Liz

My understanding is that the difference between "pack" camping and "family" camping is that in "family" camping each cub scout has at least one parent or guardian present. And family camping does't have any such one-night limits, does it?

Good point. Her parents are on top of the medical treatment so I'll mention it to dad and I'm sure he'll make sure to ask. One great advantage to having it at our house instead of hours away is that if her doctor says "no camping" she can still come in the morning and hang out with us as long as she feels up to it.

Yikes. Definitely not someone I want in charge of my kids out on the water.

Indigenous People Day is not a school holiday in our state anyway. We don't have any area-wide long weekends coming up until Thanksgiving (and I don't think anybody wants to camp for Thanksgiving). We should usually have plenty of camping options within an hour or so of home when we can plan ahead. It just so happens that the OA has that particular weekend reserved for our biggest Council camp, and the only other Council camps with availability just won't offer a viable experience for a kid who can't walk. The ones where you can drive up to the campsite tend to get reserved first. We just need to get our year plan nailed down and then as time goes on it will get easier.

Our entire Council opts out of popcorn. We sell World's Finest Chocolate bars and Tillamook Country Smoker meat sticks (same idea as Country Meats but local-ish / in-state company). They do pretty much sell themselves. My daughter dons her uniform and goes out on Pokemon Community Day and pushes a stroller around downtown with a big sign advertising "Pokemon Trainer Candy" for $1. If it's not raining too hard, people snap it right up. I've also got a secret stash of meat sticks and candy bars in the staff cabinet in my classroom and it's disappearing at a pretty steady rate. I accept IOUs in the envelope from my co-workers to make it easy. Oh, and I buy a fair number myself for my lunchbox and for snacks for the kids. This is a Council fundraiser so obviously we're sharing profit with the Council. Springtime, the Council runs a Camp Card fundraiser.

True. Ignorance and indifference are very closely related, and in the case of this particular company I feel it was a combination of both. I'm glad I don't work for them anymore.

Yes, and I only have a small handful of restaurants I'm willing to eat at as a result. But using breadsticks as table decorations was a whole level of "we don't give a ____" beyond what I could really comprehend for a company that somehow thought they were making gluten free food available.

I know for a fact that none of the youth in my unit (nor most of the leaders) knew what it was for until I told them. Our Council shop sells the shirts with the patches already sewn on. So as far as a lot of people know it's just part of the shirt.

I guess part of what I'm getting at is that simple awareness of dietary restrictions is a skill I think Scouts should learn. Sometimes that's going to mean "Don't forget to wash your hands after a peanut butter sandwich, but the allergic kid cooks his or her own food," and sometimes it will mean "Maybe we could make quesedillas on corn tortillas instead of grilled cheese sandwiches so the wheat-allergic kid can eat the same thing as the rest of us." It's shocking how few people have even a basic understanding of allergens and cross-contact. In a Facebook recipe group I'm in, someone asked for alternatives to corn bread to go with chili because her son is allergic to corn. Most people answered with "Fritos" or "Tortilla chips." Nobody I know is allergic to corn but I dang well know that Fritos and Tortilla chips are primarily made from corn. Once I went to a mandatory office party and one of the executives wandered by my table where I was sitting alone and asked why I was eating the table decorations (they were all made out of tropical fruit, still in the skins and stuck together with bamboo skewers in goofy shapes). I said I had Celiac and nothing they were serving was safe for me to eat. She said Oh, we made sure there were lots of gluten free options, did you see the table of fruit and cheese and meats? I asked her if anybody had given any thought to the fact that they'd used breadsticks as table decorations interspersed throughout the food table. She looked at me like a deer in the headlights, asked for my name, and asked if she could contact me before the next event for advice on how to better serve employees with Celiac and other food allergies (this was a big company with LOTS of employees). I said sure... and never heard from her again, not even after I emailed her to ask if I could help with food planning for another upcoming function. This was just one example - pretty much all our functions were like that. At another function everything they had on the buffet line was marked with a sign that said gluten free... except the buns which were at the front of the table and were the first thing every person put on their plate before going through the line risking cross contact with everything else on the table. They even had gluten free buns available, and an empty serving table they could have used with the gluten free buns in order to avoid cross contact, but nobody stopped to think about it. Sometimes it really is just one small change you can make, which will make a HUGE difference when you want to be inclusive. This applies to food and other disabilities as well.

