Summercamp 2013, Part 2

Well, it was a another great year at summercamp. Our 9 boys that went this year earned 33 merit badges and 10 partials. We had 2 boys earn their Polar Bear swim patches and 3 leaders earned their Scoutmaster's merit badge. Every boy earned honor Scout and the Troop earned Honor Unit. There's a lot to be proud of. 

We did learn a few things as well. We had 1 Scout who was upset homesick. We did a pretty good job at calming him down each night of trouble, but we had another Scout who was homesick and showed it a different way. He was defiant. I'd never personally experienced that before. He would quit on activities and refused to get up or participate at times. It was very difficult to handle. We dealt with it, but it took us too many days to figure it out. We also had a few kids that didn't want to eat. We had 1 Scout who was a returner that will only eats few items, none of which are good and healthy for him. I had a long talk with his mother and she just refuses to make him eat properly. The sad part is, I don't think he has the drive to become an Eagle. Sometimes I wonder if he even wants to be a Scout. The last part of our learning process was the partial merit badges. The council had told everyone what the prerequisites were for each merit badge. We, as leaders, passed that on to the Scouts and their parents. But, some just didn't listen to the advice. Summercamp is expensive in today's world, whether or not the Scouts earned their way or their parents paid their way, partials just suck. We will push even harder next year for those merit badges that have prerequisites. They must be done!  

Our Order of the Arrow lodge has gotten a new advisor. When I was a Scout, the ceremonies team memorized their lines. Last year, when my son got his brotherhood, they read off of cards and the ceremony sucked.  It was disappointing. This year, when an Assistant Scoutmaster crossed over to Brotherhood, they memorized their lines and the ceremony was incredible.  The ASM said that he felt like he was 14 again and going through Ordeal all over again. We all got goosebumps.  On the Friday night campfire last year, the tap-out was weak. This year, again it was breathtaking. After it was over, every Scout in our Troop said it was awesome. It was so good, I want to go up again to watch the tap-out ceremony again. Great job to the Scouts and their new advisor!

All in all, it was a great week. The coffee cart that comes around every morning is one of my favorite things. Our Scoutmaster and myself even drive it a couple of mornings. We've talked about maybe looking at a different camp, but with meeting all of the out of council Troops that were there this week, I can't see why we would.  Yes, our council is small and very weak as far as program goes, but our Camp is a great one. It's the staff of camp mostly that makes it so great, but our Ranger makes that camp what it is too. He cares about having the best camp around. He's proud of the fact that so many out of council Troops come here that he's creating new campsites to accommodate more Scouts. 

Thank you too all the staffers out there who make summercamps fun. Thank you to all the leaders who take vacations to be therefor their Scouts. And thank you to all the boys who go and experience the greatness of summercamp. We can't wait for next years week!!

