Cub Scout Day Camp

Our boys got picked to do the flag ceremony. Yup, that's my boy facing the other direction!

Waiting for a turn at the pellet guns...

Ready...aim...

Fire!

Next up: Practicing basketball skills

...and a half-court game

"Bottle Rockets!" Huzzah!

T-minus 10, 9...

After lunch we go to nutrition and camp cooking

"Look Pa! Stick bread!"

Yum!

Although they titled this station "Catapults" it was more of an atlatl class...

Leatherworking...or more appropriately: "Smack-a-piece-of-wet-leather-with-a-big-mallet-and-then-stitch-it-to-another-piece"

Tah-dah!

I didn't want to get close enough for a picture while he was wielding a pocket knife, but here he is sanding his wooden whistle.

"Tweeeeeet!" Yet another inanimate object banned from being used in the house (it was a looong ride home...)

Overall, we had a lot of fun. I a day off from work so even if it had been the worst experience ever, I would have still enjoyed myself. It was nice to be able to just hang out with my son for a day.

Another Successful Pack Meeting

Well, I managed to squeak through another pack meeting. It is the second one that I have done and I thought it was going to be a complete mess. Earlier in the month, I had contacted the local fire department to see if they would come and talk to the boys about fire safety...and to see if they could bring a fire engine.

I didn't hear back from them until 2 hours before the pack meeting was supposed to start. ARRGG!

Still, three firefighters showed up in full gear with a fire engine, and the boys had a great time. Although my kids are still too young for cub scouts, they came along because they knew "dad was friends with the firemen." It's kind of distracting having kids underfoot when I'm trying to lead songs/stories/whatnot, but it all turned out okay. Fun was had by all.

Next month theme is "My Family Tree." Geneology stuff...no problem. :)

Wolves, and Tigers, and Bears...Oh My!

This past week I have taken up the position of Cubmaster in our church's Cub Scout pack. I have always loved scouting and I am looking forward to being involved in this. Unfortunately, certain people around here think that taking the summer off from running the unit is acceptable, so the next two pack meetings are pretty much non-existant. I will be changing that. I am of the strong opinion that scouting is a year-round program. The new program year starts in September, so we'll see what I can get jumpstarted - we are having quite the changed in leadership, so it might not be as hard as some may think.

Tomorrow is the next "pack meeting" (if you could call it that). I've got a lot of games I'm going to get the boys involved in. We'll worry about the formalities of running the meetings in September.

Cub Scouts and Collecting

My church's cub scout pack had a meeting tonight. The theme was "Collections". One of the adults knew I had a large (to them anyway) board game collection and invited me to show it off tonight. Soo...I hauled all my games down to my car, packed them in as best I could, slowly drove to the church and set up.

I was surprised at how many tables I took up. It's a lot more impressive looking when they are all spread out. It was fun to answer a bunch of questions (mostly from the parents) about games and over all I had a good time. It sure was different from the usual baseball cards, beanie babies, pokemon cards, etc that were there - although I have to admit there were some pretty cool collections as well.

Probably the most frequent comment made was: "Games at our house never last that long. The kids destroy them." or something along those lines. When that happened, I turned to my kids who accompanied me (none are old enough for cub scouts yet) and asked them what "Dad's Rule" was. They promptly took on serious faces and replied: "Don't touch Daddy's games!" Then I smiled. I never let on what condition their games were in...