Alex The Torpedo

Alex has been swimming faster and faster and Becky caught it on video.

Scout Recruitment Party

Becky assembled the scouts of pack 90 and their families for a pizza & movie party tonight. We advertised it to the whole school, hoping to get some more kids interested. One extra kid and his dad showed up tonight - the dad had been a boy scout and believed in the Scouts as a way to help raise young men. Becky put together a great display of the Scouts and their adventures so far this year.
Wolf Den member Nicolai and I demonstrated what he had learned this year about folding the flag in the school cafeteria.

The kids enjoyed a movie called Down and Derby about parents relieving their Scout Pinewood Derby days through their sons' Derby. I had never seen it before, but it was actually funny, though I think it would be funniest for Scouts and their families, but not so much for the general population. It reminded us that the Derby should be fun and for the kids, not the parents. Our Derby will be in a couple of months.

November Blog Posts

I just finished catching up on November's blog posts. Catch up here.

Talking While Swimming

Aaron likes to talk while swimming. Becky caught it on video.

My Disaster Kit - The Blog

After the ice storm last month in Oklahoma, I've been thinking again about getting prepared for unforeseen emergencies. Mark and the cousins had to abandon the house for a night after their neighborhood lost power. I sent him some links to resources I had used to make some preparations. I realized that I had spent a lot of time thinking about this and putting together several emergency preparedness kits for personal use, for sheltering in the house during a blizzard or power outage, for getting stuck in the car during bad weather or a big traffic jam, and a portable 3 day kit for grabbing and bailing out of the house in the event of a disaster that damages the house. It has made me feel more secure, though I hope I'll never need most of it. I wanted to catalog what I was doing, and I can't seem to avoid wanting to share this stuff, so of course I decided to put it all into a blog. It is not meant to tell anyone what they need to do, but instead to get them thinking about emergency preparedness, and to catalog my specific efforts. I'm going to slowly add to it over time. I have a few posts over there already and will add more when I have time (sigh). Please check it out and comment at My Disaster Blog. There's a link to the right of this screen also that will get you there too.

Touring the Firehouse

Pack 90 took a tour of the Sylvania Fire Station today to learn about fire safety. They got a toor of the pumper trucks and ambulance. The firefighters demonstrated several pieces of their equipment and let the kids try out an infrared camera that they use to find hot spots in buildings. This tour and fire safety lecture got the boys one step closer to completing their Wolf and Bear badges.

Building Castles

Aaron was prepared as he brought his new Black & Decker toolkit that he got for Christmas to the Kids' Workshop at Home Depot. It includes the goggles, the jigsaw he's holding, a real tape measure, and a level. These were a big help (sort of) as he and Alex put together this month's project, a wooden castle bank - more of a box with a lid really.
As a matter of fact, this month's castle project was one of the hardest we'd done, with several pieces attached in odd ways. It was set up so that if one piece was out of alignment, it threw off several other parts. They got the job done (with some help), and took home two new castles.