OwntheNight

Been there, Done That AND got Two T-Shirts out of it!! Had ours 2 weeks ago! Don't forget: Where's your buddy? No running in Camp! Please don't bring Tuna Fish or Egg Salad for lunch, if you can't keep it cold! No, you may not play William Tell at the range! Really Walking Den Leader, that phone call is more important than helping your boys? It's always FOR THE BOYS!!! Have a great week!(This message has been edited by OwnTheNight)

In February, I took over as CM for our pack. The previous CC was very organized and did a lot of jobs that could have been farmed out to other people. But there were problems with the communication skills of this CC,(very blunt, emails being fired off the cuff, etc.) Unfortunately, this created a power vacuum of 1. The previous CM was good friends with the CC, and they began acting as 1 voice. Due to those power struggles within the pack, we lost our tiger and bear dens to another pack. Our COR finally stepped in and had to take control of the situation. The CC resigned, and the CM stepped dow

Normally, we give the boys in that group some sort of outdoor tool. ( we did firestarters at B/G, along with compasses for all boys in the pack) At our bridging ceremony during our Spring campout, we gave them flashlights. I found some discontinued 6 LED flashlights at Home Depot for .98 ea. Bought a bunch just to have around, and gave them to our 4th graders going into 5th grade.

Speaking of Great pictures: Here is a cool bugler photo. This has made it's way to my workstation background. http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/unbound/boy-scouts/

Our troop doesn't use one, even though we have a bunch of boys in band. I'm trying to convince Scoutson to try it when he reaches 1st class. I've even joked with him that he could be the troop tubler if he brought his tuba. Imagine hearing reveille from a tuba at 6:30 am! I've been using the digital versions at Day Camp this week, and haven't had any complaints so far. Maybe because people are looking at their watches and checking their pocket schedules for what is next. I did get to go over and talk to our Tigers and explain the significance of the bugle and explain the different calls t

Is your son allowed to have is cell phone in school; in his classes at school? Is your son allowed to bring his phone into church? Heck, is he even allowed to have it on in a movie theater? There are times and places for everything,and camp is no place for a cell phone. Actually, Yes. My son can take his phone,laptop or an ipad into school an connect to the school's network. I walk into the school, and my phone immediatly asks me if l would like to connect to one of the school's networks as a guest or a student. The school district has implemented a forward thinking approach to technology.

I have Day Camp CM duties starting tomorrow thru Friday and then Saturday night, we get on 2 charter buses with 84 boys and 12 adults and drive 14 hrs to Camp Alexander in Colorado. Out of the frying pan of Texas to the freezer of the Rocky Mountains Looking forward to this trip!

Definitely not being lazy. Due to requests from people all around the country for flags that have been flown at the capitol. It has gotten bigger than they can handle. My Wood Badge tent mate was on staff for one of our congressmen, and told me that they put a box full of flags up on a crane and raise it up, technically flying the flag over the capitol. With all those requests, it would take forever to do them individually. They still perform full honors when they raise the crate up, so the flags are still treated with respect. Congratulations to your Eagle

KC9DDI, I don't see how giving staff any special patches or lanyards or face paint or anything would enhance our emergency preparedness. Good training, and having proper emergency procedures in place is really all that you need. Your right in the fact that having these items does not enhance our preparedness. We definitely want to be prepared for any situation. Our reasoning for using the lanyard system, is to be able to identify quickly the adults who are trained for these situations. Our day camp staff is 8 people. The rest of the "staff" are parents of the boys in camp. Some are regis

The Card your participants get will be their credentials. With all the temporary patches that are out there, It might be difficult to figure out who's got what cert. and so on. Now in a large camp setting, you would want something for those individuals who are certified. At our day camp this year, we will have our medical staff at HQ, but then, any individual who is CPR certified will wear an additional lanyard that has the letters CPR in bright red on it. Everybody has been told at training, that the ones that are certified and current will have this. Until National comes up with a

BD, While the game was free to setup and play. The game offered "upgrades" to their players for extra energy, weapons, etc.for a price. Yes, a Debit Card was "borrowed" from my wife's purse to procur these upgrades, without my wife's knowledge. How many points of the scout law have been violated at this point? Unfortunately, this is one of those "lesson learned" moments. We tried disputing the charges with the bank, but they wanted us to sign an affidavit against our son for using the card without our permission. Sorry, I'm not prosecuting my son for 350.00.The explanation I got from the

6 am reveille is better than the 4 am "Nature Hike" 300 feet away from camp. Still haven't gotten use to having an old nalgene in the tent for such adventures

10. Your neighbors don't mind hearing "reveille" at 6 AM 9. If you don't like the view, turn your tent 8. You don't have to worry about losing the key to your tent. 7. Pay per view is taking the rain fly off and looking at the stars 6. Nobody ever got silly at Cracker Barrel and pulled the fire alarm 5. Dutch oven Cobbler 4. Housekeeping is as easy as shaking your tent out. 3. The calories don't count when you eat outside 2. Soap? We don't need no stinking soap! 1. You can't have a huge bonfire in your hotel room Happy Camping all!

