Superhero Academy

On Monday I was able to go to "Superhero Academy". This was the first day of the Cub Scout camp that our ward was going too. Us, female leaders only had to go on Monday while the male leaders chose to take the boys on the second of the 2 day camp. (The next day was Jurassic Park so I feel we got the better end of the deal) We had the camp up at Camp Tracy which is in the Mill Creek Canyon. It was tons of fun. Basically, I found out that Scout Camp is just a camp put on and ran by youth for the scouters to help them get lots of badges, belt loops, and pins. I didn't know what to expect, but I am glad to of had the opportunity to go. The plan was to leave the church no later than 7:45 am.... but as you know, most plans seem to go out the door. One of the boys almost forgot, and when he got there, late of course.... they realized that they forgot his scout shirt... then when they got back, and we asked for his medical info and permission slip.... they forgot again... So since we were already late, we just told them we would follow them to his house and then he could jump in with us... I rode with Tiffany, one of the other leaders because she had room in her van, that way we didn't have to take up all of these cars plus she knew where we were going already. We had 8 boys go and then there were 3 of us leaders.

When we got there, it took about 15 minutes to check in... So thankfully one of the camp helpers, had the boys do an activity where they had to get into groups of 4 and put a log in between there legs and run so far.... It was fun to watch them try and work together and try and beat each other to the finish line. We were told that us leaders just have to sit back and relax and let the camp crew do there stuff. I could live with that. We were basically just there rides and we were there to make sure they behave, but since everyone was so excited to be there they were on there best behavior so it was like a vacation! When they were doing this activity, I realized that I forgot to bring my camera... Bummer! April, the other leader brought hers and said she would get some of the pictures to us... Hopefully she does.

When we were all checked in, we went to the "Amphitheater" which was some metal bleachers set up in a semi-circle.... Not my idea of an amphitheater but hey, whatever works right. :) Here we had a flag ceremony complete with the Pledge of Allegiance and Scout Oath, and it wouldn't be scout camp without having to sing silly songs, (It was girls camp all over again) and a few Corney skits. The boys were not sure what to think or what to do, because for most of them, it was there first time at camp too.... but they finally got into it towards the end... (They were so self conscious by how they looked 'goofy' the whole time -their word's not mine and I was trying to figure out who they were trying to impress since there was no little girls around... just some 'old leaders' and fellow campers that it took them a while to just relax and have fun!)

When the opening ceremonies were done they broke us off into our Packs and assigned us a camp helper to be groupies with. Our pack and another pack for West Jordan became groupies with Dillon as our leader. We made up group 2. Our first stop was BB gun shooting. Oh, boy. Give a bunch of 8 and 9 year old their own BB gun to shoot, this should be interesting. We all got to wear these "Sexy" protective glass-ware which were so scratched up from years of Scout Camp that you couldn't hardly see out of them. Most of these boys it was there first time to ever shoot a gun...so, I opted to stay clear away from the target area and stood way behind all of the action....

After everyone got to shoot the gun 5 times, we left that station and took a short hike up the hill to a fort thing. It reminded me of the lifeguard shack on Baywatch except it wasn't all boarded off... All of the boys climbed up in it and piled in there and they had a short discussion about taking care of our world and the safety about camping... ie. not littering, not eating the berries outside of your gardens, and leaving nature how/better then you found it... etc.

After that we went back to the amphitheater and talked about the flag and then they got to practice folding the fag. I learned what the colors on the flag represented... FYI: Red is for courage, white is for purity I think , and blue was for loyalty. We had to stall for a few minutes when we got done with that because the group before us wasn't done yet so we played a few games of telephone... Surprisingly enough, the end result was always the same as the beginning.... And then we play some game that Dillon made up on the spot called mingle. What you do is walk around and then he calls out a number and you have to hurry and make a group consisting of the # of people that the number he called out was. The boys did pretty good with it but if you called out a number bigger than 5 then they had to stop and think about it... It was a good time savor.

Our next stop was inside the train cabooses that they have set up there and we practiced our geography knowledge. We have some really smart boys and they got the answers fast. Although it was cool to study geography in an old caboose... You can say that you don't do that everyday! :)

When we were done learning, we had art time, where the boys had to make a superhero mask since they are disguised as "humans" during the day and then they can become a Superhero like Spiderman, or Superman. Styles Wiler, (our eager scouter) made his favorite hero of the day, Hulk. He made me laugh, He said that he was a scout in the day and at night he turned into HULK! lol... Finley Carson made a "flower man" mask, complete with a theme song... I think he was finding his creativity since he normally doesn't want to do much... LOL. It was fun..

When we got all done with these masks, they did an obstacle course with water. They had to make a 'water line' using all of the pvc pipe they had and have the water go from one end out the other... It finally worked the second time they did it... then they had to try and fill up these pipes that had holes all over it. The boys got into teams of 5 and they had to alternate from trying to cover the holes with there hands and getting the water and filling it up. Dillon, told them that the first team to get the water all the way to the top would get the coveted "Superman" fanny pack with matching water bottle that clips on to your belt loop. The task is virtually impossible to accomplish, but the boys tried so hard to get it to fill up. All of the boys were soaked from head to toe. Good thing it was really hot outside so they could dry off really fast.

