WonderBoy

I'll admit that following these forums sometimes reminds me of spending too much time on social media or the news outlets. It's easy to fall into the trap of spending so much time on what's wrong that we forget about all that's going right in our world.

Welcome! Be careful what you wish for. You may end up drowning in information. 😁

Welcome. I have a Lions Den, officially of three, but now, practically , of only two. It seems like a lot of games I see for Den activities cease to be practical when you drop from three to two Scouts. But I'm hoping these will be nucleus of a stronger, bigger Den next year when they hit first grade. You're in good company here. Many fellow Scouters, like myself, who returned wondering (hense my "WonderBoy" screen name) how to put on a good program. But more importantly, many, many Scouters with plenty of good experiences (and some bad ones to learn from!) to share.

As a Pack sponsored by the PTO of our local elementary school, and with a diverse (as we can get in my area) group of backgrounds, I avoid the use of the word "Lord" altogether. And I wouldn't use the term "father" either so as not to offend the goddesses.

@prof- We might have been at camp at the same time! (I was there in '77 & '78)

Camp Ransburg- Crossroads of America Council (Bloomington, IN) Kishwaukee Scout Reservation- Calumet Council (Kirkland, IL) My argument against year-round schooling is my fond memory of the summer month I spent less than 24 hours at home (time to do laundry!). Family vacation, home for laundry, troop high adventure trip (w/the older Scouts), and on the way home from that I was dropped off at summer camp (w/ the younger Scouts).

I wish I had an answer to help you, but my Pack has run into a similar problem. We wanted to sign-up to accept cedit cards for popcorn sales and Pack registration fees. Well... you need a EIN for that. OK, we're sponsored by a local PTO group so we use their's right? But the PTO never registered as a 501(c)3... They just use the school district's number when they need one. Which would be inappropriate and wrong for our Pack to use. So what's the PTO's actual EIN? We haven't been able to dig it up and any paperwork from the last decade only has the last four numbers for security. So I check with our banking institution. What number was used to set up our account? Well our account predates our Chartered Organization's current account by at least eight years and was probably set up using someone's personal Social Security Number. (WAY before the post 9/11 banking changes.) We want to get things straightened out, but it's not really on our C.O.'s front burner, so to speak, as they have no pressing need to do anything about it. Until then... "Cash or check only, please."

Oh, the joys of being at the bottom of the pecking order...

Ha! I used to dislike that because they'd kicked us off our training lot to park campers for home game tailgating.

Welcome! There's quite a few of us here who lurked for years before before joining the conversations.

This can't be stressed enough. I wasn't going to pass on one of my old pocketknives until my son earned his Totin' Chip and had told him so. Off he goes to summer camp, dutifully earns his Totin' Chip, and proceeds to purchase his own knife from the camp trading post. I was (am) super disappointed. But I had never told him he couldn't buy his own. Mostly because I didn't think or know it was an option. So I was mad, with no one to be mad at... sigh.

(Light chuckle) To my ears, saying it as currently written without the pause sounds funny. Maybe I'm old enough to have originally learned it from people who had not yet retrained themselves to the addition of the "under God" line...

I'm curious if any Veterans confound their Scouts by saluting in civilian clothing? Sailors don't salute unless covered, and they're not covered indoors unless standing watch (or at Quarters), so this is what I continue to do. And I've yet to be outdoors around my Cubs, in civvies, during a flag ceremony, so I've never had to think about it.

The goal of Cub Scouts is not Boy Scouts (Scouts, BSA after February '19)...

I couldn't agree more. Last year I had a parent who wasn't happy with our Pack's programming. So I asked for her suggestions on how we could improve things more to her liking. And one by one I had to shoot down her ideas because they didn't pass muster with the Guide to Safe Scouting as applied to Cub Scouts. While it was personally satisfying to not be the unimaginative idiot she thought I was, it made me sad to say, "no", to activities that I'm sure our boys would have loved.