Category Archives: Girl Scouts

Honoring a Military Veteran with a Quilt

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There is the national organization, Quilts of Valor Foundation (QOV), a non-profit group that delivers beautiful quilts to our service men and women.  It is a fabulous non-profit group that is from any quilted hearts.

But, with so many of our service members from the most current conflicts in the past 10 years, there are dwindling numbers of older Veteran’s who have yet to be recognized with a quilt.  I do not see that there are any WWI Veteran’s still alive and the numbers of WWII Veteran’s are now dying off.  The Veteran’s from the Korean and Vietnam wars/conflicts are now mostly senior citizens and, again, there are more deaths each day from those who served during the 1950’s and 1960’s.

And unfortunately, QOV can barely keep up with the most recent returning Veteran’s, either wounded or not.  Which leaves our older Veteran’s perhaps recognized on a local level but rarely on a national level.

Enter in Military Veteran Quilts.  I started this website and hopefully, with the help of volunteers, it will grow legs and race across the United States – to help recognize those older service men and women who have yet to be noticed by the QOV.  Once the concept came to me, I wanted our first quilt to be made for someone local.  Our county’s American Legion was our Girl Scout Service Unit sponsor so naturally (I was a Girl Scout leader here for three years), that was the first place I looked for a recipient.  And then I recalled that the current Commander of our American Legion lived right here in the town that we lived in.  I didn’t have to look any further.  He was my chosen Veteran to receive the first Military Veteran Quilt.

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Here is the Commander, reading the words written on the back of his quilt.

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Here is the Commander holding his quilt.

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The Commander was in the Vietnam War as a Marine.  I machine appliqued these small round emblems onto the four corners of his quilt.  “Once a Marine, Always a Marine”

This first Military Veteran Quilt‘s fabric was donated by AbbiMays.com, the designing and piecing by myself and the quilting donated by Meloney Funk (herself an Air Force Veteran for 27 years).  To find out more about Military Veteran Quilts, please click on the link and visit our website.  Please remember to honor the older Veteran’s, too, as they deserve it for their service to our country!

Let’s Take a Minute to Learn Manners

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As I’ve said before, I have lived with a number of families while I was growing up – my own family, four foster families and a couple of other families after that.  Before my husband and I even had children, we would talk about the good, bad and ugly of raising our own offspring someday.  Manners was one of the biggies that we agreed were required.

Fast-forward a few years to when we had children who walked and talked and knew the difference between right and wrong on their level.  My kids always knew that we held hands anytime we went anywhere, be it the grocery store or to church.  When you have four kids and only two hands, this was imperative.  They knew that they had to be in car/booster seats while riding in an automobile.  They knew they had to at least try the food on their plate before they were allowed to say they did not like it.  They knew when we went shopping to look with their eyes and not with their hands.

But those manners that mattered to us?  They didn’t always matter to the adults they encountered.  I cannot even count the number of times that an adult would chastise me for making our kids say sir or ma’am.  Right there, IN FRONT OF OUR KIDS!  Oh yes, they did.  And it happened just as much with our close-knit church crowd as it did with their teachers at school.

In proper southern fashion, our children learned to address adults as sir or ma’am.  No exceptions unless it was a relative and then they had to put aunt or uncle in front of a first name.  If they were speaking to peers, that’s another story – this is mainly with adults.

If it was someone they were to show even more respect to, such as a teacher, they were to add the proper salutation to the first or last name (adult’s preference) – such as Miss, Mr. Mrs. or Ms.  No exceptions.

Gee, I still call the dad of one of my high school friends Mr. Sheldon – and we’re more than 30 years out of high school!  Regardless of whether he’s asked me to call him by his first name or not, I just cannot do it.  I was raised to show respect and that is the best way I can show it.

These past couple of weeks have really shown me that despite those adults who admonished us for the manners of our children did not have as much influence on them as the naysayer’s would have liked – and I honestly got tired of walking away from such people who reprimanded me like I was a child, for raising our children to have OUR definition of manners.

