gatorcast from paul smith

Friday night I took the boys to the annual Cub Scouts camp out at Possum Creek.  Most of the Pack came including the entire Herrington clan, yes ALL 7!   Ernie and I setup the tents and then both our families met at my house for a “cook out” before returning to the camp site.  The only way to camp!  It seemed easier to grill and eat at home since we are so close to the camp site.  I know it not the same as going to Camp Shands in Melrose but Possum Creek is supposed to be for “Beginner” campers.  As usual, we had a large bonfire Friday night and on Saturday morning we got to see the helicopters from the Alachua County Fire Rescue and the Life Flight ShandsCair from UF.  Both were very impressive and I especially liked the ShandsCair.Here is Evan standing next to the Copter Cameron is watching the demostration of the Sheriff Canine Buck  �

Today we had an ice cream social to kick off the new Cub Scout year.  Here we are for a group shot of the members of the Pack that came.  Evan is starting Bear and I will be the Den Leader.

Me (last row third from left), Evan (last on right, row two)

Today my Den completed their dragon masks in celebration of the Chinese New Year.

Joey, Evan, Ben, Thomas, Diego and Luke

Thanks to Pam, Mary and Alex for their help.

As a snack I picked up two orders of Sweet & Sour Chicken and we each had 4 pieces and some white rice.  (I’m sure their parents wont be happy with me for ruining their dinners. :>) 

To be honest I was really testing to see how many boys out of 6 would eat the sweet & sour sauce. (4 did, 2 did not).

We had a great time this month learning about the Chinese New Year.

Today we had a wonderful wolf den meeting. 

This month’s scout’s theme is the celebration of the Chinese New Year and in that spirit we ate some honey oranges, ate/read some fortune cookies (some of the fortunes were not fortunes at all and kinda bad, we learned from this too) and made paper airplanes.  

Thomas, Luke, Ben & Evan

Each boy was given instructions for 3 pre-printed paper airplanes, The Dart, The Dragon, and The  Rapier.  It was fun making them, and even better lining them up and seeing who could make their plane fly the longest.  We raced several times using the same planes. 

Here is a link to where I printed the planes:

http://www.boyslife.org/games/online-games/1867/paperplane/

The Rapier flew the longest, but The Dart won by distance.

This moring several cubs of our pack had a field trip to the Gainesville Fire Rescue Station #1 on Main St.  Here is Evan shooting the ‘mini’ hose.  Moments after this shot he pointed it into the air and got this photographer a little wet.   It was cool they let them to this.

Thomas driving backwards..

Here, ‘Darth Vader‘ is explaing to not be afaid if someone during a fire comes to get you looking and sounding like this.

We had a great time a learned a lot about fire safety.   Now, I’m going to go check my smoke detectors …

Yesterday I had my third cub scout meeting as the den leader.  This time I did less preperation, and more thinking about how to have fun.   I had two less boys but double the fun.

This Friday our Pack will be holding a cardboard box derby so I thought I’d give the boys a headstart.   We basically took boxes and cut holes for the head and arms and then decorated them with cups, construction paper, tin foil and whatever I could find in my craft box.

The real fun was when we where leaving and I told them to practice race to the side walk and back.   It was surprisingly fun!