Cub twilight Camp

Don't you love the look of concentration on Joey's face. He is building his first marble maze. This is pretty serious stuff.

Last week we took our cub scout pack to twilight camp at Breckenridge Park in Richardson, Texas. What I hate about twilight camp and scouts in general is all of the paper work involved to drive a group of kids 7 miles to a city park. Each cub and adult had to have an application and a medical release. The forms were pretty detailed and required an accounting of our lives since birth. I had to fill out a tour permit to allow us to carpool the 7 miles. We had to list driver's license numbers, insurance information, the make model and year of each vehicle which might be used in the carpool and how many seatbelts were available. Each adult then had to take an online class on preventing and detecting child abuse. Then each adult had to fill out a volunteer information sheet reiterating everything that we had just submitted. All this to go to a city park 7 miles away with our cubs.

What I really liked about cub twilight camp is the experience the boys got by participating in games, skills and crafts. Some cubs are golden boys. Everything they do is good and perfect the first time out. They are good looking. They have a lot of friends. They hit the bulls eye everytime. Then there are the rest of us, like my son Joseph. He really had a hard time with archery the first day. He did not even hit the target. It is pretty hard to be a Webelo and to miss every arrow. On his second day at archery I insisted that he change the hand with which he was holding the bow. He really fought me on it but I reminded him of how successful he had been so far. Just leave it to a mom to do that. He hit the target for the first time in his life! He got two bulls eyes that round too. So the lesson to be learned when you fail is to change things up, a little or a lot, but especially listen to your mom.

At camp we have a tradition of doing swaps. Swaps are little things you usually pin to a swap hat that you would willingly trade with other campers. Some swaps are cute homemade crafts. This year Joey got the great idea to use wrecked and irretrievable dvds or cds as his swaps. He drilled a little hole then stuck in a safety pin. On the last day of camp I brought a gallon sized bag of giant gumballs. I could not have gotten more attention than if I had been walking around a Navy base without a shirt. I swapped with everyboy who liked gum. Amazingly enough, one boy came up to me and told me he did not like gum and another told me his mother would never let him have gum. Poor things. Everyone else was willing to swap an eye or a limb for a big colorful ball of heaven.