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LANETT — Girls from Troop 5703 in Valley are busy selling Girl Scout cookies with the goal of taking two trips to Atlanta this spring.

“We’d like to take one trip to the Georgia Aquarium and another to Whitewater,” said Troop Co-Leader Deborah Clifton. “The Georgia Council will be hosting a sleepover inside the Georgia Aquarium. It should be educational and lots of fun for the girls. They really would like to go to that. If we can raise the money, we will be going there. The Whitewater trip will be lots of fun as well. We are working hard to sell cookies in the hope of taking those two trips.”

Two members of the troop, Ruby and Takiera, were outside Kroger in Lanett on Saturday and were having a good day with sales.

“The girls are looking forward to making these two trips,” said Troop Co-Leader Tammy Jordan. “That’s why we have been out here freezing on the weekends. We appreciate Kroger letting us come here, and we thank the public for supporting our girls by buying boxes of cookies. As we all know, those cookies are really good.”

On Saturday, the troop was selling Peanut Butter cookies, Peanut Butter Patties, Shortbread, Caramel DeLites, Lemonade cookies, gluten-free cookies and the popular Thin Mints, which they’d sold out of early Saturday afternoon.

This will be the final year for the Thanks a Lot cookie.

Selling season takes place from January through March. During an average selling season, an estimated one million Girl Scouts throughout the U.S. sell over $200 million boxes of cookies, raising over $800 million.

The current record for most boxes sold by a girl scout in a single season is 25,000 set by Charlotte McCourt of New Jersey in 2017, the centennial year for Girl Scout cookies.

Sales of Girl Scout cookies not only generates funds for local troops, they also teach the girls financial literacy. They learn the importance of goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics. The annual girl scout cookie drive is thought to be the largest girl-run and girl-led financial literacy program in the world.

“For the past two years, we have gone to Camp Kiwanis near Eclectic, Alabama,” said Clifton. “We really enjoyed it, but the girls wanted to do something different this year. They are really excited about going to Atlanta.”