I'm back from a Cub Scouts campout, which I went to without Alex. I think the signs are pointing to Alex quitting Cub Scouts as soon as he's done with Webelos, which I will be leading this year by the way, which may be the only reason he's staying in now. He seriously did not want to go. Anyway, we did learn a few things from last year, most significantly don't invite new Tiger Cubs on the campout, and we had a new leader volunteer from one of the packs in Columbia City. She helped out a lot, taught dutch oven cooking, and is going to lead the wolves this year, which is awesome. We met at the school Saturday morning and headed out to Chain O' Lakes State Park. They have a youth tent area which is way way way out away from everything. We got there and someone else was set up on the site we had reserved, but we were able to switch sites. We had a simple lunch after getting everyone all set up (it was a good turnout, maybe 10 or 12 tents altogether, around 24 people). After lunch, we went on a hike to the beach. The beach was very nice, because it had gotten pretty hot on the hike. It was sunny, hot, hazy, humid. We had sent a load of swimsuits and towels forward and everyone was ready for the beach by the time we got there. However while we were there it clouded up, the temperature dropped by 15 degrees, and a fairly heavy rain started. We got everyone packed up in a hurry and shuttled them back to the campsite instead of hiking back like planned. But anyway, it was already time to start prepping for dinner by the time everyone got back, and the rain stopped and it warmed back up again.We did tinfoil dinners, with a big assembly line process for the meat and veggies and such, while Krystal was teaching the kids how to cook desserts in the dutch ovens. I also learned that you always need more charcoal than you think, and you should get the kind with the lighter fluid already in it, because I had a hard time getting the charcoal to light and get hot enough to use. But someone had brought an air mattress pump, so I used it like an air blower to get the charcoal going, and that worked brilliantly. Jim had to run out to get more because 24 tinfoil dinners takes a long time to get through on a too-small pile of charcoal. We also left out the ketchup this time. However, they came out great once they were cooked. Several that were on the edges had go back on for a while because the meat wasn't done. After dinner and free time we had a campfire with a bunch of songs and skits that everyone took part in, until bedtime. For the most part, everyone was in their tent by 9 or 10. We made baggie omelets in the morning for breakfast, then pretty much just packed up. We had planned to lead the scouts on a geocaching expedition, but unfortunately there weren't any near the campground, so rather than a large hike or shuttle we dropped it from the schedule. However, once everyone was heading home I went out by myself and claimed a couple of earthcaches in the park.

Our kids have returned from camp. It has been a hard week. We dropped them off last Sunday the 14th, drove them up and dropped them off ourselves. It seemed to be going all right, even though Alex was pretty apprehensive about being gone all week, but it seemed like it was going to be a fun time. It was 4th grade camp for the both of them, even though Alex is going into 5th grade, but we wanted them both to be there for the week that our church runs the camp and Alex missed it last year. They were doing a kind of mad scientist theme, and it seemed like it was going to be fun when we dropped them off. By Tuesday though, we got a phone call from Gary that Alex was really upset and homesick, and wanted us to come get him and bring him home. We had been afraid of getting that call, but we told him to tell Alex no, we weren't going to take him home. It broke our hearts and it was all we could think about for the next couple days. (However...we had an amazing diversion Wednesday when we went over to the Purvis' house and Patrick told us about the news reporters when read on the air the "names" of the pilots of that Korean airliner that crashed last week...we watched the clip on YouTube and almost died laughing...so wrong, but lighten up) We heard from Gary a couple more times during the week to let us know how things were going. He got pretty upset when we told him no, but he rallied, which we were glad to hear, and for the rest of the week it was mostly the same: he's doing great when things are busy and he has things to do, but in the quiet or slow times he gets very homesick and wants to go home. But he made it through, and we hear that he was doing well enough that at the talent show at the end of the week he got up on stage and did a stand-up comedy routine! And really hammed it up, from what we were told. (What do you call a kingdom without a king? Dumb!) Anyway, we picked him and Missy up tonight and he's already made it plain to us that he never wants to go to camp that long again. Missy did great all week...she loved it. She wants to go back to camp next year.

I took the kids mini-golfing today at Paige's Crossing. We weren't planning on getting caught in a huge thunderstorm, but we did...and wound up golfing through some pretty maxiature water hazards after several of the putting greens became totally flooded. Laura and Thomas and Ben just departed yesterday, they had been visiting for a bit.