The next stop was the fingerprinting area. Each boy got to get fingerprints and then learned about what the different type of prints are.. I guess they also learned about braille, but I went to go bring the lunches in from the car so I missed that part.

After the fingerprinting, we had a lunch break... I was surprised how willing the boys were to share there lunches. They were all trying to share with us leaders and also the other boys their chips, cookies, crackers, etc. We all had our own lunches, but it is always more fun to share... :) It was interesting to see what everyone had in there lunches. It has been so long for me to have to pack a sack lunch, I couldn't think of what to put in them... Everyone agreed that I had the most healthiest lunch: Chicken Salad wrap, (I didn't have any bread so I had to use a tortilla, and we don't have lunch meat hanging around since we normally eat leftovers for lunch or something that can be put in the microwave..) 1/2 of a yellow pepper sliced, a bag of pretzels, and a honey oat granola bar, with water to drink... Rob should be so proud of me- he's starting to rub off on me! I got a few of the boys to try and eat a slice of the pepper... It took awhile for them to get over there fear, but they agreed with me that it is more sweet tasting instead of hot.

After lunch, our next stop on our camping journey was the push carts.... That looked like fun! Too bad I was just a leader cuz I wanted to ride too... It got kinda breezy out to where it cooled things off a little bit. It was so nice outside. One of our boys, Jackson Rees, seemed to get motions sickness with it though, and looked like he was going to pass out. He just kept saying he was dizzy so we made him sit down and drink some water thinking that he was just getting dehydrated he didn't want us to fuss over him and look like a baby in front of his peers but you could tell that he wasn't feeling very good because whenever the trees would move in the breeze he would get this look like he wanted to spew... We came to the conclusion that he probably has a phobia of some sort against the wind. So for the pushcarts they would have 3 boys push with one boy getting to ride and they had to go around on this little trail that goes in a big circle. They were constantly racing each other... If I remember right, the winning time was 36 seconds! They were unleashing their inner "superhero" I guess because that is pretty fast!

After the pushcarts, the next stop on our journey was to go to the bottle rockets..... They filled up these old soda bottles with water and then put them on the launch... and 1, 2, 3, blast off! Away they went! We had 2 rockets going at the same time so we could get each boy a turn at filling up the bottles and getting it on the launch. Sometimes, the rockets would go pretty high, and pretty far.. Other times, it would us go up a little ways and then fall down right next to the launch. This one time was hilarious, The rocket got launched and went flying way high, then when it came back down, it landed right on top of Jackson Rees' head. KAH POW! If he wasn't already sick enough... LOL, It was so funny, and the Camp worker said that of all the time he has been doing this, then that was the first time that the rocket actually hit someone. Good thing that were were almost done with this station when that happened so no one else got hit.

The next stop was all about team work. The camp had made this big A-Frame thing out of logs and attached lots of rope of various sizes to it. The Object is to have some one stand on this A-Frame thing and to have the people holding the ropes work together and make the frame 'walk' without having the person who was standing on it fall off. It was a cool concept but the boys didn't seem to catch on to this very fast. It took everyone, to help talk them through it in order to get it to work... The still didn't really get it completely figured out in order to get it to work right, but they did get he frame to move a little bit before we had to go to the next station.

Now we could go to the much anticipated Trading Post! (The boys were looking forward to this all day long and kept asking when they could go.)
They had so many cool things to buy... I ended up getting a couple of first aid kits to go in the cars for $3.00 and a Spiderman ball for Maysie and one of the plastic helicopter things for Maysie too... I'm not sure what they were called but they remind me of a helicopter. It has the propeller thing on top and then a long stick thing on the bottom, and when you rub it in your hands it will fly... I know I totally butchered this description but it is as close as a description to what this thing is as I could come up with. They had all sorts of cool things here to buy. They had the coveted fanny packs and water bottles, candy, bear claws and eagle claws, hacky sacks, tons of Superman, Batman, and Spiderman stuff. and t-shirts.

When we got done with the Trading Post, we went back to the amphitheater for the closing ceremonies which again was filled with lots of songs and skits. There was some fun jokes too, but I can't remember them. The took down the flag and we said a prayer, and then they did one last song which makes everyone little by little go down and do this song with the actions in front of everyone until there is no one left in the bleachers. When that song got done then everyone was free to leave and go home... It was so much fun, and I hope I am still in scouts to be able to go next year too.


PS. I almost forgot to do this again, since I forgot on the last Blog but, Happy Birthday to my nephew Spencer whose birthday was on July 1st. And Happy Birthday to my niece Presley who turns 2 today! And just in case I don't blog tomorrow, Happy Birthday to my nephew Gabe!