"I doubt yeh could find an adult in da country that's actually read all of 'em. And let me tell yeh, I don't think a single one of 'em is enforceable as written." Not until a certain 12 yo racks up 350.00 worth of charges for a "free" game. And then when you have to call Germany to try to get the charges reversed, because according to their TOS, he had to be 13 to setup an account. When you try and argue that point, their response in a nutshell. "Too Bad, So sad, we got our money, and you won't get it back." Needless to say, there was definitely a long conversation about the Scout Oath

As a DL with Scout son, I experienced the BURNOUT, and looked forward to the summer break, just to get my head clear and to prepare for the next 9 mos. I realized that I was doing every thing myself and wasn't sharing the wealth with anybody. When I became the DL for wolf son, I took shared leadership to heart, and began letting go of some of the responsibility, things couldn't be better now, the boys in the den get a different perspective from different leaders every week and look forward to den meetings. As a CM now, I accept that kids have lives outside of Scouting, and I encourage the

Are we splitting hairs about this? My 12 yo has a FB page and an email acct, that I set up for him. I'm friends with him on FB, I also have his password to FB and his email shows up on my desktop. Unfortunately, my son never checks his email, but is in contact with his patrol through FB. While the troop uses google groups for parents, ASM's, PLC, TTFC, committee members, I'm only on 3 of those lists. If my son's PL sends something out through the patrol page, my son will never see it due to it going to his email and not mine. So if my son's PL sends out a list for the next campout through em

First off , welcome to the forums and thanks for wanting to be involved with your den and pack. This might be one of those"lesson learned" experiences. Now how do you go about implementing change for the better. You've already started that process by getting onto the PWD committee, you have a voice in how things can be changed for the better of all the boys involved. Ask the other parents what they thought about the derby, not just the ones running it. Feedback is a great tool. If the other parents had concerns about the finishing device,or any other part of the race, that can

Right there with you, our schedule has been chaotic to say the least. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. All the work has been building up to our crossover campout next weekend. Then we kick in the summer program, when day camp starts at the beginning of June. First Weekend-Prep work and planning for Pack Meeting at City Park Last Weekend- Pack Carnival ( Don't even get me going on the Bounce House, and the PWD track) This Weekend- Day Camp Training for all the Walking Den Leaders and Station staff. Also trying to wrap up our Spring Fundraising to get all monies collected and turned i

Do you have a local bike shop that could bring part of their team out? We had one of the shops come out and they brought a couple guys from their freestyle team to do a demo of freestyle (Think x games) for our pack. They also did full safety inspections and adjustments on all of our participants bikes. Try and find a bike rodeo that's being put on in your area and go visit to see what they do. We've done a rodeo for the last two years and the boys and their families loved. We included all riders, even siblings. A couple of events the kids really enjoyed: Stop on a dime- Ride

Well, that explains why my dad and some of the other ASM's in my troop wanted to set up their campsite so far away! I always thought they were teaching us the 300' rule! In all seriousness though...Instead of a SM minute, It needs to be a CC minute explaining to these guys that we expect the boys in the troop to be professional in their actions while they are travelling to and from events, because as representatives of the BSA, they are held to a higher standard, regardless of who the boy is. The same goes for us leaders, we are held to a higher standard and example to the boys we serve

SctDad, Will you be attending the Council facility in a camping format (Resident Camp, Day Camp, etc)? If you are, you might talk to the Camp ranger or Camp director to see what kind of projects they have available for the Cubs. When our Webelos attend resident camp, there is usually a camp award for a conservation project done during camp week. All we had to do was go ask, and we were put to work. One year, our project was to clean up all the dead branches that had fallen around the camp site. Spent about an hour during one of our free time sessions taking care of it. We ended up being

Right now I've got 7 official scheduled events for the Summer, just don't have the dates set. Worry about June, nah, I'm worrying about May right now with a Pack Recruiting carnival and our Family campout at the end of the month. Here's what we've got planned out so far 1. Day Camp for our Tigers and Bears, Webelos resident Camp, This is the only we have hard scheduled. 2. Welcome Home a Hero- DFW International Airport is one of only two airports in the country, that is the main hub for soldiers coming home for R & R, or finishing their deployment in Iraq/Afghanastan. Usually,

That was great, thanks for sharing. I might have to use that at my JSN presentation to get people to step up to volunteer.

Or one can do like a lot of troops do it. Mess as a troop and then you don't have to worry about any of this. OK Stosh, you've piqued my curiosity. I get as a troop with a dining facility, like Summer Camp, but on a regular campout? Is it like family style, where different patrols fix different items and then the whole troop eats together. Or is it more like the family camping from Cub Scouts where you have a group of people cooking everything for the whole troop. I can honestly say, I've never seen a troop do that outside of an extended camp environment. If it is family style, I might be

You might be on to something! Remember it takes quite a few years for government and military inventions to reach public usage. WWI-1916, Cub Scouts fully integrated with BSA-1930. Hmmmm!