WS Chronicle

There was a cloud of flour and red and green sprinkles dotting the dining room as Girl Scout Troop 2819 spent Saturday morning, Dec. 22, baking seven kinds of cookies to share with the Kernersville Police Department and Glenn High Fire Department. Co-leaders Terra Parrish and Christina Gordon kept the mixers and oven going while Girl Scouts Riley Gordon, Alexandria Dove and Cienna Parrish, with the help of mom Alvie Dove-Ali, rolled out, cut and decorated cookies. Also helping was Riley Gordon’s younger brother, Liam, who is in his first year of Cub Scouts and was working on his service project badge.

The Girl Scouts are known for their annual cookie sale, but last year the troop’s hard work selling over 4,000 boxes of cookies was for naught when it was discovered that over $1,500 was missing from their cookie sale money due to fraud.  Without these funds, which covered special troop events, the girls weren’t able to go to camp or participate in other several other activities.

The Christmas Cookie Bake was started by co-leader Christina Gordon, who said, “This was a family tradition we started when Riley was about 18 months old as something fun to do, but I didn’t want all those cookies around the house, so we decided to donate them to the police department.” Later, as Riley watched the new fire station being built, she became fascinated with fire fighters and decided to include them in the cookie giveaway. It then became a community service project for the Girl Scout troop.

Alvie Dove-Ali said that her daughter, Alexandria, joined the troop when she was in third grade and will be moving into Scout Cadets, but will stay with this troop. “She just loves doing community service projects and is a real cookie hustler,” said Dove-Ali. She mentioned how she has seen her daughter become much more independent and has made new friends since joining Scouts.

Girl Scout cookie sales begin after the first of the year and the troop is already taking orders (for the boxed kind, not the hand-made kind). Deliveries are around the 20th of January and continue to the end of February. Orders can be placed online at www.girlscoutsp2p.org.

After several hours of baking cookies, the finished products were ready to be delivered. The first stop was to the Kernersville Police Department and Officer R.L. Russ was pleasantly surprised when the kids stopped by with a big container of fresh-baked cookies. He promised to take them to the break room to share with all the officers, minus one or two for himself.

Co-leaders Terra Parrish and Christina Gordon were pleased with how the project turned out. They were unsure of how much flour, sugar, eggs, peanut butter, chocolate and sprinkles they went through, but they did add up the butter: three pounds. The result was dozens of cookies to be shared.

“Cookies are our thing,” remarked Parrish.