Badges and Cookies (UPDATED)

Our Missionettes and Royal Rangers

Last night was the quarterly Royal Ranger Council of Achievement at our church. Luke earned a few badges and we are very proud of him. He worked hard and was after me constantly to work on them. He was the only one who earned more than the one badge that they did together as a group. I think that's probably because he has a book and we know what all the badges and requirements are. And the fact that his daddy was a RR commander helps his motivation as well. He has kind of slowed down on his progress because we don't have many more to earn and he is going to be working on the God and Country medal for his age group which is more involved than the badges. He will be working on the God and Me medal.

You can hear his little friend in the background saying that Luke is a homeschooler - a Home Ranger! At the end you can see all his little buddies congratulating him. Sorry for the poor video - Bob left our video camera at home so I opted for the video on my digital camera. I didn't get any stills so this is as good as it gets....one of these days we will get all of our media equipment organized and remember to bring both!

Jozie has been selling Girl Scout cookies over the past couple of weeks. She had a goal of 95 boxes. I wasn't really sure how many was a reasonable goal because I've never done it before and we weren't sure how many we could reasonable sell. She chose 95 because I stopped her there as she was writing 950! I couldn't see that happening unless we walked all over town and I didn't think I could do that! LOL She was going to do 950 boxes because she could earn $100 for her troop in Dakota bucks that they could spend on badges and such in the store there. So last night we finished up her sales and she sold 96 boxes! I'm sure if we were a little more aggressive and went to a couple more house we could have sold more but I thought it was great for her first time selling Girl Scout Cookies!

* Update: I just brought in Jozie's cookie order and she officially sold 98 boxes - the neighbor bought 2 more boxes as we were going out the door to turn in her order form!
I couldn't believe how much these babies cost! They are up to $4 per box and these girls only get $0.75 of that for their troop! I did a little research on it and in 2006 they were only $3.50 per box and the girls earned $0.85 cents per box. And that was only 2 years ago! To me - though most people think there are no other cookies in the world like them - you'd think that the GSA would come up with a fundraiser that they get a better percentage from - closer to 50% would be make more sense to me. These girls work hard - going door to door, selling at the mall or other public place, calling long distance relatives, etc. and all they get to show for it is about 20% profit. It's a shame! (I believe that Keebl*er is actually the maker of Girl Scout cookies so they are really the ones who profit from these little girls selling their cookies!)