Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Cub Scouts, & Bugs & Dirt - oh my!

So I've officially been sucked into the world of blogging. Not that I think my writing is at all interesting and you should all check here daily for some profound reading.... but I send enough pictures out to friends and family of our mundane happenings, that this actually started to make sense. Bear with me and my typos, here we go!

Camping. The dictionary says this:
A place where tents, huts, or other temporary shelters are set up, as by soldiers, nomads, or travelers.

Tents, check. Huts, heck no. Temporary shelter - thank goodness! If I had to pick from this list, I would say I was a soldier this weekend. Yes, a soldier. #4 in the dictionary says this about a soldier: a person who contends or serves in any cause. I went camping with the cubscouts. I served. The Cause. And I hope it doesn't happen again soon, because my body is going to need a good year to recover from the lumps and bumps of the 42-degree ground that I had to sleep on. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration (the year for my recovering body, that is) but my mind doesn't think so. It will remember. For a long, long time. A woman's mind never forgets.

I think I could be a camper - as long as I could sleep in a hotel at night. I could handle all the other stuff up until that point. The set-up. The hiking. The fire. The cooking. The cleaning. (yes, cleaning, I didn't want a dirty tent and someone about 4 ft. tall kept going inside with muddy shoes... grrr!) The bugs. Ok, some bugs. But I think I sprayed myself with enough Deep Woods Off that I could have repelled small woodland animals in addition to the bugs, so it wasn't so bad actually! But, the sleeping part - not so much. Why didn't someone mention that the New Age Camper now brings along an air matress? Not me. I had the kind of gear that Real Men, (or women!) use. A sleeping bag and the earth. I know, I know. Don't gasp in horror. I'm a rookie! But this rookie learned a valuable lesson for the next time I am a Soldier. For the Cause. Next time I will be prepared - I promise. How, you ask? Because it will be Tom's turn to camp for the Cause.

Now for some pictures of my Tiger Cub in action!

Here's Carter taking a break for lunch. He was tired out from watching me set up the tent and get settled.


Here's a shot of Carter and Henry. And Henry's dad, Kurt. Kurt is our Den Leader!


Here's a shot from our hike. Ever use a walking stick? Me either, but the boys sure enjoyed shuffling through the poison ivy to find the perfect size for them. Do you know what walking sticks become when the hike is over? No, not firewood. Weapons! Gotta love boys... Here's a few shots from the activities we did. Sack races, tug-of-war, and shooting potatoes from this really cool home-made potato launcher thing. Just add hairspray and push the igniter and BOOM! Into space (or the woods) it went. This sort of 'sport' makes a Mom nervous. Boys don't quite hear when someone yells 'step back!' They think it's more fun to see if they can look down the barrel of the launcher if the potato hasn't come out yet.... I had my fingers on the 911 button on my phone just in case.





Finally, after a long day, Carter asked to go to bed at 8:15 pm after S'mores and fireside stories. He got into his Patriots fleece pajamas and knit hat and agreed to sit outside for another 15 minutes. We listened to a few more knock-knock jokes being told as well as a 7 yr old can tell 'em and then turned in. The other kids stayed outside our tent around the fire for about 2 more hours. I think I checked my cell phone clock every 10 minutes until it was time to leave the next morning. My little man slept like a log though. At least one of us did.

6 comments:

Christina said...

Sounds like a good time to me. Maybe this will make me want to have kids. But, for real I'm looking forward to reading about your fun adventures. Somebody has to have them.

Unknown said...

Great post! I'm looking forward to more. Real campers are not in cell phone range of 911 though. Keep up the great work.

Claire said...

Great job! With your talent we may be reading your articles in the Star.

Dori (Aviva's mommy) said...

More power to you....I do NOT like camping at all..Love the pics looks like everyone had fun.

Veronica Burchard said...

I really enjoyed reading that, thanks! You're an amazing writer!

Kelly said...

OH my! We just joined Tiger Cubs this year - does that mean we have to camp? ;)

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