My Monday Morning Apology

We had a bar-b-que with the girls’ Junior troop yesterday. Before we all had fun, we had a badge ceremony. At the ceremony I made a mental note to find the missing Daisy and Brownies badges.
For a long time now we were unable to locate one Daisy vest and one Brownie sash. We found the other two hanging on the blond twin’s side of the room. We stripped the brunette twin’s room down to nothing searching for these things. We went through the basement and the living room. While we were searching for the missing pieces I kept the badges in plastic baggies. We had a group from Daisies and a group from Brownies. With the Juniors ceremony, I now had three baggies. It was time to find the missing vestments.
We went through the brunette twin’s room again before I told the girls they would have to find these things tomorrow. There would be no fun until these things were found. They went to bed, but I kept searching. Daddy and I sat down to watch TV. I sorted all the badges on the credenza and organized the project. Now I really needed the missing pieces. I kept getting up to look here or there. I knew these things were in our house. It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t find them. I finally gave up about 11:00 p.m. I went to bed thinking about the vest and sash. In the middle of the night I sat up in bed with a startling realization. We weren’t looking for the brunette twin’s vest and sash. We were looking for the blond twin’s vest and sash. The blond twin wouldn’t leave her vest and sash hanging on a hook underneath other things. Hers would be put away neatly in a drawer or on a shelf.
I went into their room and turned on her closet light. Quietly I opened her closet door and reached on her shelf. There, folded neatly, were her vest and sash. I took them downstairs, put them with the rest of the project and went to bed.
The first thing I did when the girls woke up Monday morning was apologize to the brunette twin. I was so annoyed that she couldn’t find her vest and sash. She was so relieved that we found the missing pieces. She was so tired of searching for the items. She also felt vindicated that these were in her sister’s room. She kept saying she didn’t have them and she was right. Why didn’t we find these earlier? I think there are a couple of things I did wrong. First, I thought I was looking for the brunette twin’s items. I was in the wrong place all the time. Second, even when we looked in the blond twin’s closet, we didn’t do a thorough search. Daddy hangs his “out of season” shirts in the blond twin’s closet. We have two bars so his hang on top and her stuff is on the bottom where she can reach it every day. We never moved Daddy’s shirts to see what was on the shelf.  Third, let’s be honest here, I wasn’t very focused on putting the badges on the vest/sashes. I’d think about it, forget about it, see a badge, and think about it again. If I had really spent some time on this then the badges would be in their proper places.
Now that we have everything, I’ve been busy sewing these things on and reminiscing. The girls have had a lot of fun so far with Girl Scouts. They are in their final years when Girl Scouts is more about community service and earning their Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards. It’s fun to look back at what they did as Daisies and Brownies and wonder what kind of impact they can make and Juniors and Cadettes.