Cub Scouts Rule!

Wow what a great weekend the kids + I had. We went camping all weekend. My daughter made a new friend, that happens (also) to be a straight A student and more importantly just so happens to be a close neighbor. In the funky nice-cool-fairly-keep-to-yourself neighborhood I live in, where the only way kids run into each other is if they hit each other going down the hill on rollerblades, this is a major thing for her and I am proud of her.

She didn't warm up to the other girl right away. Despite the fact that they were both part of my sons cubscout pack and would be camping together for three days. She sort of kept her distance, and kept to herself. In fact,they didn't really click until they both found a hutch of baby rabbits. They still didn't warm up to each other , however - until ... well it was almost like a light switch being thrown. Just to see them click. Her mom said once she connects with someone like that, its forever. Same with my daughter. It was hard to describe but sometimes kids just keep their distance. Thats sort of the way mine are; they have friends, maybe a few acquaintances, but the reality is that people like me tend to make one or two best friends and then just wear them out. Tee hee.

My son hit his first home run kick in kickball. The first of many. I had to show him how to run the bases , but hey - thats not a big deal. He got tired about 2/3 of the way through ultimate frisbee and volleyball. At his age, sometimes they want to play in the sand on the volleyball court more than hit the beachball. Thats sort of ok. I kept him in the game most of the way through then let him go off when it was really obvious he'd hit his limit. When they all got to gether to play marbles, he played the whole game through. Even knocked one or two out for himself. It was an eye-opener. We hadn't played organized sports up until that point. The concept of being on a team was still kind of new. But he did wonderful. And we learned how to read a compass (yes, my little preschooler can go bearing 110, 30 paces north for a scavenger hunt and find the trail mark). Our pack was one of only two in the entire campout that got all the trailblazing marks.

The other pack was ... ahem.. a pack of girl scouts that were camping along with us..

For some reason, the kids thought it was really funny when I told them my name was "Dude" and somehow the nickname stuck. I gave everyone else nicknames. Even the weird guy from texas who brought the black ukelele to the adult campfire got a nickname from me. I'm just not going to say it here. :-) This is a family show.

At about midnight I woke up from my tent and found all the adults around a cozy campfire singing Credence Clearwater Revival. Joined in. Later I played some pink floyd, at least what I knew of a few simple guitar pieces that I can play well. The conversation ebbed and flowed through the night until 2 am. Everyone enjoyed each others company and it was a welcome break from World of Warcraft. I even felt, for a moment, that I actually had a personal life.

The next day we broke camp and we were so stoked to jump in the shower for a nice hot shower after three days of scouting. Strange thing, the UPS blew over the weekend and I had some servers down so I brought them back up. So I tended to that first, then jumped in the shower.

If you were there in the bathroom with me, as I happily leapt into the shower - I think you might have been able to see my skeleton actually leap right out my mouth when I jumped in. The water was ICE cold.

I boiled some water on the stove and set up a shallow bath for the kids and once that was done I was down for the count. I woke and my two little ones were watching a surf movie - I walked into the living room and said "Hi guys, whats up" and my son turned to me and said "Dad, why is the basement flooded?". (!)

So I headed down there and sure enough the water heater had blown out. Flooded the entire basement - I had to turn off the main water valve to stop flow.

And so we trucked over to grandma's for badly needed showers.

For dinner, my little one tried to eat pickled okra and yogurt and soy milk and he ended up eating too much too much too fast and threw up in the sink. He was dog tired and just about ready to fall asleep. I decided we'd better get him to the shower. I set him up with a nice shower and then I went up to check on him and found him lying there in the bottom of the shower motionless. I called out his name - He woke with a start.

My mom and I laughed about it a bit as we left for home.. "Hi Mom, We're going to use your shower now. Mind if we throw up in your bathroom sink? Oh don't worry about the passed kid in the shower - he just needs a nap". All of us were very tired. My daughter had enough life left to work on her horde character a bit so I let her do that, then I went to sleep. Fun weekend.

See if you can guess why the following cubscouts (*and one girl scout) ended up with the following nicknames ... "Tank" ... "Three Fries" ... "Spider" ... "She-wolf*" ... "Precious" ... "Malcolm X" ... and "Clip". Can you guess which one of these nicknames is in fact a young boys actual name?.