Life at the Academy

Not my first backpacking trip, but Boxman’s and Buster’s first.  I had prior commitments so I couldn’t go with them last weekend.  My first, and only, backpacking trip was 20-something years ago when I went with my brother’s Boy Scout troop on the Appalachian Trail.  Boxman and Buster were attempting an 11.2 mile trek in Oklahoma with Buster’s new Boy Scout troop.  I was pretty nervous about letting them go without me.  Buster wasn’t really prepared for it and Boxman had no idea what he might be getting himself into.  The fact that he overpacked just added to my nervousness.  They were to leave last Saturday morning but only had decided on Thursday that they were going for sure.  Fortunately, the troop had a child-sized backpack that Buster could borrow for the trip and we had several packs that my dad had given us once for Boxman to choose from.

The troop also had tents for the boys to use, but parents had to provide their own.

Boxman had splurged on a nice backpacking tent a few weeks ago when he heard about this trip, so he was excited to get to use it.

They both had hiking boots although Buster’s were hardly broken in. I went and bought some hiking socks for him and sock liners for both of them. Boxman didn’t know he needed sock liners but he was glad he had them.

I also bought them Mountain House freeze dried food, and plenty of other good snacks. Of course when dinner time came and they were making their freeze dried macaroni and cheese, nobody seemed to know how many ounces were in a cup. The directions said to use 2 cups of water and they used 32 ounces! See, I knew they needed me to come along. But they did survive without me and both of them had a great time.

It helped that they cut the hike a little short due to some “issues” one boy had.

Saturday night we lost a Cub Scout and gained a Boy Scout. While I’m still trying to figure out where the past 4 1/2 years have gone, Buster keeps reminding me that he is indeed a big boy. The evening started with the Arrow of Light ceremony including the boys shooting flaming arrows. The Scoutmaster then took over for the crossover ceremony. I had always thought it would be hard when we got to this point of his Scouting career but instead, I found that we were all ready to move on and up.

Buster is very excited to be in Boy Scouts. He had his first troop meeting last night. He was proud that the boys voted for his suggestion of flaming arrow for their new patrol. He is also ready to have a Scoutmaster’s conference for his Scout rank already. I hope he keeps up the enthusiasm.

Since Buster is moving into Boy Scouts next month, last weekends Pinewood Derby was his last one.  From his first year as a Tiger Cub, the derby has been a big deal at our house.  Buster has designed the car every year, carefully choosing paint colors, and helping with every cosmetic detail.  The first year, that was about all he did with regards to it.  The next year, he did a little more of the work and started to get interested in what was necessary to make a fast car.  He remembered those little details and applied them the following year, taking over more and more on the entire car building process.  He spent time on the internet researching designs and tips that might make his car go faster.  Each year, he won a trophy for his rank and most years overall for the pack.  This year, his heart wasn’t quite in it – he already had all those trophies and he was looking forward to moving on to Boy Scouts.  Boxman decided that he was going to make the fastest car ever run on our track just for fun and started it way ahead of time.  Three weeks before the derby, Boxman was trying to get Buster to work on his car.  He wasn’t interested.  Two weeks to go and he had figured out the design in his head but had no interest in actually starting to build the car.  Boxman’s car was looking pretty good.  At one week before, Boxman was just sure that Buster wasn’t going to be doing a car this year or at best would be racing a block of wood.  But alas, he couldn’t let his last opportunity to race pass by without having a car in it.  He drew his design on the wood and Boxman helped him hollow it out with the power tools.  Buster sanded it.  He was starting to get into it all and the next thing we knew, he was once again on the internet trying to figure out what he needed to do to make it into a fast car.  Things progressed with Buster doing more of the work on it himself than in past years.  I overheard him telling Boxman exactly what he needed him to help him with.  It was a beautiful thing.  Now despite trying to make it fast, his main concern was that it was a cool car.  It was definitely more *his* car than previous years. In the meantime, Doodles decided on Thursday night that she wanted to make a car for the siblings race on that Saturday. Boxman thought it would be close to impossible to get a car done that quickly but he would do what he could to help her. Of course he was still very focused on finishing up his ultimate car before the race.

For the few weeks before the race, this is what my kitchen looked like….

I was glad to have it cleaned up after the big race day.

So the day of the race arrived too quickly for some, but the cars were done for the most part.  They had to fine tune the weights on them after weighing them in for the race.

This is Buster’s car.  I can’t find pictures handy of the other two cars.

So, the first heat had Buster’s car skipping the track (due to too much of the weight being too far back in the car).  Rather than risk getting disqualified, they started racing his car backwards.  Not a good way to go with all that weight that was so far back in the car now so far forwards.  He still ended up beating about a third of the cars.  And best of all, he had fun and was proud of himself for making that car so much on his own – in less than a week.  Not winning another trophy to add to his collection didn’t seem to matter much to him.

And what about those other two cars? Boxman, who spent weeks working on his very cool car, didn’t do so well. His car had a similar problem with the weights too far back. Doodle’s car, which had the fewest man hours invested in it and was whipped together in 1 day, was not only the fastest of our 3 cars, but also was faster than the car that won for the pack. I think a lesson was learned by Boxman….

