Avocado is Silver

If I write this up as a narrative it will go on for pages, and...no. So: highlights.

FRIDAY
Arrival Time: 4:30 afternoon.
Number of Camporee Attendees (including adults and "Camporee Committee"): 130
Number of Hours I Spent Cooking on Friday: Seven and a half.
New Skills!: I can now run an industrial mixer and an industrial dishwasher!
Servings of Cake Made: 150±
Hours of Sleep on Friday Night (me): 5 1/2
Deer Intercepted on Way Back to Cabin at 12:30 am: Three or four. They looked as startled to see us as we were to see them.

SATURDAY
Wake Up Time:6 am
Pancakes Mixed and Made: 360±
Daytime Temp, Saturday: 102° outside. It was cooler in the kitchen.
Workshops Taught: Three: two cupcake decoration for the Juniors; one sugar-molding for the Brownies. The girls all were delighted, but boy, what a mess all that sugar made. We also made the pudding and crushed cookies for Dirt Cups*, the lunch dessert.
Lunch Chores: Serving burritos to the starving millions.
Free Time: About an hour of sitting around gossiping and soaking my feet.
Dinner Prep Begun: 3:30. Cut up stuff for salad and fruit salad, helped with service and clean up.
Done in Kitchen: 8:30.
The Bedtime Experience: We (the adults) were over at the cabin by 8:30, ready for bed by 9. At 10 or so the Cadettes came rocketing in at the top of their lungs. Some of them kept leaping off the stairs directly in front of the adults' room door, until I threatened them with death. Even so Namu, our dauntless Troop Leader, had to threaten the girls with No Silver Award At All if they didn't go to bed an hour or so later. It was still hot--until about 2am when it got chilly. Sleep under these conditions was, um, not optimal.

SUNDAY
Wake Up Time: 7:15 or so.
Generally: Cooking, Serving, Cleaning. Riding herd on kids' clean up (very important, as we wouldn't get our site deposit back if the place wasn't cleaner than we found it). Losing my temper with two Cadettes who "just happened" to wander off just at the point when they should have been cleaning up the cabin. Cleaning five bathrooms (for some reason it's required that the adults clean the bathrooms). Wrapping up leftovers. Discovering a pan of meatballs left in the oven, and dispensing same to various hungry people.
Time Spouse Arrived to Pick Us Up: 1pm.
Time Inspection Was Over and We Actually Left: 2:30pm.

As usual, there are the parents who pitch in everywhere, and there are parents who do a chore and then expect that they have done their part and are due lavish plaudits. Same thing with the girls: some worked their tails off, others...not so much. For my own particular Girl Scout I will say: she worked very very hard, was as enthusiastic, graceful, and generous as it is possible for a 13 year old under stressful circumstances could possibly be, and she, certainly, earned her Silver Award. And when we got home the kid did her Algebra homework and we had take home Chinese, and she was in bed by 9:30.

So, for the Silver Award, it's all over now except the paperwork.

* Dirt cups: take a cake-style ice cream cone. Fill with a mix of chocolate pudding and crushed cookies. Top with a Gummi worm. A Girl Scout classic.