Girl Scout Day -Hellen Keller Festival

Thursday was the 1st annual Girl Scout Day at the Hellen Keller Festival. Hellen Keller's birthplace is less than an hour from here. I read the girls a book about Hellen Keller and Annie Sullivan this Spring. I thought we might go tour her house, and I looked it up on the internet and saw that they host a whole week of festival every summer. That was exciting, so I decided to wait until then to go, then I got something from Girl Scouts about a day just for Girl Scouts. I signed myself and Madelyn and Natalie up, they didn't allow "tag-a-longs". Which is what they call siblings, other parents, friends, etc. that are sometimes allowed to come to an activity. I had to get a babysitter for Hannah, and she got lucky in that her family was going to the lake on their boat that day, so she got to spend the day boating and having her own adventure.

Back at the Girl Scout Festival. We started out the day in a large Church's gym, in nice air conditioning, listening to the great great grand neice of Hellen Keller tell her story. She is the great great granddaughter of Hellen Keller's little sister whom she dumped out of the crib when she was a baby. Very interesting. Then the split us into 3 groups and our group first toured the Tennessee Valley Arts Museum. There were two speakers that talked to us there and led us around. After that, we got to take trolley rides around the town of Tuscumbia. It was a pretty long ride where we stopped off at the cemetary and saw the Keller family plot. Hellen and Annie S. are buried in Washington, but the rest of her family is buried where we toured.

After the trolley, we got some water and finally toured the house and grounds where Hellen was born. We got another tour guide for that. 85% of the memorabilia in the house is actually the original and authentic. The house was a lot smaller than I had imagined.I knew there was a den, dining room, etc. I guess I was expecting a huge house with more rooms. Another suprise was that the cottage that Annie to Helen to was probably about 25 feet from the big house. I knew it was on the same property and they drove 2 1/2 hours around their 650 acre plantation to make Hellen think that they were far away, but I still thought the cottage was more than a few yards from the house.

After touring the house we walked back to the huge Church gym and had another talk from a lady who taught us how to sign a song. Then we had a catered dinner. Dinner was good, but when we went to get into line, we saw the chicken which was leg, thigh, breas.t and wing all attached. Natalie almost didn't take it, I had to force her to just get her plate and go, and we would worry about the meat later. They did eat some of the chicken, but I thought it an odd choice for a bunch of girls. I heard other people talking about their scouts reactions too, which were close to Natalie's.

After supper, there was the annual parade that the girls all got to march in. They wanted the girls to go in pairs and Madelyn was picked to hold a sign, and Natalie didn't want to be my partner, I was able to find another troop that had and odd number, so Natalie got a girl partner, and I got to sit in the shade and watch the parade instead of walking in it. That was the last activity of the day and we got to go home. By then Aaron was had been home a few hours with Hannah. It was a fun and tiring day.

Friday I worked 7-11 in the morning, using the same babysitter I had the day before. We are still waiting to hear about the new offer we made on the house. We won't hear anything at least until Monday since her realtor is out of town. I am leaving for camp tomorrow with the girls. I will be gone at least until Friday, maybe Saturday.