are going to spend money on picking strawberries.

Seedballs for Journey project

I have emailed a man from Reimer’s ranch telling him all the kinds of seeds that are in the seedballs. He replied and said that he would send my email to the natural resource department. I (Kirsten) will tell you when we get an update from him.

Nice meeting last night!  A couple of notes:

(On-going) Girl Led Efforts 
I’ll be working on setting up a joint signer with the checking account so we can rotate girls through an official treasurer position.  Slate this to start after this year end financial report is filed, term will be one year and Kirsten will be the first to fill the position.

I’m setting up this blog to ease with communications.  Girls will need to be responsible going forward for updating and maintaining it.

 (7/18-7/22) Chicago trip notes:
– We’ll be staying at the Hampton Inn Majestic on West Monroe, Lesli will handle reservations
– Itinerary for the day events has been set (separate trip page to be created)
– Girls each have an assignment to determine transportation for a destination

1.         Karen  Airport -> Hotel
2.         Kirby  Hotel -> Aquarium, Field Museum, Planetarium (all are in the same area)
3.         Kirsten  Hotel -> Museum of Science and Industry
4.         Katelynne  Hotel -> Grandparents house

– Girls should start researching restaurants, breakfast is covered at the hotel
– A few evening events were discussed, girls should research theater offerings for discussion