Sniffles157

Woody, I guess we were blessed with 2 wonderful leaders. We always camped out at the local camps and we were lucky enough to know one of the oldest girl scout who would let us campout on her property a couple of times. I did not take offence to what you said, I was just teasing. I have a good friend who was a former boy scout and he is always teasing me about how easy the girl scouts have it. It really depended on the leaders of the troop. I have never heard of anyone camping out in a mall though and IMO that is not a way to show the girls how to camp.

Maybe the difference is in how many days we run. Last year we ran 5 days, all the staff was volunteer, we had all the crafts and stuff donated, the boys brought their lunches everyday except for the last and we had the hot dogs donated, and I know we used the archery equipment from the council office. As far as the place we held it at, it was not a council place. The gentleman who owns it donated it to us for the whole week. It usally runs about $300 a day. The only thing we were not allowed to do was advertise outside of the cub scouts. That was mainly due to the fact this place is very popular. He is a former scout and did not want to donate it just to anybody.

Thank you ScoutNut. I'm glad I at least retain some of my memory, LOL.

Woody- I take offence to that, LOL. I was a Girl Scout for years and we never camped in the mall. IMO the girls have their program and the boys have theirs and the two should not be combined. I remember alot of boys also had to tag along with the Girl Scouts and at the day camps they would have their own seperate area with things for them to do. Now ya'll forgive me if I get this wrong, but I had a friend who was in the Explorer Scouts(?). She would ride around with the police dept. As I said forgive me if I got that wrong and please correct me.

I want to know how ya'll managed to get the price of your day camps at $30 - $45? When we held our first one last year, we had no one show up for sign-ups so we dropped the price. It started at $60 then we actually requested camp scholarships for all the boys and they only had to pay $15. None of the parents would pay the $60, they said it was too high. (we are in a low-come area) This year we were told by our DE that we had to charge $60. We had almost everything donated last year so there was really no cost and I know that the girls who are working on it this year have much of it already donated. I just want to know why we were told it had to be $60 and no less.

We held our districts first Day Camp last year and the boys loved it. We did most of the activities that have been listed, but at our closing campfire we had a gentleman, who was a former Boy Scout, come in and do a flag burning ceremony. It was great and the boys enjoyed it. He had them come up and help him with different parts of the program instead of just sitting there.

I have my son's book right here. It is the 2005 printing and on page 4 The heading is "Welcome to the Webelos Den". That is just the first one, all over the book it clearly states Webelos Den. On page 29 it talks about the Webelos Denner. I hope this helps clear anything up.

The only song I can think of right now is "Friends are Friends Forever" by Micheal W Smith. Here is the chorus: Friends are friends forever if the Lord's the Lord of them, And a friend will not say never, if the welcome does not end. Though it's hard to let you go, in the Father's hands we know, That a lifetimes not to long to live as friends. I know I have more, but I can not find my songbook right this minute. I will look tomorrow and see if I can not find it.

Your right that is how it should be, but last year when we first started I was the only english speaking parent who volunteered for that age group. I was told if I do not do it then they would not have a Webelos den. This year the tiger cub leader from last year agreed to do it cause I am leaving. I know she is having a really hard time with it. This year they put the one bear that we had registered with the Webelos den. So she has 3 age groups to deal with at one time. My prayers are with her.