Very true. My youngest child is sensitive to cow's milk, both the protein and the lactose. She gets tummy aches and eczema. She does fine with butter, as well as sheep and goat dairy products of all kinds, and I don't worry about trace amounts of milk in ingredients for her. But last time she convinced my oldest kid who was babysitting that it was OK for her to eat her sister's goldfish crackers, I had to listen to her moan about tummy aches for a week. 🙄😂 As for me, if I get a trace of gluten in my food I may very well miss a week or more of work over it. Other than a SMALL stash of snacks that my 9 year old is allowed to take to school to eat (hence the goldfish crackers), nothing in my kitchen is allowed to contain gluten. I bought my own brand new dutch oven to take camping that I won't share with the girls because you can't reliably clean gluten out of iron. The key to doing any group meal planning is to ensure you talk to the family and find out exactly what you're dealing with. If I had a Scout in my Troop with, let's say, a life threatening peanut allergy, I'd encourage all campouts to be peanut-free at least in terms of group cooking.

I've had Celiac for more than 10 years and after extensive research I've pretty much memorized the major brands I can count on to list gluten in their ingredients if it's present. I would pass on a generic brand with the same thing in the ingredients list, but I'd buy McCormick.

Huh. I guess I missed that memo. On the other hand, "Once an official uniform, always an official uniform," so I don't really see it as "enforceable." Overall though, I don't like the change. I think the gradual phase-in during the Webelos years makes more economical sense. Families with the resources to run down to the Scout Shop and buy a new shirt were welcome to do so, and other families were welcome to wait until the blue uniform was outgrown. Oh well. I opted for the lazy and apparently currently correct route of leaving the rank insignia off the tan uniform entirely. Sewing badges on pockets is a PITA. I think when she earns the Webelos badge I'll sew some Velcro on it and be done with it.

Huh. It also doesn't show the blue uniform as an option for Webelos any longer. I don't see that changing any time soon though. A Scout is Thrifty. The "grace period" to let kids outgrow their blue uniform before they switch to tan is pretty useful. In other news, I am trying to decide whether to save or pass along this blue uniform. I'm afraid my petite youngest child might be in 6th grade before she grows into it. 😛

That's good to know. Unfortunately, it doesn't exactly answer the question of whether I can place any rank insignia on the tan uniform other than the Webelos rank. 😕 It doesn't show any other options, but it doesn't appear to prohibit it either (and the diamond shaped previous ranks were previously allowed).

I guess, but I think those are pretty ugly.

My Webelos Scout is outgrowing her blue uniform. Time to move up. The insignia guide ( https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34760.webelosscout.final.pdf ) gives three options for rank insignia. She should be earning her Webelos badge within the next 60 days or less. In the meantime, what I'm inclined to do is center the diamond shaped Bear badge on the pocket. I am unclear on whether this is an allowed configuration. The guide shows the diamond shaped Webelos badge on the pocket as an option, but I'm not clear on whether it's OK for that to just be the most recent rank earned or whether my options before she earns the Webelos badge are all 3 of her diamond badges (Bobcat, Wolf, Bear) or no badge at all. I'd rather not put all 3 badges on the uniform because they may leave some sewing marks that won't be covered by the oval Webelos badge or future Scout badges. Tiger badge was not earned, if that matters, only because they weren't allowing girls in Cub Scouts until she was in 2nd grade.

I once had a situation where I hand delivered the "special needs" request forms for the two Celiac Scouts in our Troop to the Council months in advance of summer camp. It included requests for fridge space for the kids to bring some of their own food and that sort of thing. I wasn't really asking for much - certainly not for the camp to provide special food. The kids were willing to bring their own camp stoves and the like; they just wanted a place to store perishable food and a sink to clean their own dishes in. I never heard back so a couple weeks before camp I called the Council office to verify that our kids would be accommodated. They told me it was too late to accommodate anything. I explained that I had brought the forms in months ago and dropped them off myself, including who I had given them to and approximately what date it had been. Eventually they found them mis-filed in the Council office. Their response was (without consulting us) to issue a refund to the two boys in question and tell us that they were not welcome at Camp. My son decided to take them up on the refund. The other one decided he'd rather live on nothing but salad and trail mix for a week and got his mom to call and yell at them until they agreed to let him come as long as they didn't have to actually do anything with his request. I'm gonna be honest here, that left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. In terms of patrol cooking, I don't think it has to mean a backing off of "boy led" at all. It just means the boys have to learn that peanut butter sandwiches may not be the solution for every campout depending on the needs of their members. Adults need to do the same thing they always do - keep an eye out for potential safety violations and say something to the SPL if something is looking unsafe - just like they would if a patrol was undercooking their hamburgers. Food safety is a thing with or without allergies. Learning how to think outside the box and plan a menu with constraints is a better skill than teaching them to live on cereal and sandwiches and donuts whenever they are camping. I've spent the last 10 years or so accommodating not only Celiac but dairy allergies, nut allergies, and shellfish allergies for our family Thanksgiving meal. It takes a little creativity but we do it and we do it RIGHT so everyone feels safe and can eat (almost) everything that is being served. For dessert we usually do have diary and non-dairy options to choose among, and they are clearly marked. Learning how to do food service including the "this isn't always easy" cases is a life skill that can turn into a career skill for some of our Scouts. My son (the one with Celiac) is now seriously considering a career in the culinary arts. He wants to open a food cart serving gluten free pizza. He's becoming quite an excellent chef, actually, and I love it when he comes over to visit and cook dinner for us.

