A Leather Woggle!

Well I am now the proud recipient of a hand made leather woggle. Of course I had to earn it, but more of that later....
This has been a majorly busy week. Monday evening was the only one where I didn't have anything planned. Of course I was at work all day, Deborah had her first solo Welcome Wagon visit, which went well. The previous incumbent was a little disorganised, so she is busy redoing the information and gifts. It was a nice evening when I got home, and I managed to get a photo of Matthew and Emma with their sunflowers, which they planted earlier in the summer. Matthew's are the half on the left, with Emma's on the right. Matthew has the tallest one as you can see, but Emma had the biggest flower head. Amazing considering the small seeds they grew from. It looks like we might catch the tail end of Hurricane Isaac next week, so I hope they don't get too battered. At least we have a photo of them!
Tuesday, of course, Emma has Fiddle lessons and then in the evening I had my first part of the Cub Leader training. Officially called WoodBadge 1 Training. It took place in Halifax at the United Bethany Church hall between 7 and 10pm. Basically an evening of lectures and group exercises. The bombshell came at the end of the night though. I had been told that part of the camp was an overnight stay at Camp Lone Cloud. However, it turns out that it is a TWO night stay. Luckily I had managed to recruit the father of one of Matthew's friends and so I wasn't having to experience all this alone. They gave us a list of 'equipment' we had to bring to camp. Oh joy. Anyway the evening lasted until 10.30pm so I was shattered by the time I got home.
Wednesday evening is Cub night of course. We had decided the week before to take advantage of the still light evenings and do a hike along the Shubenacadie canal. There is a lock system along this canal and it used to be used to transport goods between Halifax and Truro and the Minas Basin. I hadn't realised this, so I learnt something that night! It was a good hike. We do have one 'youth' who is a bit of a handful. He's just come up from Beavers so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and hoping we can instill some discipline in him. Well it will be that or a clip round the ear! (joke!). However Matthew and Riley (Matthew's friend who's father I roped in) also played up a little. As a consequence I threatened to hold Matthew's hand on the hike, and half way round actually did that - tightly! He did settle down, but needless to say he was read the riot act on the way home in the car. I'm hoping they are thinking they can get away with murder as we are the leaders, but we've got news for them. When I got home, I had to start thinking of what I had to take on the camp. It seemed a little excessive to me, but hey, who was I to argue. While we were at Cubs, Deborah was at a Pampered Chef party - upmarket kitchen equipment basically, sold via home representatives. They have some nice stuff and she didn't spend much so that was a result!
On Thursday,Matthew and Emma had a 'Terry Fox' walk in aid of Cancer Research. In case you don't know, Terry Fox was a young Canadian who lost a leg to cancer. He then started to walk across Canada to raise awareness and money for Cancer research. Sadly, he only made it as far as Thunder Bay in Ontario where they found the cancer had spread to his lungs. He developed complications and died. It caught the imagination of Canadians however and since then millions of dollars have been raised in his name for this cause.
Thursday night of course was Toastmasters which was a good meeting, and we had an exec meeting afterwards to hear the results of a group analysis that had been performed on us. One of our members has started his own company doing what's called Predictive Index. It's a way of matching employees with jobs that best fulfill their character and personality. The members of the executive had it done first individually and then this was amalgamated to create an overall group picture. The results were very interesting, but the meeting dragged on a bit - I needed to get home to pack! We were then dragged (kicking and screaming) to the pub to be bought a drink for allowing ourselves to be analysed! How could I refuse. Anyway, as I mentioned the results of the whole exercise were fascinating, and we got to keep a copy of our individual picture. I might show it to my boss to improve my chances of a pay rise!!!
Then before I knew it Friday had arrived and it was time to set off for camp. Scott was picking me up at 5.40pm to be at the boat ramp by 6pm - Camp Lone Cloud is on an island....We got there, dumped our bags and were then bombarded with 3 hours of lectures (with no break). By 10pm I was all lectured out and was so grateful for the coffee and snacks! As it happens the coffee was a huge mistake...now when I say camp, I don't mean we were sleeping under canvas. Well some were - scout leaders and Venture Scout leaders. Beaver and Cub leaders had cabins. As it happens, a very new cabin with bunks. Bunks without mattresses or any form of springing - basically wooden boards. Very hard wooden boards. I'm not sure if I didn't sleep because of the caffeine from the aforementioned coffee, or the most uncomfortable sleeping arrangements ever encountered. Either way, by the time we got a 'wake-up' call (or should I say, 'get out of bed' call), I had not slept a wink. Saturday was going to be a long day.
And indeed it was. One of the bonuses was the fact that we didn't have to bother about food. They had got a cook in to prepare meals and generally look after all the catering side of things. The food was very good. Pancakes/scones/bacon for breakfast. Soup & Sandwich for lunch and so on. While on Friday we were lectured as a combined group, Saturday saw us breaking off into our respective areas. Colony for Beaver leaders, Pack for Cub leaders, Troop for Scout leaders and Company for Ventures. It was an excellent day. We learnt how to start a meeting, close a meeting, organise, deal with issues, all the elements you need to include in a meeting and so on. We even planned and executed a cub meeting. We learnt a lot that day! We were also informed early in the day that we had to think of a song, a skit and a yell to present at that evening's campfire. Sadly we had no time during the day apart from a 15 minute gap right before the campfire! We managed to come up with something though and I think they went down well. I ended up leading all three elements though which was not supposed to be the case - especially the singing/chant!
Anyway, I slept slightly better Saturday night, woke up cold at 6am which wasn't ideal. I had decided to use my sleeping bag liner as an extra pillow. Mistake. So it was Sunday. A nice breakfast was followed by a day of doing outdoor skills. We learnt how to build a fire, we boiled water in a tin can, learnt how to make firelighters (wax and tumble dryer lint), learnt all about shelters, put up a tent blindfolded - that was fun - and even made up and cooked Tin Foil dinners on the campfire. Mine was little overdone, but delicious all the same. We were shown how to cook bacon & eggs in a paper bag (yes really), how to cook a cake in a cardboard box oven, cook a muffin in a hollowed out grapefruit and even make ice cream in a zip-lock bag. All fascinating stuff and some things we will try and carry out with Cubs this year. A lot was learnt and despite my misgivings, it was a fun weekend. Except the sleeping part....At the end of your course, you are presented with your leather woggle. This is in recognition of you completing this course. I have a lot of admiration for the men and women who commit a massive amount of time on scouting duties/training/meetings etc. All the trainers on the course are also pack/colony/troop leaders in their own right. They have also volunteered to do training. It was a privilege to be part of that whole experience and consequently I am very proud of my woggle! I'll be able to put it to use at the Investiture on November 6th. This is when I get to wear the necker and officially become a leader at 2nd Wellington Wolf Cubs.
I had a fantastic shower when I got home, but this is nothing compared to the mother of all sleeps I'm going to have tonight!
Matthew & Emma were off school on Friday as well with a Teacher development day - yes they have them here too and call them in-service days, and then Deborah was out scrapbooking on saturday. A friend had both Matthew & Emma for the day so they also had a good day. All the halloween tat is stacked up in the shops ready for the 31st...
As for the pictures, well sunflowers gets pride of place obviously! The top camping photo is the cabin, then me having just lit the fire and boiled lakewater (yes it was cold, hence the hat) and finally, me getting presented with my woggle. A good week don't you think? Now i'm off to my very well earned bed.