OK i am going to show my age is to how young I am on this one. I actually remember when the Daisy program was introduced to Girl Scouts. I was a Senior Scout and I remember that we went to help out a new Daisy troop. I do not think that the Cub Scouts can pull off this program. In Girl Scouts our troops were seperated by age and we did not have a monthly meeting where there was a wide range of ages. The only time there was that many ages together was at day camp. As it is in our Pack, our Tiger parents do not even show up half the time so I do not see them staying for 2 years. At day camp last year, our district pulled off its very first one, we only had 20 boys and we split them up into 2 groups with various ages. In my group I had 1 WebelosI and he ended up helping the younger ones most of the time. The other half of the time he kept telling my how cheesy most of the activities were. He actually enjoyed helping the younger ones more than anything else. Both my brother and I spent years in scouting. I started as a Brownie and I fiished everything except my Gold Award.(for those who do not know anything about Girl Scouts, that is the highest award at the time.) My brother started CubScouts at the beginning (I can not remember the starting rank back then) and finished everything except his Eagle Scout project. We both got burned out towards the end and to add to that we also had many other activities going on. I started my son as a WebelosI mainly so he would not get so burned out in the end. Also because the two years I tried to join him before that I never recieved a response from the council office as to where we go. If they want to up the recruitment numbers so much then they need to stress that everyone who calls them inquiring about joining should be called back. I am still having that problem with some of the Boy Scout Troops I have contacted about visiting their troop with our WebelosII. No one bothers to call me back. Now if they do decide to implement the Lion cub program, could they consider having the WebelosII come in and help t=like the den cheifs do? I know my son loves to help out the younger ones when he can. There was one incident when the Webelos leader got frustrated with the boys and sent them home. My son and another WebelosII, who did not get in trouble like the other ones did, wanted to stay and help the younger dens. They were told to leave immediatly by their leader and IMO that was not the way to handle it. She admitted to me that my son and the other boy did not do anything wrong and the leaders of the other 2 dens wanted them to stay and help. My point is that these boys maybe Cub Scouts still, but they are still mature enough to help out the younger ones. Ya'll were talking eailer about it being like babysitting. That reminded me of when I first started volunteering, I was told that most parents think BSA stands for "Babysitters of America". Some Packs have a serious problem with lack of parental involvement and IMO it does not need to be made worse by adding another age group to the whole thing. I do like the idea of having the Lion cubs come back, but making it the first year Webelos. In my experience it was very hard for a new leader to run a den with 2 age groups and having the older ones ready for Boy Scouts by the end of the year.

CMJ- When we had the dicussions of who would take over what, they decided to leave her as the CM. She does actually do a great job running the pack meetings. There is a serious lack of leadership in the pack, but the 2 new leaders we got this year are getting more parents involved. When they took the boys to Cub-O this past weekend they had quite a few parent volunteers to go with them. I think it is a great thing because when I took my Webelos to Webelos Woods last year I only had 1 parent volunteer and his child was not going on the campout. I had to reduse the number of kids going because no parent would volunteer to come. I would like to come and help them with the pack after I move, but due to other thing it just would not be possible for me to do it. I have already thought about it and my husband and I dicussed it. Unfortunatly, I will just not be able to do it. As far as all the checks go that the CO has written us, I spoke with their rep. yesterday and we have found all of them. They now all have been deposited and everything has been cleared up. The new treasurer is having the account changed to a 2-person signature. When the account was first set up, I just found this out yesterday, it was not set up as a 2 person signature like we first thought. The reason is because I was the only signature on the account until the other girl was able to show her marraige certificate as proof of her name change. I think I answered the 4th question in the beginning. I am still trying to contact the DC so maybe they can come in and explain exactly what the different postions are. The pack is also very behind on it's training. Everyone has had the Youth Protection. I am the only one who has had the New Leader Essentials ands no one has had the leader specific training. All but 1 has attended Pow Wow this year, so someone needs to step up and make sure everyone has been trained. I do not know if that needs to be the DC or if someone needs to be Pack Trainer. I do know that the 2 new leaders are wanting their other training and I looked on line and found another district who is doing both of the leader trainings. They are planning on attending those. I think it is just time for me to step away and move on. I have helped them as much as I can and the situation is starting to wear on my nerves. People should be able to enloy the volunteer work and not have as much stress as I have had. I hope that the new pack we are going to will be stable enough that I will be able to enjoy it more.

