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Liz

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Everything posted by Liz

  1. My understanding is that the difference between "pack" camping and "family" camping is that in "family" camping each cub scout has at least one parent or guardian present. And family camping does't have any such one-night limits, does it?
  2. Good point. Her parents are on top of the medical treatment so I'll mention it to dad and I'm sure he'll make sure to ask. One great advantage to having it at our house instead of hours away is that if her doctor says "no camping" she can still come in the morning and hang out with us as long as she feels up to it.
  3. Yikes. Definitely not someone I want in charge of my kids out on the water.
  4. Indigenous People Day is not a school holiday in our state anyway. We don't have any area-wide long weekends coming up until Thanksgiving (and I don't think anybody wants to camp for Thanksgiving). We should usually have plenty of camping options within an hour or so of home when we can plan ahead. It just so happens that the OA has that particular weekend reserved for our biggest Council camp, and the only other Council camps with availability just won't offer a viable experience for a kid who can't walk. The ones where you can drive up to the campsite tend to get reserved first.
  5. Our entire Council opts out of popcorn. We sell World's Finest Chocolate bars and Tillamook Country Smoker meat sticks (same idea as Country Meats but local-ish / in-state company). They do pretty much sell themselves. My daughter dons her uniform and goes out on Pokemon Community Day and pushes a stroller around downtown with a big sign advertising "Pokemon Trainer Candy" for $1. If it's not raining too hard, people snap it right up. I've also got a secret stash of meat sticks and candy bars in the staff cabinet in my classroom and it's disappearing at a pretty steady rate. I accept IOUs in t
  6. True. Ignorance and indifference are very closely related, and in the case of this particular company I feel it was a combination of both. I'm glad I don't work for them anymore.
  7. Yes, and I only have a small handful of restaurants I'm willing to eat at as a result. But using breadsticks as table decorations was a whole level of "we don't give a ____" beyond what I could really comprehend for a company that somehow thought they were making gluten free food available.
  8. I know for a fact that none of the youth in my unit (nor most of the leaders) knew what it was for until I told them. Our Council shop sells the shirts with the patches already sewn on. So as far as a lot of people know it's just part of the shirt.
  9. I guess part of what I'm getting at is that simple awareness of dietary restrictions is a skill I think Scouts should learn. Sometimes that's going to mean "Don't forget to wash your hands after a peanut butter sandwich, but the allergic kid cooks his or her own food," and sometimes it will mean "Maybe we could make quesedillas on corn tortillas instead of grilled cheese sandwiches so the wheat-allergic kid can eat the same thing as the rest of us." It's shocking how few people have even a basic understanding of allergens and cross-contact. In a Facebook recipe group I'm in, someone aske
  10. Very true. My youngest child is sensitive to cow's milk, both the protein and the lactose. She gets tummy aches and eczema. She does fine with butter, as well as sheep and goat dairy products of all kinds, and I don't worry about trace amounts of milk in ingredients for her. But last time she convinced my oldest kid who was babysitting that it was OK for her to eat her sister's goldfish crackers, I had to listen to her moan about tummy aches for a week. 🙄😂 As for me, if I get a trace of gluten in my food I may very well miss a week or more of work over it. Other than a SMALL stash of snacks
  11. I've had Celiac for more than 10 years and after extensive research I've pretty much memorized the major brands I can count on to list gluten in their ingredients if it's present. I would pass on a generic brand with the same thing in the ingredients list, but I'd buy McCormick.
  12. Huh. I guess I missed that memo. On the other hand, "Once an official uniform, always an official uniform," so I don't really see it as "enforceable." Overall though, I don't like the change. I think the gradual phase-in during the Webelos years makes more economical sense. Families with the resources to run down to the Scout Shop and buy a new shirt were welcome to do so, and other families were welcome to wait until the blue uniform was outgrown. Oh well. I opted for the lazy and apparently currently correct route of leaving the rank insignia off the tan uniform entirely. Sewing
  13. Huh. It also doesn't show the blue uniform as an option for Webelos any longer. I don't see that changing any time soon though. A Scout is Thrifty. The "grace period" to let kids outgrow their blue uniform before they switch to tan is pretty useful. In other news, I am trying to decide whether to save or pass along this blue uniform. I'm afraid my petite youngest child might be in 6th grade before she grows into it. 😛
  14. That's good to know. Unfortunately, it doesn't exactly answer the question of whether I can place any rank insignia on the tan uniform other than the Webelos rank. 😕 It doesn't show any other options, but it doesn't appear to prohibit it either (and the diamond shaped previous ranks were previously allowed).
  15. I guess, but I think those are pretty ugly.
  16. My Webelos Scout is outgrowing her blue uniform. Time to move up. The insignia guide ( https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34760.webelosscout.final.pdf ) gives three options for rank insignia. She should be earning her Webelos badge within the next 60 days or less. In the meantime, what I'm inclined to do is center the diamond shaped Bear badge on the pocket. I am unclear on whether this is an allowed configuration. The guide shows the diamond shaped Webelos badge on the pocket as an option, but I'm not clear on whether it's OK for that to just be the most recent rank earn
  17. I once had a situation where I hand delivered the "special needs" request forms for the two Celiac Scouts in our Troop to the Council months in advance of summer camp. It included requests for fridge space for the kids to bring some of their own food and that sort of thing. I wasn't really asking for much - certainly not for the camp to provide special food. The kids were willing to bring their own camp stoves and the like; they just wanted a place to store perishable food and a sink to clean their own dishes in. I never heard back so a couple weeks before camp I called the Council offic
  18. Yes, having the kids do individual meals does help, and that's more or less what we've usually done. But it's not the most frugal option. Individual servings of food tend to cost more. When my older kids were still Scouts, we had an entire patrol we put all the kids with food allergies in. They all had their individual mess kits, backpacking stoves, and did their own individual meal planning. But they didn't have the advantage of learning to cook together as a Patrol. It worked, and I might do it again faced with the same challenges in a future troop, but it's not without its disadvantages.
  19. Menu for 9 scouts, $50.36, gluten, dairy, nut, and peanut free. Also, I serve a fresh fruit or veggie with each meal because I'm like that. $5.60 per person. Breakfast menu (2 breakfasts): Hard boiled eggs, Cream of Rice hot cereal, Fresh Fruit (oranges or bananas) Lunch: Carrots, "Beanie weenies" (baked beans and turkey franks) Dinner: Dutch Oven Drumsticks (with seasoning), Baked Potatoes, Broccoli Florets.
  20. New challenge: Try to do the same thing but you have Scouts and/or leaders in your troop with Celiac, dairy sensitivity, and nut/peanut allergies. I'm presenting the challenge before I try to actually accomplish the menu. Give me some time to work on it too.
  21. Liz

