UNDER THE WIRE
Just woke up from a doze on the sofa and realized it's 11:33 p.m. CST, and I had not yet blogged today. Better hurry.
Today was Girl Scouts, where we worked on our Safety Patch. My EMTsis took good care of us and pretty much ran the meeting. She brought the local training ambulance to the house and went over safety measures. She also had a really cool machine that allowed the girls to "call" 911 and practice giving their names and addresses to a recorded-but-very-real-sounding voice. I wish I could remember what this machine is called...I'm going to find out and will post it here soon.
Part two of the meeting involved making fire escape maps. My sister had drawn up a simple floorplan of my house and had the girls draw colored lines to the nearest exits (of which my home has three). She even drew in a "fire" in the kitchen and told the girls to be sure and avoid it when they were drawing the lines. For example, they had to draw a red line from the breakfast nook to the nearest exit, a yellow line from the living room to the nearest exit, etc., but since they had to avoid the fire in the kitchen, it took a little more thought than simple A-to-B line drawing. Clever, sis.
The girls also made bookmarks that said "911 - Police, Fire, Ambulance" on them. I wish we'd had time for everyone to write down their addresses on the back, as several of the girls don't know theirs. Moms - please make sure your kids know their own addresses and phone numbers ASAP. You just never know when they will need that information.
Lastly, EMTsis took the girls outside and told them, "On the count of three, all of your clothes are on fire. Show me what you should do." On three, all eight girls hit the ground and did the right thing - Stop, Drop, and Roll. Yay for my troop!
After all the activities, the girls were allowed to tour the ambulance, where they could touch the oxygen masks, lie on the stretcher, and basically lay their hands on anything they saw (no drugs or needles are ever stocked on the training ambulance, so they were perfectly safe). In a big finale, EMTsis turned on the lights and sirens and gave the girls an earful. It was the perfect end to a really fun meeting!
