SPORTSMANS DAY EVENT SEPT. 11 2010

401 MILWAUKEE AVE. BURLINGTON WIS.

Fox River District Boy Scout Troops are invited to participate in a Dutch Oven Cook Off. The event will be held on Sat. Sept. 11 as part of the events of Reineman’s Sportsman Days.

Scout Troops have long known the great foods that can be prepared in a Dutch oven. This is your opportunity to show off your skills. There will be two categories of competition: One Pot Main Meals & Desserts.

All entries must be prepared on site. Each unit will need to bring all necessary supplies and equipment. Fire pit and charcoal will be provided. Each category will have a maximum of six contestants. Troops can apply for one of the categories they would like to enter. List your first and second preference. Registration will be on first come basis. Email reply date and time will determine entries. Teams will consist of up to 4 Scouts and Adult leadership. Entries will be prepared by the youth.

If a category is not filled, troops may be allowed to enter the open space.

• Category 1 -One pot meal judging will be at 12:00
  
• Category 2 -Dessert judging will be at 2:30
  

Recognition and prizes will be awarded.

Email entries will be to rbvogt@wi.rr.com

Question contact Ron Vogt 262-763-9056 or by Email

In the years since I had last been to Adventure Territory it had grown from a barn with a couple of video games, mini golf and a go cart track, into something that is starting to actually look like an amusement park. Both kids & adults enjoyed $8 admission which got us 2 go-kart rides, 2 bumper car rides, unlimited mini-golf, bumper boat rides (and we got really wet!), and laser tag in a very cool play area. Each one of us also received 10 tokens for the game room, so the kids were able to score on the redemption games and bring back some small toys from their experience.

Ken tells me that 7 different units showed up, and there were boys from both Cub and Scout programs in attendance. I have to admit I was a bit surprised that this was attended as lightly as it was given the great weather and the normal price of these activities. (It’s pretty rare that any of these attractions can be done for far less than $1 each!)

In all, my family of 4 spent almost 5 hours at the park and with slushees and hot dogs we spent about $50 total – about what we spend when we go out to eat. Overall, a great value! Best of all, we got to see friends from several other units, and events where Scouts get to meet other Scouts are the best kind of events!

Ken plans several events each year – from District Roller Skating Parties to Bowling for both Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. These events are a phenomenal family entertainment value, and just a great way to get out with your kids in a clean and safe environment surrounded by other Scouting families. Hope you can join us the next time!

Saturday August 7 was the WACKO (Waterford Area Canoe & Kayak) and Full Moon Four Miler races in Waterford. Any time you have events like this, lots of help is needed to make things go smoothly. As Scouts, we’re here to help ~ so we’ve enjoyed getting invited to help at these events and the lessons that the boys learn in doing so.

This year the Four Miler did something really neat – they brought in a few hot air balloons along the course. As the sun sets, the balloonists would fire their balloons causing them to light up in bright & beautiful colors as the runners ran by. After watching the start, we walked our boys down to a water station that runners had to pass by twice ~ once in each direction. Working with our friends the Girl Scouts, we handed out cups of water and then helped collect the cups from under the runners feet so that nobody would slip, and to help keep the village and the course beautiful!

But our real job took place early Sunday morning. It was raining, at times heavily. We had to clean up the village park where the race both began and ended, and also played host to the late night after-party. We swept the grounds picking up food, cups, cans and cigarette butts that had been littered on the ground. We loaded up both the garbage cans that were overflowing, and the ones a few feet away that were half full, and took them over to a dumpster to be emptied and returned. It was hard work, and we didn’t have much help.

My new-Tiger 6 year old son remarked, “that wasn’t much fun.”

That opened the door to a little discussion on what exactly “fun” was. It was my Webelos-2 Scout-veteran 10 year old who made the connection for him.

“Fun makes you feel good, right?” My 6 year old nodded.

“Doesn’t it feel great to help out and make the park look nice again? Without us picking up the park, there won’t be any more of these kind of things like last night. It’s just ‘a different kind of fun.’”

My plan is to give a very easily maintainable website to ALL Fox River units who want one!

I found one little mistake that I made early on that is making things a bit difficult. When I first worked on the site I tried to save the old website for some time and installed WordPress into a subdirectory – that is why you see “/blog/” as part of the URL. Because of that, I can only create unit websites also in subdirectories – in other words foxriverbsa.org/yourunit.

My goal is to provide a URL like yourunit.foxriverbsa.org that is uniquely your own! But I may have to start from scratch to make that happen.

Because of that, over the next few weeks, you may find the website is unavailable or that you may have to create a new subscription if you subscribe via RSS or email. If all goes well, this won’t be necessary but since I will be installing from scratch you never know.

I look forward to this exciting change!

I’ll admit we haven’t been doing as much Scouting, because spring sports have taken over our schedule. Combined with the end of the school year, I haven’t had much time to write. But tonight was one of those moving experiences ~ we all have them ~ that I wanted to share.

It’s been a rough start to our season. With the exception of a non-season game in a tournament, our boys have been winless.

I’m glad I’m not the coach because it’s the kind of thing where everyone questions if the right things are happening, and when you wear the jersey, all eyes are on you. The kids are depressed, and it shows in their play.