Well I am going to update everyone as to what happened at the meeting. I told everyone what happened to the account was a mistake, it is taken care of, and that we have learned from it. I did not go into detail as to who's fault it was. I did mention that we were missing 2 checks that the CO gave us and the first words out of her mouth was, "I didn't have the checkbook." She would not even let me explain what the checks were. Now she did have one of them that was written over a month ago folded up in her wallet. Does that seem strange to anyone or is it just me? I think what really upset me the most was she tried to say all this was not her fault because the records were not kept and all the reciepts were in the checkbook. When she gave me the Pack record book I found out she had not updated it since I gave it to her in the first place. Those records were kept till she got the books and I do not appreciate it one bit that she was trying not to take responsabilty for her actions. I sorry I had to vent there, I do not like being blamed for something I had no control over. I contacted our Rep. from the Co and he is going to get back with me as to how many checks he wrote to our pack. All of us are pretty sure that it was more than 2 checks, but she says otherwise. I am straiting out the Pack record book before I had it over to the new Treasurer. When she found out that we were handing it to someone else she said "I guess they don't _______ think I can handle anything." I am sorry, but ya'll can fill in the blank. I do not talk that way. As far as asking her to hand over the CC book, I did not choose to make the situation worse than it already was and I told the other people after the meeting that it was something that they need to handle. I do not think she will give up her power so easily. FScouter, the reason I tried the DE first is because our district is so new we contacted her for everything last year. After I saw your post I looked at some of our District newsletters and found out who our DC was. The phone number he has listed is no longer working so I am going to see if his e-mail works. I haven't done it yet because I want to calm down some before I contact him. (I am still upset over the whole deal) Eamonn, Her That Must Be Obeyed, hehehe I like that one I may use it. The account does require 2 signatures. The bank has not done their job and the new treasurer will work that out. I like the idea of only writing checks at the meeting. It will be the best way to handle it, everyone brings their recipts to the meeting so they will get reimbursed. The only problem I can see is that the other 2 who were there last year may not like it too much. We spent alot of our own money last year, because we had no pack money at all. We were too new of a pack to have built up an account. That is something though that they will have to deal with. HEHEHE not me anymore! I did contact someone from the Pack that we will be going to and after I spoke to her I was in shock. They have about 32 boys and 16 adults who volunteer. Now I know some of you more experinced scouters are saying so what that is normal. Well to me it is not. We had only 3 adults last year and 5 this year for about 20 boys. It just floored me that they had so many people to help. I was sitting here thinking that I will not be as stressed as I have been and now I will be able to enjoy it more. Thanks again everyone for all of the advise. I have told some of the other people about the site and how much info and help is on here. I know one came on, but she could not find the forums. She asked me to come over and show her.

Thanks everyone for all the advise. I have tried contacting our DE I have tried that. The DE is very new at the job and we are such a new district. If our meeting turns into a bad situation I will contact the DE again.

My name will be removed in a few days, I have to anyway because of the move. It was supposed to be set up as a 2 person signing on the checks, but the ones the bank sent us only had room for one signature and to top all that off they said they never look at the signatures anyway. We added the new person to the account only because I was moving and I did not remove myself at that time because I was still doing all of the popcorn sales. Then the one who messed up the account wanted me to stay in there so I could find away to fix her mistake. Luckily no one who is on the account is married, so right now we do not have that problem. I have spoken with the new treasurer and as of right now we can not take the other person off the account. No one else will have anything at all to do with this especially now that it got so messed up. We both feel that the account is strait now and she will know now how to avoid future problems like this. I feel safe knowing that she will take this over and that she has a person at the bank that she can go to with any problems. Our only real problem with the account now is what happened to the 2 checks that our Co wrote us. They total over $200 and the pack desperatly needs that money for the B&G.

I wish I could stay, but where I am moving to has a pack right down the street from me and that is alot easier than driving an hour to come to the old pack. You have followed it right. I know it got kind of confusing, but you summed it up very well. What is even more scary is (I just found this out on the councils website) that she will be the program director at Day Camp this year. I am hoping that she understands that we are doing this to better organize our pack. She has way too much on her plate especially now that I found that she will be PD. The boys need a stable pack so I hope that this will help solve the problem. I only feel guilty because I helped start this pack and even though we have had some hard times I have enjoyed it so much. I am hoping that I will have the chance to get envoled in the new pack.

