Weekly Post, March 21, 2010

Post date: Mar 21, 2010 10:29:17 PM

Greetings Scouts, Scouters, and Parents,

OK, there is lots this week. Please take a few minutes to review it with your parents.

Tomorrow night is a Court of Honor, Monday March 22. Regular time. ELC. Now, this is not any ordinary Court of Honor. This is a Hawaiian Luau Fiesta. Masters of Ceremony are George M. and Matt L. Dress Code: Shorts and a Hawaiian shirt over a Scout Shirt with neckerchief. Although this is on the calendar, the food assignments are as follows:

Thups - Veggie and dip

Dragons - Macadamia nuts

Tigers - Cubed fruit

Flaming Arrows - Drinks

Serpents - "out of the box" veggie and dip

Eagles - Cheese and crackers

Panthers - Whole fruit

Stags - Jello with embedded fruit

Alligators - Fruit smoothies

Stealth - Spam

And there's more. There will also be a Friends of Scouting presentation and collections during the meeting. Friends of Scouting is the annual campaign where the Denver Area Council asks Scouting families, businesses and civic-minded citizens to support our mission of providing the Scouting program to tens of thousands of young people in Colorado. Friends of Scouting provides roughly one-quarter of the money needed to operate the DAC's Scouting camps, programs and facilities for a calendar year. These camping and training facilities are the "outdoor classrooms" in which Scouts have fun, learn leadership skills and develop into better young men and women.

Our Last Webelos Crossovers - Mr. Kerber is arranging the crossovers and will have a sign up book at the meeting. The goal would be to have a minimum of 4 scouts and two adults for each crossover. Den Chiefs must attend to receive credit for the position for advancement. Our last crossover is:

  • Pack 507: Tuesday Mar 23 6:30 pm (King-Murphy Elementary School)

No troop meeting, Monday March 29 due to spring break.

Thursday, April 8. Timberline District Roundtable scheduled for April 1 has been rescheduled to April 8. The calendar will be updated once I can figure out how to change a recurring event. At this Roundtable, they will be holding Merit Badge Counselor training. This training is now required of ALL merit badge counselors. This will be a great opportunity for 737’s MB counselors to get the training and to get an introduction to Roundtable. Car-pool. Also that night at Roundtable they'll be holding a session on “Life to Eagle.” It’s designed for both the L2E advisor in the troop, and for all Life Scouts.

Monday, April 5 Troop Meeting will be at the Alpine Search and Rescue Center in Evergreen. You will need to go there for the meeting, not ELC. Regular time. See the website calendar for details.

Monday, April 12 Troop Meeting - Advancement. Scout Skills for new scouts taught by older scouts without merit badges. Time permitting, paper airplane contest.

Monday April 19, Troop meeting. The troop will be holding a search and rescue night to satisfy the 8a and 8b requirements of the Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge. These include:

    • a) Prepare a written plan for mobilizing your troop when needed to do emergency service. If there is already a plan, explain it. Tell your part in making it work.
    • b) Take part in at least one troop mobilization. Before the exercise, describe your part to your counselor. Afterward, conduct an "after-action" lesson, discussing what you learned during the exercise that required changes or adjustments to the plan.

Those who need these requirements need to complete part a AND participate in planning this activity. We will be conducting a MOCK search and rescue for a lost scout in the woods, so dress warmly and bring flashlights.

New Family Orientation Presentation - As requested by several parents, I posted to the website the wonderful presentation prepared by Mr. Johnson and presented at the New Scout/Family Orientation. You can view it or download it at the site. It is about 6MB.

Summer Camp Parents - I'm sure you saw the email from Mr. Johnson about summer camp. Island Park in Idaho is full, we have 20 scouts signed up with one on a waiting list. However as of right now we only have one adult signed up, and with twenty boys we will need at least three but preferably four adults to be at camp for the week in order to keep the two deep adult leadership that is required. This does not include drivers to and from camp, depending on the number of seats that the adults who are staying have plus the gear they will be taking. If we do not get enough parents to stay for the week we will have to cancel this camp, so if your boy or boys are going please consider spending the week with them. We would like to get the adults signed up as soon as possible before we have to start making payments, so please check your schedules. Peaceful Valley - as of right now we have room for more scouts, however we do not have any adults signed up to attend camp. With the current number of boys going we need at least three adults to stay for the week, more as the number of boys goes up. If you can only stay for part of the week please let us know. The number of drivers we need will be verified later. Please check your schedules and sign up. We would like to have at least half of the money for camp to be paid by the end of the month.

Troop Email - As you all now know, we ported our mass email server to GoogleGroups. You should have received several emails last week to this effect. The our safety, we won't be including the details of this effort to the announcements page.

This email group will continue to be used for last-minute notifications (i.e. cancelled events due to weather), as well as other important communications around troop activities. Make sure you frequently check the Troop web site at

www.themountaintroop.com for a full list of announcements, calendar of events, and other resources and information. PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHEN REPLYING TO EMAILS FROM THIS GROUP. If you reply to the google.group email address, your message will go to EVERYONE, which may not be your intention.

CRITICAL DEADLINES AND SIGNUPS - These are in the troop calendar and, as a reminder, in Announcements. Please see announcements.

UPCOMING - Click here for the current Troop Calendar.

ADULT TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES. (…it’s not just an opportunity, it’s an expectation…)

Click here for the location on the webpage.

Complete listing. Register online at www.Denverboyscouts.org.

Matt Wickham

Scoutmaster, Troop 737

Home: (303) 816 9207

Cell: (720) 318 2219

mwickham@themountaintroop.org