Yes, having the kids do individual meals does help, and that's more or less what we've usually done. But it's not the most frugal option. Individual servings of food tend to cost more. When my older kids were still Scouts, we had an entire patrol we put all the kids with food allergies in. They all had their individual mess kits, backpacking stoves, and did their own individual meal planning. But they didn't have the advantage of learning to cook together as a Patrol. It worked, and I might do it again faced with the same challenges in a future troop, but it's not without its disadvantages. Food preferences should be considered a burden of the individual Scout. But actual medical dietary restrictions CAN be accommodated in a group setting without going crazy. Whether it always makes sense to do so is another question, but IMO it makes sense to do it at least sometimes. It is good practice for the kids. Edited to add: It's important to understand how dietary restrictions affect kids socially and emotionally too. Having that one kid who always has to stay out of the kitchen area and eat his meal away from the rest of the patrol is not a good way to foster a sense of belonging.

Menu for 9 scouts, $50.36, gluten, dairy, nut, and peanut free. Also, I serve a fresh fruit or veggie with each meal because I'm like that. $5.60 per person. Breakfast menu (2 breakfasts): Hard boiled eggs, Cream of Rice hot cereal, Fresh Fruit (oranges or bananas) Lunch: Carrots, "Beanie weenies" (baked beans and turkey franks) Dinner: Dutch Oven Drumsticks (with seasoning), Baked Potatoes, Broccoli Florets.

New challenge: Try to do the same thing but you have Scouts and/or leaders in your troop with Celiac, dairy sensitivity, and nut/peanut allergies. I'm presenting the challenge before I try to actually accomplish the menu. Give me some time to work on it too.

We recently cleaned out our storage unit and I finally found my jewelry box which disappeared when we moved. While I had been hoping to find my wedding ring within, alas, that is still missing - but I found something far more valuable: My Proud Parent ribbon full of Parent Pins from Tiger to Life. ❤️ It went a long way toward making me feel better about the idea that I'll never see my wedding ring again...

But now that the World Crest is standard issue and no longer earned, nobody knows what it's for. I think the Messengers of Peace award fills the hole that the World Crest used to when it needed to be earned and therefore the people who wore it knew what it meant.

We have a boy in our Cub Scout pack who I think would be much more interested if the GSA program were an option for him. Poor kid hates the outdoors. He only goes because his mom makes him go (she's the CC). He likes the stuff we do at pack meetings as long as they aren't too outdoorsy. I don't fault GSA for not having a bigger outdoors focus. That's fine for some kids! But for MY kids, I would be pretty frustrated if I had to dig and search for like-minded girls from other Troops to form a special interest group focused on the outdoors.

We have something pretty close to that on our homeowner's policy too. You should have seen me nagging kids at my daughter's birthday party to put helmets on before riding bikes and scooters up and down our steep, gravel driveway. I have liability coverage but that doesn't mean I want anybody to get hurt! 😱 How did I not have ANY IDEA about this? Totally filing it away for near future. Thank you!! LOL! We'd love to have you. Especially if you bring an experienced Scout with you to help train our girls who are all still teaching themselves what they need to know for the Scout rank! Man, the patrol method is slow when you don't have any Scouts with any Scout Skills. Our youth are probably less of a concern than our adults. While willing to drive 2.5 hours after work on a Friday evening, I am not necessarily looking forward to the idea for a 2 night campout. It sounds like all the youth and adults who have chimed in so far this evening are leaning toward taking us up on the back yard camping experience.

The more I think about it, the more I like the option at my house. It really is a nice setting. Only my house and one other house are visible. Convincing everyone else, however, might be a challenge. One parent was concerned the girls might get "too comfortable" with the house. My response was "I didn't say I was going to let them come inside." LOL! (Although I have no other bathroom facilities so they'd have to come in once in a while).