Thursday June 15 2017
Little sneaking feet creeping down the hallway at 5:04 a.m. Once they reach the hardwood, we heard pitter-patter as they ran! So funny. We then heard their chatter until about 5:45, when they must have continued on to the basement. It's times like these that I wish we had a brother for Jadeyn.
Today is Cub Scout day! We had a nice breakfast of biscuits and honey and then got the car all packed up. Cub Scout resident Camp is at Jack Nicol Cub Scout Ranch, the same place where they have the Halloween haunted weekend. We then arrived and checked in, we were assigned a campsite and were accompanied there by one of the Eagle Scouts. We got there to find only one tent available without any cots and a second empty platform and no tent. What now? It seriously took 25 minutes of walkie talkies for them to figure out what to do with us! While we waited, we play Pine-cone baseball! Little did we know that our Eagle Scout would soon become our own personal tour guide and almost constant Shadow. Nice kid, but quite a bit unique and doesn't take any hints. Oh dear.
Our tents are perfectly classic Cub Scout. They are well over 30 years old A frame, and held up by mismatched log, rope, twine, and string. They're perfectly picturesque. We ended up borrowing a few better cots from tents not yet occupied and made ours a home. Jadeyn and Austin had one all to themselves, and Kevin and I are next door.
Dinner was chicken burgers and salad. Not too bad. Our ‘shadow’ joined us. Programs were next where we gathered with the rest of the Webelos. The scout helping this time was quite funny. He played a game called Chinese numbers. He drew a symbol in the dirt with his foot and had the boys guess what number the symbol represented. It took quite some time for them to figure out the trick. He held his hand against his leg with fingers out and that was what told you what the number was, not the drawing at all. Jadeyn was one of the last of figure it out, and he was not happy about not succeeding sooner. He got frustrated with himself but eventually got it. They then discussed pulleys and levers and Jadeyn again got frustrated because most of the boys were quite rowdy and goofing off. But they had a great time when they got to build their little wiggle robots!
Dinner was chicken fried steak and potatoes. Yes, our ‘guide’ was there again. I completely forgot to tell about the hike. We wanted to hike, but the boys were not excited that our hiking guide would be our shadow dude. When we found out we were the only ones going, we made our excuses and left. Well, he came and found us and asked if we would come because he needed at least four people and he only had two. The boys were not happy, but we went. Then another group join us and we ended up with 22 people!
When they opened up the shooting ranges, we had a ton of fun! The boys did archery first and Jadeyn did fantastic. He scored 25 on his first round and 42 on a second! It was Austin's first time and he said he would do better on his next try. Wrist Rockets didn't go as well and Jadeyn missed on the first two. He got frustrated and said he was doing terrible and pretty much gave up. There is no room to improve when you have an attitude like that! BB guns were great though. With 9 BBs, Jadeyn scored 72. He hit the middle Bullseye four times! Way to go.
The campfire show was cheesy and a blast. We sang a bunch of songs including a sing off with nursery rhymes. The funniest song was a kid who did: baby shark doo doo doo doo, baby shark doo doo doo doo baby shark doo doo doo doo baby shark! Then mama shark, daddy shark, shark attack, lost an arm, lost a leg, lost all limbs, lost my head, Dig a grave, went to heaven... It was hilarious!
Time for bed. Right before bed, our ‘personal guide’ checked in on us and happened to mention we were the farthest tent from everything and the first hut that the bears would come too. Scared Jadeyn and Austin and they got all nervous and worried. Oh my. So Kevin and I took a backpack full of Austin’s snacks to the car to reassure them, only to find out when we got back that Austin's book was in the backpack. Back a third of a mile to the car. But they read aloud to each other for 30 minutes which was fun to overhear!
