November Pack Meeting Was a Huge Success

I have great news: last night's Pack Meeting was really excellent. It was a lot of fun having the cubs from Packs 510 and 542, along with special guests: the Tigers from Pack 549 and the Raven Patrol from Troop 510 all together.

The room already happened to be decorated for Memorial Day: awesome! And John P brought lots of real flags used by the Navy and put them up as well for his "American Moment". (He did such a great job! I learned a lot about our flags.) So the room looked AWESOME. I think that was such a blessing, as I had brought up in Committee Meeting that I'd sure like us to get a Decorations Committee. But nothing came of it, unfortunately. (I will keep trying.)

We made care-packages for deployed servicemen. That went well. I was realy obsessed with making it go well. I even made a huge cardboard flying saucer for the intro to the space derby demonstration.

Susan H, who called from the newspaper announcement, brought her son Justin and her whole family, and we had an induction ceremony for them. I'm so excied about that. We're going to send one of the care-packages to Mr. H, who is a military doctor in Afganistan.

I stapled awards and advancements to big photos of real military medals. They looked awesome. We gave authentic noisy military cheers: "Hip hip hooray!"

We planned according to BSA guidelines -- wrapping up final plans at committee meeting. I planned a gathering activity (I always do, and we are guided to do so by BSA), and it was so obvious how well it worked. As boys arrived, they began to run. So we immediately got out the gathering activity, and soon there was a charming circle of boys busily at work doing word-searches and drawing pictures. (It was vital to have that, especially this month, as there were about seven Tigers visiting. I was thinking: "Look at that!".)

During a transition, I could sense we needed to refocus, so we went right into a fun song. That worked well.

The meeting ran just over an hour, including gathering. I think it could have been a tiny bit shorter, but I think we did really really well, and I think the families had a good time. (I just think 45 minutes is a good goal for most pack meetings, for the sake of the mommies holding small children.)

I just want to work so hard so we can have a big well-attended pack meeting like that every time with our own cubs and webelos. I hope we can find more and more families to join us. We need a thriving pack. And it will lead to a thriving troop in a few years. And that will be the troop my own sons will be part of.