Swimming Rescue methods

Hey scouts!  If you need to have requirement 8c from the Second Class Trail signed off, we will be meeting at the Jolly's house on Friday at 7pm to help you get this accomplished.  If you need directions to the Jolly's, send me an email.

Quartely Court of Honor

Held our latest Court of Honor last night.  Lots of merit badges handed out and three advancements.  Good job to all the boys in the troop!  Keep it up.  We'll be planning for 2012 beginning with our next meeting, so bring some ideas of things you would like to do and places you would like to visit.

Many updates

Wow. Didn't realize it had been a couple of weeks since my last post. Lots going on. Summer camp has come and gone. A small group attended but much fun was had. There were some issues as well, but when aren't there? It was good that a few of our newest scouts attneded and earned a couple of merit badges. I'm especially pleased with the performance of our older scouts. They stepped up when needed and made sure stuff was taken care of.

The PLC annual planning meeting is this coming Saturday. Be there to give us your ideas of what you want to do next year.

We've had a couple of regular troop meetings since my last post as well. Seems like things are progressing. It's difficult to see sometimes. Growth takes such little steps and it's much easier to see a stumble. We're getting better, I really believe that we are. It's taking a heck of a lot longer than I thought it would.

We have a new committee chairman now. Thanks so much to Dennis Ledbetter for his years of service to the troop. Dennis will remain active in scouting, but with the Eagle board. Much success to you in the future.

Also congratulations to Mike Donlon for being selected as the new committee chairman.

Our next outing is fast approaching. Scotts Flat Reservior and water sports. This is gonna be fun! Deadline to sign up and get your payment in is this coming Monday's meeting. You're not gonna want to miss this one, I promise! We are hoping to hold one of our next couple of meetings at a pool to get the swimming requirements out of the way. Wish us luck!!!

Lastly, we have had three boys advance in the last month. Greg O. is now a Life Scout while Steven W. and Jaughn F. are now Star Scouts. Great work guys (and about time to a couple of you).

Summer Campers are there

9 youth and 3 adults ended up making the trip to Camp Fleischmann.  They got camp set up really quickly.  Temperature was nice, not too hot.  I guess it's been a little cooler this year when compared to the recent past.  Hopefully it will stay that way.

We are occupying a new campsite this year.  It's lakeside and looks to be well shaded in the afternoons.  That will be a nice respite from any heat that may come up.

I hope the week goes well for all attending and can't wait to hear the stories.

Weekly meeting

Very good meeting last night.  All of our newest scouts worked on their Fireman Chit while the older scouts worked on flag ceremonies.  Even though they have done many of these in the past, we want to give them a refresher and come up with a troop standard that they will then teach to our younger boys.

Future meetings will take us back to some basics of not just scouting, but comfort and survival in the outdoors.  We're planning some patrol competitions as well.  I'm hoping to get them to be creative in these competitions and use their imaginations.

I'm really excited about what is happening in the troop right now.  Things feel different.  Things feel good.

Twilight Camp redux

Twilight Camp was a success.  The Friday Webelos overnighter was also a huge success.  Ryan did a fantastic job and received quite a few compliments (we even received our very first comment to the blog concerning his handling of the campfire program).  There were around 40 Webelos scouts and their guardians that camped overnight.  We were able to have the BB gun range open on Saturday morning so these boys were able to have it all to themselves.  If you were there, thanks.

Court of Honor

What a turnout!!!  The room was filled to (almost) capacity!  We added a fourth row of tables for the anticipated crowd and it's a good thing we did.  For a simple, basic meal of hot dogs and picnic sides, that was a fabulous meal.  Maybe I was just in need of a chili dog.

Lots of rank advancement, a few merit badges and some special awards were handed out.  A couple of nice presentations were shown.  The first one was to help a scout finish up the Citizenship in the Community merit badge and the second was from the troop historian.  It covered our participation in the VFW Memorial Day Parade.  Good job to both of you!

Lots of talk concerning summer camp also.  We're under a month until we leave.  Hopefully you'll be able to attend.  Too much fun to miss.  Trust me on that one!

Summer Camp

For the last 8 years or so we have camped at Camp Fleischmann for our long term summer camping.  Should we be visiting other camps periodically?  I worry that the boys may be missing out on different experiences.  Each camp offers their own brand of lunacy along with different merit badges and opportunities.  I love Camp Fleischmann and would be very happy to go back there each and every year, but I have very fond memories of camping at Camp Winton as a boy.  Your thoughts?

Court of Honor

Our meeting this coming Monday is our Court of Honor.  If you didn't sign up to bring something, expect a phone call from our COH organizer.  Make sure you're in attendance to cheer on our boys (and adults).

Summer Camp paperwork has arrived

The leader guide and all the merit badge paperwork has been posted to the Camp Fleischmann web site.  I have downlaoded it and will be reading it over soon.  We'll put together a session to go over summer camp for everyone to answer any questions you may have.

Leadership can and does happen

At the recently completed Scout Expo our SPL was unable to attend due an illness.  Our ASPL was also absent so I appointed Trevor to be our SPL for this event.  Trevor recently earned his Life rank and he did a fantastic job.  He had never even help a Patrol Leader position before.  This is what I was hoping for.

