After the new year my troop and I switch into “cookie mode”. Cookie season is the most fun and busiest time for our troop! What is “cookie mode” you ask? That’s when we start discussing our goals (both personal and troop), organizing our ideas, creating sales materials and practice getting ready to talk to people. One thing that we do that always makes us laugh is when our troop leader (my mom) makes us practice the “creepy stare”… she claims it will help us in the future when we are adults. Cookie season is actually more than just earning rewards and hitting goals - we are learning some really valuable life skills like decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics; all while sharing the joy of cookies!!! But my favorite part of cookie season is selling with my little sister and cookie booths with my friends! I really enjoy making it a team effort to reach our goals. 

This year there is a new cookie called “Exploremores”. It is a rocky road ice cream inspired cookie filled with flavors of chocolate, marshmallow and toasted almond crème - yummmmmmm I can’t wait to try it! Doesn’t that sounds delicious?! In my opinion the Carmel deLites are the best and the classic shortbread comes in 2nd. Shortbread cookie with Nutella and blueberries is a breakfast I make for my siblings! :)  We offer a variety of cookies that fit most allergies, including a vegan and gluten-free option, so everyone has a chance to try our famous cookies. If you just don’t want to eat cookies, we also have a really great program that donates cookies to our local hero’s - Cookies4Heros. We were able to give local firefighters, police, and hospital staff 63 cases of cookies last year. Additionally, we donated 50 cases to various organizations in the area (SOS, Children’s Safe Harbor, & local elementary schools) all thanks to the generosity from you all. 

The sales from the cookies let us not only give back to our community but also funds our adventures! Each box of cookies we sell gives money to our troop, our community and council. Community funds allows us to have events for all local troops - its really great getting to know others. Council funds allow for maintenance of the 7 camps, horse facilities, programming/events, archery and much more!!! This past fall we used our troop funds to pay for our first overnight stay, which was at the Houston Museum of Natural Science - we slept with mummy’s, eek! We also did an overnight camp at Girl Scout camp grounds and that was a very exciting time. A few skills I’m looking forward to learning is how to make a fire, be brave enough to go primitive camping, and riflery. We also have some field trips in mind for reaching this years goals. Last year I sold 1,500 packages of cookies and worked 12 traditional booths. The troop sold 10,425 packages. This year my goal is 2,000 and the troops is 11,000. That’s a lot of cookies!