But this isn’t really about being the last place team. After each game, we shake hands with the other team and our boys promise one another that NEXT game will be the one that matters.

Winning tonight was a pretty big deal.

Halfway through the season, they handed the other team a pretty decisive defeat. And it wasn’t just any team – it was a team with a pretty good record and near the top of our league. Throughout this game, and when we have played this team before, the coach continued to yell at and berate his players. It’s behavior I’ve seen before, even in Scouting. It’s a badge of bullying that transfers an adult’s anger to the hearts and minds of 9 and 10 year old boys.

At the end of the game the losing coach made his players run 5 laps around the bases. One boy was sobbing as he did so.

If you’re familiar with playing Little League, its rather customary the WINNING team gets to take a victory lap around the bases. This coach, who continued to belittle his players as they ran, not only affected the youth on his team, but robbed our boys of taking their first victory lap this season by refusing to yield the field. He extended his sphere of influence to every one of us there.

As we left to go get ice cream at Uncle Harry’s – our coach’s treat for winning their first game – my son said to me that he felt sorry for the kids on the other team that they lost. He was glad his team had finally won a game, but winning wasn’t that important to make the other kids feel that way.

Sometimes as adults we forget that words are more than just words.

When we wear the jersey; when we wear our Scouting uniform ~ we stand for far more than what we do on our own. Boys look up to Mom & Dad. They admire Coach. They’re eager to please their adult Leaders. Our actions say “I’m big and you’re little – so it’s OK for me to push you around.” We all get angry and frustrated once in a while. It’s easy to forget that our kids are, well – kids!

I don’t like to give that power to anyone. I try to teach my sons to stand up for what is right, and resist those who abuse that trust. Not an easy task when you’re 40, and certainly not when you’re 10.

My son struck out twice. He sat on the bench feeling pretty low and I put my hands on his shoulders. “It’s OK buddy” – three tremendously difficult words in front of your team. “Be proud you went down swinging. You’ll get it next time.” He and I were both choked up a bit.

Our boys watched the other team run the bases – then they congratulated one another, got a pat on the back from their coach, and turned their back on the field and walked away.

On another night we might not have won, but tonight our boys were clearly the better team out there.

If I had to choose between a team with a winning season that behaved like this coach did, or a team that was still growing and learning to come back to be better not just at baseball but at life, I wouldn’t hesitate one moment in making my choice.

I’m not aware of any promotional videos for Lyle or OhDaKoTa from this year, so here are a few shot during 2008!

Feeling any warmer yet?!

However, an article in today’s Trailblazer caught my eye: the Seno Woodland Education Center is doing Scout programs! It was buried in the “day camp news” section on Page 13, so I don’t feel too bad about pointing it out here.

A week or so ago I wrote about how as my den moved into Webelos, I found that it made sense to start making advancement activities a special event. We began visiting various museums and non-formal educational partners to help with our Webelos Badge work.

Now, to be fair to our old friends at the Pringle Nature Center, very similar programs are already offered in our district very close by. But they frequently fill up, and sell out.

For just a few dollars and a couple hours of your time, Seno will help your boys earn the Forester, Naturalist, Geologist or Scientist badges – and provide all of the materials needed to do so! You only need to show up, and take home any final activities they give you to complete with your den after the event.

Don’t know where Seno is? You’ve passed it almost every time you head to Camp OhDaKoTa! It’s located just West of our camp (almost the other side of the road!) on Hwy P in Burlington! It’s close, convenient, inexpensive, and heck – what have you got to lose?

FRD is built upon the “free and open source” project “WordPress.” It’s pretty neat, actually ~ tons of very talented people have come together voluntarily to create this wonderful tool, because they know that together they can create something better than any single person can. The core of WordPress is free for use – and is constantly under development. In many ways, its much like we do in Scouting, coming together to be something greater than any of us can imagine alone.

WordPress is about to release a major upgrade. (May 15 is the current target date!) One feature of particular interest to me is that they have greatly simplified a product formerly called “WordPress Multi-User” into the standard product that FRD is built upon.

Hopefully, when I next upgrade the software that FRD runs on, I will be able to create children sites for any units that want them with only a top level domain change, like:

pack323.foxriverdistrict.org (that isn’t live yet – it’s just an example!)

WordPress 3.0 is due out yet in May, and then I have to figure out how to install and configure it, learn how to use it myself as well… When I get that all set up – I will try to host a boot camp for units that are interested in sending a potential webmaster and getting their own site set up here on our district domain.

And posting is really easy too – you can do it online, or set up Word 2007 or 2010, or even download a small application for your Blackberry or iPhone that lets you publish on the go! Photos, videos and text right from camp, as it happens – how cool is that?

And if you don’t want to host your website on the Fox River District domain, but you host it elsewhere, please let me know where your website is so I can link to it. As always, we ask all webmasters in our district to put a prominent link BACK to foxriverbsa.org and sewisbsa.com. A lot of information is posted on our district and council websites that we really want parents and volunteers to know.

Keep an eye out here, and make sure you’re part of the Fox River District Yahoo Email Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foxriverdistbsa/) or you’ll find a link on the right side of this webpage under “District Links.”