Five Strands of Embroidery Floss Makes Girls Happy

Everyone,

Tonight was the night I go to my church and help run the bi-monthly activities for the 8-11 year old girls. I've been doing a little over 2 years now, and it is so much fun! I've come to know all these girls and watch them mature into beautiful young women.

Our activity tonight was all about making friendship bracelets. We also talked about what makes a good friend. Here is the list they came up with.

A good friend is

• Honest
• Trustworthy
• Fun
• Helpful
• Loving
• someone who really cares about you and cares about you back
• likes to play
• likes to call you on the phone
• picks up your homework when you're sick without asking
• doesn't ignore you on the playground
• picks you on their team when it's their turn to be captain

I think this is a great list. It's something you could apply to any of your relationships, not just your friends. Because I'm sure Juice would pick up my homework for me if I was sick. (I think he did that once in high school. I know he helped me with my homework several times. There's a reason I know the 16th president to this day.)

These girls were so excited to talk about the good things their friends had done or things that they had done to be good friends. Then we got down to the fun part. Braiding! Check out this video of someone else doing what we did tonight.

Did I ever mention that I was a camp councilor for a year? No? Well, it was one of the most fun jobs I've ever had. And these friendship bracelets were HOT. Everyone had them. I taught horseback riding lessons for the summer and we would always pull out the hair in the horses tails to make these bracelets. I still have that bracelet and it's one of my treasured souvenir of camp. I also made one out of the horse's tail that I owned at college. But at camp, these bracelets were our currency. I never did get very many, but I had enough that I was happy with them. This is the easiest way to make a fun and interesting braid. Everyone made at least one and everyone went home with someone else's.

I imagine we'll be seeing these around church for awhile. At least I hope we will! (Especially since this was supposed to be an hour long activity and after 2 hours, we had to kick everyone out. They had a ball!)

Safire