On the brain!

As you may know, I went to Boy Scout camp for a whole week recently, and since then, I've had scouting on the brain. It's pretty hard to escape. Even if I'm not thinking about scouting, I'll realize it, and then there it is again.

Yesterday, I got a call from a mom of one of my scouts. She needed some names of merit badge counselors for her son so he could work on them during our stake high adventure trip to Mt. Whitney. I had to dig a little to find a partial list. I still can't find my complete list.

I also started the paperwork to turn into the scout office, for the merit badges the scouts earned at scout camp. I need a couple of other signatures, so that won't be done till Sunday. (I'm not into driving all over town for signatures.) I also had to fill out a new adult volunteer application as a scoutmaster. Wish someone would have told me that when I got this new calling. Luckily, Anna (our ward's primary president, so she's over cubs) just worked with our district scout executive to finish the cub scout recharter (that was suppose to be done back in March, but the person in charge of doing it moved and didn't tell anyone they didn't do it.) and she new I needed to fill out a new application for my new position. Oh yeah, because of the cub scout recharter stuff, and because Anna's the primary president for our ward, she got put as both the cub scout and boy scout committee chairperson. That's a lot of responsibility, but I think she can handle it. She'll have to get really good at delegation.

Another reason I can't get scouting out of my head is because we are having a Court of Honor at the end of the month, and I'll need to put that together. Normally that falls on the committee chairperson, but I volunteered to do it. It's always good, as a scoutmaster, to stay on your committee chairperson's good side, especially when it's your wife! This Court of Honor is traditionally our biggest of the year because the boys just completed scout camp and have a lot of merit badges and hopefully rank advancements that need to be given out, as well as sharing what they did at camp. Plus, being the new scoutmaster, and recently going through leader training, I'm trying to build a better scouting program in our ward, and I'll need to do a good job at the Court of Honor to set the tone for the coming year.

It might sound weird, "the coming year", because I'm not referring to 2009 so much as I'm referring to the 2008-2009 school year. I've decided to run the scout year as the same as the school year. As the new school year approaches, the school schedule is finalized, and now I know when their days off are, etc. To run the scout year at the beginning of the new calendar year means I don't know about the second half of the year as far as school schedule goes. Plus, running the scout year along with the school year makes scout camp our big end of the year activity. At the very least, I'm giving it a try for this year. We'll see how it goes. If it's too confusing to the boys and parents, I might have to revert back to going with the calendar year. So we'll see.

And finally, I probably can't get scouting out of my head because all I thought about for a week was scouting. It still hasn't even been a week since I got home. But maybe if I get some of it out, that will help. So here's my week at scout camp report (abbreviated)...

We went to scout camp a day early. That means Saturday. Check-in is on Sunday afternoon, and because we don't want to travel on the Sabbath, we go a day earlier than go a day late. That means we need to bring our our meals for Sat. dinner, and Sunday breakfast and lunch. That's not a big problem, it's almost like any other overnighter we do.

The boys ended up bringing a lot of snacks and junk food. Next year I might have to put a limit on how much they can bring. Even one of the adult leaders brought an ice chest full of sodas.

Saturday night the boys were out of control (not literally). They were loud and obnoxious. There's a time and a place to have that kind of fun, but during quiet time, before lights out, isn't one of them. I had to walk over to their tents 3 or 4 times. At this point I'm thinking, "what have I gotten myself into?" I had to pull the "I'll move your tent to the other side of camp.", to quiet them down, and that seemed to work.

Then Sunday, we went to "the bowl" to have a church service. We met with some LDS staffers and another LDS troop that was up there a day earlier too. It was about 40 minutes long, and helped it feel like Sunday. Somewhere between that and registering for camp and finalizing our weeks schedule, a couple of the boys have a falling out. Unfortunately, they're tentmates. One boy wants to be in another tent with some other boys. I say no, because we can't have someone in a tent alone. He tries to make another boy switch tents with him, that boy says no. They come to me and complain. "He won't switch with me. Will you tell him to switch with me?" and "He's trying to make me change tent's, I don't want to change tents." I can't tell you how happy I was that they had this problem! It gave me a chance to use some of my leader training... "You guys work this out. Let me know what you come up with." and I was done. By the end of the day, when it was time to turn in for the night, I asked what sleeping arrangements had been made? The two boys that were at odds had made up, and everyone was staying in their original tents. A small victory for a new leader.

Finally it's monday! That means the boys go to their merit badge classes! And I get to finally enjoy some quiet in camp. Every one in out troop had archery and rifle. After that they all had their own things; canoeing, horsemanship, first aid, Indian lore, climbing, camping, bird study, reptile and amphibian study, nature, environmental science, and woodworking. Those were the merit badges they signed up for. They could have spent their free time working on other merit badges too, but all of my guys usually chose to go to the rifle or archery range to do more shooting. I told them that was fine, as long as they were going to finish their merit badges.

Most days of the week were the same. A few of the days, I signed us up for some troop activities. As a troop we went to the rifle range, the wrangler or horse area to ride some horses. I think for all but one of our guys, this was their first time ever riding a horse. We also did "low cope" which is a set of team building activities, and another day we did "high cope" which is a set of high wires and obstacles that they maneuver through, ending with a zip-line slide. The boys did very well with those activities.

Once we were in the camp routine, the days went my much quicker. Some other items of note: We chose to do "Jamboree" feed over "central" feed. That means that the camp provides us with our food for the day, and it's up to us to store it and cook it ourselves. We do that for a couple reasons. First, that's how our troop has done it for so long, it's a tradition. And second, it gives the guys a more full camping experience. Also it's about $35 cheaper per boy that way.

I brought an air mattress to sleep on during camp. The first night, I roll it out, grab one of the two air pumps I brought, and turn it on to blow up the mattress... no juice! I thought for sure both pumps were fully charged! I grab the second pump thinking if this one is pooped out too, this is going to be a really long week. Luckily it's got a full charge and the mattress inflates just fine. I go to bed. At about 6am, I realize my hips are on the ground. The mattress has a pin-hole leak somewhere. Just great. Luckily for me, the air mattress pump kept it's charge all week, and I was at least able to fall asleep each night on a full mattress. Plus, by about 6am each day, I had a reason to get up.

The boys got really dirty during the week. You could tell which boys still only wash up because their moms make them. As well as who has chores that they have to do at home. I had to really get on a few of the boys into helping out their chore-mates. I definitely had a few whiners.

I think that's a pretty good over view of my experience. There are a ton of details I left out, so if you want to hear those stories, you'll have to ask about camp next time you see me.

Sorry for the lengthy entry.