Good morning.

 

I wanted to take a few minutes to write about some of our Boy Scout adventures.  A couple of weeks ago, the Troop went on a campout that is a yearly competition between Troops.  It’s called Camporee.  Tim had attended a meeting about what the camp would be like and which event would be played.  The events were centered around the “Scouting Around the World” theme.  Tim came back and we had a couple of meetings about the events and we practiced. 

 

Now to give some background about our Troop, this troop was recently abandoned and the charter was going to expire on March 1^st.  Tim and his little Webelos group moved up on February 25^th to save the troop.  The whole Boy Scout experience was new to Tim and new to the boys.  We had 2 brothers of some of the Webelos join as well.  So all in all, we had a new, inexperienced Troop of 7 boys.  Before we left for camp we explained to all the boys that they needed to know that we were very new group and not to expect to win any of the competitions.  We told them just have fun and do your best. 

 

So off we go to the camp competition with 7 brand new Scouts and 3 new leaders.  Each Troop was given a country to represent.  We were Italy.  I made 2 large Italian flags for us to carry and we greeted others by saying, “Essere preparato” which means “Be prepared” in Italian.  That phase we also adopted as our yell throughout the day. The boys competed in a variety of events and did very well.  There was geocashing, map & compass, lashings, international flag recognition and a few others.

 

 As a woman I must interject here that the morning started with a temperature of 19F and the high was slightly above freezing for the afternoon.  For a Texan, it was down right cold. 

 

 Here’s some great pics of the competitions. 

 

This is where they did some lashings on some branches and put together a triangle they had to walk and guide to the finish line. This was my favorite because it was the hardest for our boys and they beat the two other groups.  HOORAY!

 

This was a wrestling contest. 

Map and Compass

 

International Flags

 

My favorite picture of my wonderful scoutmaster hubby.

 

When they day was done. We attended the campfire ceremony and to our surprise we won the “Geocashing” trophy…. then the “Most Authentic Country Representation” trophy…..then we won the “Camporee Grand Champion”  and the  “Golden Axe Award”.  We were in SHOCK and thrilled for the boys. 

 

All 7 boys with their trophies!

 

The overall comment of the camp staff was that the boys worked very well as a team and seemed to truly be friends.  I was proud that the thing that was noticed most was their friendship, and that it was the thing that made a winning team.