Also, Greg took charge of the kitchen as head cook for the outing.  He divided the kitchen in two since we had basically two patrols going.  Greg was wonderful in his duties as head cook.  We had some excellent food over the weekend.

Both of these young men were singled out for attention at our committee meeting last night, and deservedly so.  Congratulations to both of you for an outstanding job!  Our troop is in good hands as it heads into the future.

Another new Life Scout

Ryan has attained this rank.  Congrats!!  We now have two scouts one step away from the rarified air of Eagle.  Could we have both get there this year?

10-19 Meeting

Productive evening. The boys began work on two Eagle required merit badges, all by themselves. They plan on finishing them up before Thanksgiving.

Been absent awhile

Haven't updated the blog recently, don't know why. So lets get us up to date.

Since I wrote last, the big event was summer camp. Other than that, we have had our normal weekly meetings. So lets talk about summer camp.

Six of our boys and five adults went with us to Camp Fleischmann in Chester. This is our seventh or eighth year of attending this camp and the boys still love it and want to come back. While there, each of the boys earned at least 4 merit badges each. Only a couple of partials were brought back, so that's a good thing.

Best of all was that each of them took and earned the Citizenship in the World badge. This is an Eagle required badge. And when I say 'earned', I mean it. The counselor for this badge tested each boy at the end of the session before signing off the blue card. A couple of Troop 22's adults were recruited to help with the teaching of this badge and I was asked to help out with the testing at the end of the session. There were 4 or 5 out of 52 that signed up for the class that he wouldn't sign off on. This is a good thing because those boys that he didn't sign off weren't ready for this badge. They were too young to understand what it meant.

We didn't earn any special awards while at camp, but we did get many compliments on the cleanliness of our campsite. We also got many comments of one of our camp gadgets that one of our boys put together. One of the pet peeves I and other adults have while at camp is having day packs left wherever they get put down. So Steven built a day pack hanging station. It is the second one he has built for us and I think it needs to become a Troop 22 camp site fixture from here on out. Job well done!!

This years summer camp was different than years past because we left a day early. We broke for camp on Saturday so we could get our site up and running and not have to worry about it on Sunday, the actual start of the session. It worked out great and we plan on doing this in future years.

During the week we had some guests visit us as well. Mr. David and his son Andrew stopped by as well as Mr. Fox and his daughter Katie. That was a nice surprise to have some visitors. Remember, just because you may not be able to join us for the week, it doesn't mean that you can't come up and join us for a day or two. You are always welcome! Just make sure you bring snacks!!!

I'll end this entry here. Others will follow concerning specific topics. So keep a look out for more frequent updates.

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.

Some upcoming events

Sunday, May 31

Orienteering. Not an official troop event, but a few of the boys did sign up to work on the Orienteering Merit Badge and this would be another item to check off for its completion. Of course, even if you didn't sign up for the badge, you could. Or show up any way and learn how to do it. I think it's a fun event. See the link for Gold Country Orienteers below right to learn more.

Sunday, May 31 (again)

Patrol Leaders Council. R will be making calls to those that need to be in attendance.

Monday, June 1

Troop Meeting and Committee Meeting. We will be visited by Pack 22 tonight. A joint activity is planned while the committee meeting is going on. If you haven't attended a committe meeting recently, or maybe at all, we could use your help. We have positions of our committee that need to be filled.

Friday, June 5

Scotts Flat canoeing/fishing outing. The plan is to have all of the boys that attend earn their canoeing and fishing merit badges. Lets hope that's possible.

Monday, June 8

Court of Honor. Need I say more? Seriously, come and see what's been going on with our boys. This will be totally(?) planned by the boys. At least as much as they can. Come and give them your support.

May 18 meeting

The boys held troop elections tonight. We have a new SPL in D, his ASPL is our current SPL R, the Dragonslayers have a new PL in C, and the Rabid Monkeymen (or is it Krew now?) have a new PL in J. Congratulations to all of you! I look forward to working with you to help make this a great experience for yourselves, but for the troop as well.

We also had a visitor. L came to pay us a visit and decided that he wanted to stay. So now our ranks have swelled to 11 boys. Growth is positive.

Some of our adults held a meeting also. They are concerned about the lack of direction from the boys and wanted to discuss ideas for networking among themselves to help encourage the boys to advance. It was a very positive step in my opinion and I can't wait to see what it brings to the table.

April 13 meeting

Our last meeting until camporee. Some things were accomplished that will help at camporee by a couple of the boys. Some of the other boys just don't seem interested in anything other than everything that isn't scout related. Hopefully it's just me.

Two boys had their Scoutmasters conferences for Tenderfoot. Congrats to C and B. All they need to get past is the Board of Review.

Changes to how our meetings work/run is on the horizon. I hope they are prepared.

March 23 meeting

Planning for our next camping outing on the first weekend of April took place tonight. Menus were planned and duty rosters made. T had his board of review and was granted the rank of First Class Scout. Congrats T! Other than not knowing when to keep quiet, the boys are making some great progress.

Mr. P (T's dad) asked about putting together a 2 nighter canoe trek. We discussed what kinds of things we could do as far as activities and merit badge work. Sounds like it will be fun. I look forward to learning more about it.