June 22 meeting has been...

canceled!!! It came to my attention at Roundtable last week that we may be quite a few bodies short for the Pioneer District Twilight Camp being held at Camp Pollock all of next week. Since the first day of any twilight camp is always the worst, and since our meeting night of Monday is that same first day, I would like all of the boys (and any of you parents) to come to Camp Pollock instead and offer to help out where you may be needed. I know this is short notice, but it wouldn't be the first you had to make a change to your schedule with little or no notice. I'm not going to ask any of you to volunteer for the rest of the week, but if you can I'm sure it would be greatly appreciated. The main purpose of this is to help make Monday go more smoothly. We will return to our regularily scheduled meetings the following Monday.

June 15 meeting

Only a few of the boys made it to the meeting tonight, so it was a tough pull. They worked on some emergency preparedness items from the merit badge booklet, but I heard they didn't get as far along as I would have liked. I wasn't able to keep a watchful eye over them due to the parents meeting we held to discuss summer camp.

It's a tough transition letting them go it on their own. They are very rudderless right now. Part of that to me still seems to be a lack of respect to the leadership they themselves elected. Part of it is not really wanting or caring to work on 'scout' stuff. I'm trying to work it out in my head how to correct this.

June Court of Honor

A great COH tonight. All of the boys in attendance were able to stand before the audience and receive something. We had a few Merit Badges, a few Rank advancements, some special presentations, and some special guests.

The food as usual was excellent. Who knew hot dogs could taste so good? Maybe it was all of the side dishes.

Scotts Flat camping

That was a long weekend. At least it seemed like it to me. I haven't felt that tired after an outing since I was in the Cub Scout program with R. It was probably the excellent parenting going on in the campsite right next to us. If you were there you know what I mean, if you weren't any one of us can explain at length later.

All of our boys went to this event at Scotts Flat Reservoir which is located just Northeast of Nevada City. I had initially thought we were in for some very nasty weather, but it was quite nice really. It didn't get sunny until Sunday morning, but it was never really cold and we didn't get any rain.

A special thanks go out to the Mr. Powers for putting this event together. He signed up to be a Merit Badge councilor for both fishing and canoeing, so the boys had a chance to earn 2 merit badges this weekend. He put in a lot of effort to see that all of the boys had work books and spent a lot of time signing blue cards. When you see him next time make sure you say thanks.

Fishing was very difficult from what I heard, so none of them were able to complete it. Canoeing on the other hand came off quite nicely. Seven boys signed up to take the badge and six of them earned it! The seventh came this close, but wasn't ready to take that final plunge as it were. That's okay. He'll finish it at summer camp (hopefully).

We even had a boy earn a rank advancement at camp! B was able to have his Board of Review while at camp and was promoted to the rank of Second Class! Congratulations!!! An extra special thanks go out to Jeff Rogers. Jeff was at the campground with his church group. I had initially thought it was another scout group (not many other groups fly an American Flag while camping) and approached them to see if one of them would be willing to help us out. Turned out he is an Eagle Scout and was more than happy to be helpful.

Fundraising

It has become painfully aware that we need to have fundraising projects (other than the annual popcorn sales) on a regular basis. We discussed this at last nights committee meeting at length. Deborah has brought some great ideas to the table for us to make use of. I ask that all of us keep our eyes and ears open to any other possibilities that we can use.

June 1 meeting

While the adults had their monthly committee meeting the boys were visited by the Webelos of Pack 22. After discovering a problem with the water rocket launcher they had built, plan b was put into action. They still launched rockets, it was an air version. I didn't get to see any of this myself, but I heard that a good time was had by all.

Another scout reached First Class last night. Congrats to G!

B and I held his Scoutmaster Conference for Second Class. Hopefully we'll get the BOR done this weekend while camping.

Scott's Flat is this weekend. Looks like we're going to be getting wet, and I don't mean because we plan on canoeing and swimming.