Anyway, these past few weeks have been eye-opening for our two oldest daughters in terms of using the manners that their parents not only taught them, but we still use today.  Our oldest daughter is working at a church camp.  She addresses her peers by their first names but she addresses her supervisors and directors as sir or ma’am.  She has been asked, repeatedly, to not call them that – but, she refuses.  She is showing them respect and if they don’t know or hadn’t learned the same manners, that’s not on our daughter’s shoulders.  She continues to show them respect.

Then, our second eldest daughter went to a sleepover the other night – and once again, the adults asked her not to use the same manners but to be less formal.  I am okay with a senior citizen asking one of our kids to call them the “grandparent” equivalent, as I continue to call a dear neighbor Nina as if I were one of her grand-kids (though she’s way too young to be my grandparent!).  But when she kept calling the Mom of the house “Ms. Last Name”, the mom asked her to call her by her first name….hence, she became Ms. First Name.  The mom didn’t care for that but our daughter has learned and showed her manners as she had been taught to do.

When I was a Girl Scout leader, my little Daisy’s, Brownies and Junior’s called me Ms. Tammy.  Perfectly acceptable to me because I didn’t want them to confuse me with my mother-in-law (who also helped with my troop).  If they called me Mrs. Harrison, I dealt with it but also helped them learn to call me Ms. Tammy.

Both my husband and myself have received lovely compliments from others about how well mannered and respectful our kids are, especially when we aren’t around them all the time.  It does a heart good to know that our life lessons are paying off.

And to those who stuck their nose where their nose didn’t belong?

Girl Scouts on the Go

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This past week, some of our nation celebrated the day of the girl.  On Friday afternoon – my two younger daughters also celebrated the day of the girl by having a small Girl Scout bridging and award ceremony.

My youngest daughter earned her Bronze Award in Girl Scouts.  This award is earned by girls at the Junior level of Girl Scouts and entails a plan they put into action to help others.  They have to put in a certain number of hours on planning, talking to the community and putting their plan into action – all on a volunteer basis.  If there’s a need for funding, they have to find a way to earn that, too.  DD#3 chose to help our local AGAPE room at the church who sponsored our Girl Scout troop.  They already had a lot of clothes and small appliances for the room but the director wanted her to set up a corner in the room for kids – is one thing for needy parents to go shopping but is an added bonus if the kids can pick out something special for themselves, too.  Our daughter raided our bookshelves and cleaned out her bedroom and set up her little corner in the AGAPE room with those items, plus items that were donated.  She also volunteered to help once a month when the AGAPE room was open.  My mother-in-law worked with our daughter to make all of this happen.

Our middle daughter earned her Silver Award.  This is the next step in Girl Scout awards, earned by a Cadette Girl Scout.  She chose to help a local animal rescue place by making dog treats for their dogs.  She had to do all of the things that were mentioned above for our younger daughter, but she had to put in 50 volunteer hours instead of 20.  The kicker of the Silver (and Gold) awards is that she has to make her project sustainable.  This means, long after she’s earned her award, the project she put into play has to continue.  To make this happen, she gave a presentation to the ladies at my mother-in-law’s church by sharing the recipe she and her dad came up with for all natural dog treats – and then she showed them how to make them.  The ladies at the church agreed to make four dozen dog treats a month.  Then, she got to go out to the rescue ranch and present the treats to the dogs.  This was the part she liked the most :-)   She will continue to make a few batches of dog treats a month, as well, in the coming year.

I couldn’t be more proud of my daughters.  Girl Scouts, at the local level, isn’t about politics.  It’s not about who is allowed to be in the troop or not.  It’s about the GIRLS and a goal of helping them learn leadership through a great program.  I can tell you that I have been a leader for 10+ years and each of my three daughters learned more about kindness, compassion and leadership through their Girl Scout affiliation than they learned just about anywhere else. 

We will continue on.  Both of these girls will be in the same troop next year.  DD#2 will be working toward her Gold Award, the highest award for a Girl Scout to achieve; and DD#3 will be working toward her Silver Award.  At this point, they still love their time as Girl Scouts and as long as they continue loving it, we will find a way to facilitate them moving forward!