Last night, we had a meeting for the Boy Scouts who were selected for our council’s contingency to the National Jamboree in 2010.  Buster sat there leaning his head on my shoulder for the whole meeting.  The Scoutmaster talked about the all of the walking they would be doing and the activities available.  Buster leaned on my shoulder some more.  I kept wondering what the Scoutmaster must be thinking about this little 10 year old leaning on his mom’s shoulder.  How would this little boy be able to handle 2 weeks away from his family, sitting on a bus for a good day coming and going, camping out for 9 nights/10 days?  Is he really ready.  I was thinking that anyway.  Afterall, Buster is only 10 and will barely be 12, the minimum age to go, when they head off to Fort A.P. Hill in July of 2010.  Will he mature enough in that year and a half?  Will the campouts with his soon to be Boy Scout troop, along with the camping done as Jamboree training prepare him enough?  Will he learn to love camping, because he certainly doesn’t like it much right now.  Will I be able to wave him goodbye when he gets on that bus?  I know he will grow a lot before the time comes and I do hope he will be ready to go because I don’t want him to go if he won’t enjoy the experience and come back with great memories.  He’s looking forward to all the patch trading though.

Last night was the Boy/Cub Scout district dinner.  I almost didn’t go due to having tkd and then having to pick Doodles up from dance 15 minutes after the dinner was to start.  The idea of not having to cook dinner or eat leftovers won me over though.  Boxman and Buster took the apple crisp that I had made earlier in the day, and Doodles and I met them there a little late, but just in time for our table to go through the buffet line.  We ate and the kids asked me if we could leave.  Doodles had been gone literally the whole day as she was doing dance performances at schools and then had 2 dance classes so I was very sympathetic to her desire to leave early.  For some reason, I waited a little bit.  And then I looked at the program and realized there were only a couple more things which shouldn’t take long.  Maybe the kids could hold on for a little bit longer before ducking out.  This is one of those times where afterwards, you are really glad that you stayed for whatever unknown reason because you were supposed to be there even though you didn’t know it.  The last award presented was for the district family of the year.  My mouth dropped and I truly had a look of surprise on my face when they announced our family.  Boxman has been heavily involved in Scouting ever since Buster was old enough to join while I supported him.  He is planning on starting up a Venture crew next year when Doodles will be old enough to join.  This past year, I did take on an official roll of advancements chair.  Apparently this was enough to earn us the honor.  I’m still surprised over it.

No, I’m not talking about the tv dying again. I have gotten the bug that put Buster and Boxman out of commission for an entire week. I don’t have time to be sick. I have to teach my children, run them around to their activities, and do little things like cook meals and clean the house. It’s a miserable little bug in some ways – makes you just want to lie down and rest, my whole body feels very heavy. In other ways, it’s not so bad – I have some congestion and a headache, but I don’t feel totally miserable.  I did manage to get Boxman to go buy groceries today since I was out of commission.  And I was so sick that I didn’t even fuss that he didn’t buy exactly the right things.  I’m proud of myself.

Despite feeling yucky this morning, I went to church with my family so I could see Buster get his Parvuli Dei religious emblem award for Cub Scouts. After presenting all of the boys with their awards, they mentioned that they had an award for a couple of the adults. Boxman was completely surprised when they asked him to go up and receive the St. George medal which is the highest award an adult can get through the Catholic dioceses for Scouting. He had no idea he was going to be getting it and the look on his face was priceless. He has helped at the religious emblems camp the past 3 years in various roles so the man in charge nominated him for the award. I was wondering if he was going to take it off at all today, but he did finally.

Let me start by saying that I love Cub Scouts. Of course Buster and Boxman do too and even Doodles enjoys her time at scouting events. It’s a great complement to homeschooling as we sometimes incorporate his rank requirements, belt loops, and pins into our studies. He had to write about a president or other important person from US history for his Citizen activity badge so I made it a writing assignment for school. I got far less grumbling about writing a paper that way.

It was a big week for us with Cub Scouts. Buster is a first year Webelos and earned his Webelos rank on Thursday. To make it all a bit more meaningful and special to him, we decided to have him continue to wear his blue shirt instead of switching to the tan Boy Scout shirt that most of the other boys wear as soon as they move up to Webelos. His blue shirt was adorned with all of his awards from the past three years. It also made sense to not wear the tan Boy Scout shirt until he knew the Boy Scout oath, law, motto, and slogan. We told him that as soon as he earned his rank, he could switch to that shirt. Friday morning, when he got up, his rank was sewn on his shirt, waiting for him. He was so excited about it and it made the whole thing so much more meaningful.

Then, on Saturday, he had the pack pinewood derby. This is always a big event in our house because Boxman gets way into it. The first year, he even went so far as to make his own car after the race was over to try to figure out ways to make it faster. But, it has been so neat to see how Buster has been doing more work on it each year. This year he had some definite ideas about how he wanted things and did them even when Boxman didn’t necessarily agree with him. The hard work payed off – he finished 3rd place in Webelos and 5th place overall. He will add the trophy to his 2nd place Tiger, !st place Wolf, 1st place pack, 2nd place council for Wolf, 1st place Bear, and 2nd place pack trophies from the previous years. I told you that Boxman was way into it. I was actually kind of glad to see him let someone else win this year.

I’ve also volunteered to be the advancement chair for our pack. The woman who was doing it has resigned. I think it’s something I can handle. Boxman is also moving back into the Cubmaster position. He had to resign when he started his current job because he was traveling all of the time. Now he is home most of the time so he is relieving the woman who stepped up to do it in his place. The problem is that we will only be filling these positions until February of next year when Buster moves on to Boy Scouts, so we are actively looking for people to train to take over next year.

And one final thing, Boxman got his invitation to Philmont! For you non-scouters, this is the ultimate in Scout training. You have to be recommended by your council in order to get invited to the training. It is located in New Mexico and the whole family is encouraged to attend. They have programs for kids based on age and things for spouses to do too. We are all excited about our summer vacation for this year.