OK this will probably be long so please bear with me. I am in the process of changing packs due to the fact that I am moving. The pack that I am currently in is a total mess right now. When we started this pack last year, we had enough people to fill in all of the postions. By the end of the year there were only 3 of us left doing everything. When we had the round-up at the begininng of this year we were able to get a rew more people to help. There were now 6 adults running the pack. Unfortunatly we are in a very poor neighborhood and most of the parents will not help due to the lack of money and time. At the beginning of this year I knew I was leaving and it was agreed that I would be the CM till I left, one person would be the ACM and take my postion when I left. At that time all other postions were filled. A few weeks later I was told that I was not the CM and that the person who was supposed to be the ACM was (I still currently hold the Cm postion on paper at the Council Office). I understand the ACM's reasoning for doing this, but I was highly upset over the fact that I was not even asked to step down. I am currently holding no postion. The person who agreed to do CC has stepped down and appartently the CM has taken over the postion without asking the other leaders. That is one problem now for the other. On our checking account there are 3 people listed, myself, the CM and another leader. I was handling the finances and the record keeping until I was told I was not CM anymore and I gave all the records to the new CM. I was in charge of all the popcorn sales so I asked for the checkbook so I could deposit the money and write a check to the council office. Not a single check was written in the transaction book and all that we had proof of was the reciepts. I also gave her a book that had monthly accounts of our expences and deposits. I have not seen the book so I have no idea if she kept it up. I doubt it since all the recipts were in the check book. I sat down and balanced the check book and luckily at that time every thing came out OK. I recieved a phone call a few days later from the CM begging me to deposit the popcorn money because she thinks she overdrew the account. Apparently she wrote 2 checks from another book. Well the bank covered both checks, only one of those overdrew the account, however it put the account into a negative balance so when 2 other checks tried to come thru they bounced and we had to pay fees for each one. After I made the popcorn deposit it cleared our account and put us back to normal. The 2 bounced checks unfortunatly were from the council office and they have not sent them thru yet. Also I just found out that our CO has written us 2 checks that were given to the new CM and neither one has been deposited in the account. According to her she lost one check and I have not even bothered to ask her about the other one yet. All of this mess (that is the nicest word I can think of right now) looks very bad on us with both the council and the CO. Now here is my problem, I feel very guilty leaving the pack in the state that it is in now. I feel that the new CM has taken on way too much responsibilty and so do some of the other people. The other person on the checking account has agreed to become treasurer. We are also going to ask one of the other adults to take over the position of CC. The B&G is coming up pretty soon and there was a meeting scheduled to discuss the event. The CM was very upset that it was scheduled. Apparently at the last Comm. meeting she delagated every thing to the other adults about the B&G, but she is still trying to do everyone elses job. This will be the last meeting that I will attend. I am planning on discussing the problems with the account. I will say that there was 1 check that the bank covered and 2 that were bounced. I will nicely say that it was a mistake and I feel that since the acount is in good order that no one should pay the bounced checks fees. It was a lesson that we have all learned from. I will also say that the pack needs to be reorganized. Most of the other people I have talked to agree with me on this one. We need the CM to stay the CM, one person has agreed to be the treasurer, one other has agreed to take over the CC postion, and one person told me that she was just to diorganized to do anything so she will be just a comm. member. I have not spoken to the CM yet because we are all afraid she is going to be very childish about this whole thing and decided to leave. I can see no way around not hurting the CM feelings and I do not want it to seem like we are all ganging up on her. IMO she has way too much responsibilty, the jobs are not getting done, and it is affecting the pack. I want some feed back from some of ya'll. Am I doing the right thing even if I am leaving. I helped start this pack and even though I am leaving I do not want to see it this way.

Our pack was new last year and we did not charge dues. The only thing we paid was registration and the Boy's Life was up to the parents. We sat down before we started this year and decided to charge $.50 a week to cover the cost of supplies. We make enough from fundraisers to cover the awards and the refreshments for the pack meetings. Our chartered Organization has helped us out this year by purchasing pack t-shirtd so all the boys can be in some kind of uniform. A lot of our boys can not afford some of those things so we try to keep it as cheap as possible.

Hi ya'll I am a cub scout mom from Texas who, since or pack was brand new last year, has been,Webelos Den Leader, Committee Chair, Committee Member, Cubmaster, and now I am Asst. Cubmaster till we move cities and go to another pack. Our pack was very small last year that we only had 3 adult leaders and about 20 boys. Now we have added two more leaders and about 15 more boys. We maybe new, but we're growing and I wish I nknew about this site last year cause we really could of used the help. Last year the three of us self-taught ourselves what we hope we needed to know, but there is always more to learn. We had fun and the boys had fun so that's all that counts.