    parent rank pins

    We recently cleaned out our storage unit and I finally found my jewelry box which disappeared when we moved. While I had been hoping to find my wedding ring within, alas, that is still missing - but I found something far more valuable: My Proud Parent ribbon full of Parent Pins from Tiger to Life. ❤️ It went a long way toward making me feel better about the idea that I'll never see my wedding ring again...
  22. But now that the World Crest is standard issue and no longer earned, nobody knows what it's for. I think the Messengers of Peace award fills the hole that the World Crest used to when it needed to be earned and therefore the people who wore it knew what it meant.
  23. We have a boy in our Cub Scout pack who I think would be much more interested if the GSA program were an option for him. Poor kid hates the outdoors. He only goes because his mom makes him go (she's the CC). He likes the stuff we do at pack meetings as long as they aren't too outdoorsy. I don't fault GSA for not having a bigger outdoors focus. That's fine for some kids! But for MY kids, I would be pretty frustrated if I had to dig and search for like-minded girls from other Troops to form a special interest group focused on the outdoors.
  24. We have something pretty close to that on our homeowner's policy too. You should have seen me nagging kids at my daughter's birthday party to put helmets on before riding bikes and scooters up and down our steep, gravel driveway. I have liability coverage but that doesn't mean I want anybody to get hurt! 😱 How did I not have ANY IDEA about this? Totally filing it away for near future. Thank you!! LOL! We'd love to have you. Especially if you bring an experienced Scout with you to help train our girls who are all still teaching themselves what they need to know for the Scout ra
  25. The more I think about it, the more I like the option at my house. It really is a nice setting. Only my house and one other house are visible. Convincing everyone else, however, might be a challenge. One parent was concerned the girls might get "too comfortable" with the house. My response was "I didn't say I was going to let them come inside." LOL! (Although I have no other bathroom facilities so they'd have to come in once in a while).
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