It Floated!

I sent out an email this morning to the parents of the girls in the Girl Scout troop that I lead with Exceeding Expectations as the subject and it was such a good feeling. It was truly the only way to describe the event we took part in yesterday. The annual Cardboard Boat Regatta.



No this was not our boat. It was built by another group and we all looked at it in disbelief but it really was cardboard. It was also kind of unstable which led to us referring to it as flipper - 'cuz it flipped to one side in one race and the other in the next.

Anyway, after building the event up for my girls for a very long time, we started building our boat about 6-8 weeks ago and it was anything but smooth sailing. We struggled with design and adhesives and then came the push to get it painted. We wanted to get as much paint on the boat as possible to prevent water from getting to the cardboard. In the end, this was our boat.



Note: no Girl Scout cookies were wasted in this effort - those boxes were empty.

Yesterday was the big day and most of the parents and the girls were convinced that we'd sink like a stone. However, you should never underestimate girl power (or the determination of their moms). Our boat floated!



We were able to participate in the 2 races that I had entered us into and - wonder of wonders - we were still in good enough shape to enter the Survivor's race where all of the boats that were still standing race for bragging rights at the end. We sank midway through that one but by then nobody was upset about it at all. In fact, we cheered when our boat went down. It served us well.



It was such a great day and all of the girls present had a chance to crew the boat. It couldn't have been a better day... except if we had won one of our races. That would've been nice. But sometimes just making a good showing really is a victory in itself and this was one of those times.