Friday June 16th 2017
What was it like sleeping in an authentic Cub Scout tent? Well, once we remove the spider from Jadeyn and Austin's tent ceiling and being accused of dropping it right into Jadeyn’s sleeping bag, we returned to our tent, turned on our lantern and found one on our ceiling too. With the lantern shining on it, and it cast a shadow, it look twice as big! My night was great. I wore earplugs to help me stay asleep and not worry about creepy crawlies that could crawl right in through our floors and walls. Kevin's night wasn't as good, but he was able to sleep a bit. We heard our boys wake up shortly after 5 a.m., but we stayed in our tent until after 6. Up and 'em!
Flag Ceremony followed by breakfast of biscuits and gravy and hash browns. We have been impressed by the food. It wasn't spectacular, but nice and plenty of it. Right afterwards, we opened up the ranges. The boys were so excited to do archery range that we didn't realize we were surrounded by Bears. Apparently all the Webelos were together at another range. Oops. They had fun and improved. BB guns were great again to. Wrist Rockets is always a blast! Kevin and I even got to try our hand at it a bit. We also took some more time for meeting plans. We are really getting to know the requirements and feel excited about this next year!
Lunch with hot dogs as Kevin predicted. Then about an hour to kill. We walked to the fort and bought Austin a toothbrush because he had left his at our house. Then we did our "conversation" project as Jadeyn kept calling it. We picked up rocks and repaired the walkways and paths. For programs, we met at the Lighthouse and did a program simulating the deaf and blind. To the food hall for some more science experiments. We learned a new game called GaGa ball played in a walled ring. You can only hit the ball with your hands and try to hit someone with the ball below the knees. If you hit someone above the knees you are out. They played with multiple balls to and multiple kids. It was pretty fun when Austin and Jadeyn were the only two left a few times. We have lots of ideas to incorporate it somehow into our scouting meetings too. One thing we noticed about this Camp was that there was a lot of open time for dens to meet together and work on requirements. Since we were the only ones from our whole pack, we did have quite a bit of downtime. We were glad that we brought Wits & Wagers to play, and had a really fun time playing it.
After dinner we had the evening campfire. It was full of skits and jokes that the dens had prepared. Some of them were absolutely hilarious, others were okay. Tonight there is a planned evening hike. It is up to the same Mountain that we hiked the other day, but since it was a night hike we thought it might be fun. We changed our minds when they changed the departure time to 7:45. It wouldn't be anywhere close to dark. So we decided to go on our own hike down towards the boy scout camp. lots of fun, but an awful lot of mosquitoes! By the time we got back, the night hike was just coming back, even though it was still daylight. We decided to go up at soon as they came down. So we actually got to do it in the dark, which was fun. When we got up there though the boys found three large white balls. It turns out they were mushrooms about the size of a football! Crazy.
Another peaceful night in our rickety tents and another fun day of scout camp.
Saturday June 17th 2017
We weren't certain how today was going to go, and it was a small bit of a disappointment. Flag ceremony and breakfast were great again. Austin and Jadeyn got to help out on the flag ceremony which was pretty neat. After breakfast we packed up our tents and loaded the car. They provided wagons to carry our gear, and we made Austin and Jadeyn roll it both directions empty and full. It was quite hilarious because it was an awful lot of for them to pull through the dirt. Afterwards there was a 2 hour window to show off the robots that the boys had built. We got to see the robots, but it really only took about 5 minutes to see so the boys played with the other robots for a little while. We decided that we might as well head home rather than wait 3 hours until lunch. What a fun time they had and we are so happy we did it!
When we got back to Longmont, the boys instantly started playing once we unloaded the car. We all agree that we could just keep Austin a few more days and would absolutely love it. The boys kind of got this idea in their brains too, thinking he could spend the night again. At 3:30, Shawn arrived with Jaxson in tow. Chloe stayed home alone since Stephanie was at work. Shawn and Kevin got to talk for quite a while while the boys played, and I worked on the computer. It was great to hear them all laughing down in the basement and then here in Jaxson occasionally squeal!
Overall, it was a mighty fine Cub Scout Camp!
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