Until next time, Yours in Scouting,

Eagle Scout Doug

Summercamp 2013

So as I sit here in my nice air-conditioned house on the evening before we leave for summercamp this year, I just smile thinking about all that we have done and are going to do with this Troop. I was reading the local paper and yet again we were featured in it for a flag retirement ceremony we helped out with. Last year, myself and our Scoutmaster took 5 boys to summercamp. Only 1 of the 5 had ever been to camp before. It was amazing watching how each of these boys grew during that week. We are taking 9 boys to camp this year and 4 of the 5 boys from last year are going again. That means, we have 5 new boys this year. It is going to be so much fun watching each of the 9 boys this year grow. We are so lucky to have the leaders we have, the boys we have and the family support we have. Having an active program is what makes a Troop successful. Yes, we all have our struggles, but as long as you learn from your mistakes and improve upon them, that's what makes a difference in these boys' lives. For anyone starting a new Troop or improve an established one, let me give you one piece of advice. At the least, download the BSA's Program Resources. You can find them in PDF form online, there are 4 books. We have focused a lot over the past year and a half on getting boys advanced. Now that our number of Scouts has increased, we really need to focus on having the right program for them. I have downloaded them and as we approach our 2nd annual Troop planning conference, I've read quite a bit of them and see a huge value in them. They can give you the outline for your next 12 months and then turn it over to your PLC and let them have fun with it! We just had a Court of Honor last week. 6 boys advanced. Before summercamp is over, 5 more will advance. I am hopeful that my own son will advance to Life before he heads to the Jamboree in 3 weeks. He needs 1 more Eagle required merit badge, a Scoutmasters conference and a Board of Review. I believe he's prepared to earn a minimum of 5 merit badges this coming week. Communications, Citizenship in the Nation, Emergency Preparedness, Canoeing and Computers. There are a few independent study merit badges that he can earn too, but I'm not going to push too hard on those. I am so excited for him to go to Jamboree. I remember going to the 75th at Fort AP Hill. It was amazing. I also remember going to the 100th and visiting for the day with my oldest son. Although the leadership of our council's troop is horrible, I am grateful that he knows how to have fun and I know he will get the most out of it as he can. I will be going out on the Saturday of the Arena Show for a visit. It's a hard pill to swallow when they want $50 just so you can see your Scout that you spent a ton of money on to go there! I do believe it will be worth it though. I haven't talked much about my younger son, but I will tell you that my little Bear Cub is headed for 4 days of summercamp himself. It is going to be a "rustic" type of camp, with coonskin caps and all. He is very excited to be going. He has asked a number of times if he can just skip Cub Scouts and become a Boy Scout. He's a funny kid, and really can't wait to be able to do the stuff that the big kids do. Yet another future Eagle Scout for our family. Have a great day and I hope you enjoy my thoughts. Yours In Scouting, Eagle Scout Doug

A Week of Networking

It's been a great week this week for our Road to Eagle. Wednesday's troop meeting was a parents meeting about summer camp. Wow, I had no idea how much money summer camp was going to be. Yeah, I'm thinking that I may need to be Membership committee for our troop. We need to raise money. Not that $230 is a ton of money, but I'm hoping that we can figure out some money making ideas to help offset the cost of camp. So, I've connected with the NESA committee in our council and they meet every month for a breakfast of eagles. I have this sneaky suspicion that they aren't very active. I'm hopefully going to change that. They need to be visible.

So I wasn't able to go to the parents meeting, but my wife did. I had all kinds of questions about things that the troop says they need for camp. So, using this wonderful thing called the world wide web, I went to work on some forums and in twitter to see about a few items.

Here are some of my discoveries.

Footlockers - There are many out there. But we need a lockable footlocker. I've found a few, but when I was a scout, I had a big footlocker. I'm going to have to check with our scoutmaster how big he recommends, but it seems that Walmart has a 2 pack of them for under $40! We'll see what he has to say about size and then go from there.

Rain Gear - Again, when I was a scout, we wore ponchos! I loved my poncho (Not really). So, my wonderful wife went to google and came up with a name of frogg toggs. So, back to twitter. Most everyone had good things to say about them. I did go to the outlet mall yesterday and checked out ll bean, columbia, the usual suspects. I just wish the coleman store hadn't closed. I'd still be there shopping over 24 hours later. I did find a nice rain jacket at ll bean for $25. It was a little big, so room to grow, but it was waterproof. The problem with just a jacket is that we would need pants too. So the search continues.

Hiking boots - This is a big concern of mine, since our son is growing right now like a weed. 4 inches in 6 months, and his feet seem to be following suit. I hate the idea of spending a bunch of money on hiking boots for him to be able to wear them for a month or 2. I had a great tip from Scoutmaster Shawn (He's a scouter in WI, who does podcasts, twitter, etc....) who told me that we should spend about $50, buy the boots about 3 weeks before camp, and make him break them in for 2 weeks before camp. Of course my cynical wife say to me, "but it's July! It's hot and humid here." I don't care about that, I thought it was a great idea Shawn had. While we were at the outlet mall yesterday, many stores had waterproof boots for under $50, so I'm encouraged by that.

I'm a little bummed out that Will is going to miss the next 2 troop meetings, but I'm happy for him to be going on a spring break vacation with his grandmother. I hope that sometime in the next couple of weeks that I can get together with our scoutmaster and committee to get things rolling!! I have a ton of ideas that keep me thinking constantly about our troop.

Hope you had a great week

Eagle Scout Doug