Planning Outing -

This weekend I took the scout troop up to my folks cabin. I was a little reluctant because I think they need to rough it a bit. But, my vision for the weekend was to plan the troops program for the entire year. I think the end result was well worth the fact that our outing was more 'sleep over-ish' than camping.

I told some of the other adults that we would plan the entire year in less than an hour. I think some of them were very doubtful. Last year it took us 3 hours to plan half the year, but that was because we weren't prepared.

This year I had packets for each of the boys and they got to make the decisions. They chose what badges they will work and where they will go camping each month. I gave them 20 camping spots to choose from and let them debate and consider their options. They were very responsible about choosing to get the required merit badges for eagle, except that they had to do the Rifle merit badge first. That was ok with me.

I wish we had taken some pictures of the planning meeting itself. That was a beautiful thing. We planned everything in 47 minutes (I timed it). The next day we took a trip to Tonto Natural Bridge. This was the first time I've been down there in the winter and it was cool to see all the icycles hanging from the roof of the tunnel.

I didn't take many pictures this trip. Oops. I think it's because we went to places I've been to about a million times.