Start your engines...

For the past month, Cameron and Melvin have been working on Cam's Pinewood Derby car for Scouts. About once a week they'd head across the street to our neighbor's house. Being life-long scouts, they had all the "special tools" needed to create the little speed demons. Starting out with just a block of wood, it was actually quite a process to be able to produce t a final product. Except for some of the more dangerous sawing, Melvin let Cameron do all the work.

Saturday was the big race, where all the dens from the pack get together and run their cars down the ramp. There's electronic timing and everything.

They ran the cars down in a few different combinations. The first time Cameron's car was released, it placed second (out of three), and the last two times, it placed third (or last). I'm not sure how his car did overall, but he didn't bring any trophies home. Nonetheless, Cameron had fun just watching all the cars with his brother and sister hanging out with him.

And call me crazy...but I think some of those parents worked really hard on their kids' cars.

Be prepared....the kid or the parent?

I don’t think I knew what I was getting into when I told my son that if he wanted to, then of course he could be a part of Cub Scouts!

To start with, there was A LOT of paper work to fill out. Even Melvin and I had to fill out some forms to tell them how we were going to volunteer for the scouts. I used my “currently dealing with a medical emergency” phrase (what my brother calls pulling the cancer card) to bypass much volunteering.

Then they actually meet at least twice a month, at someone’s house, in the evening…with parents there. Honestly, I thought it was some little gathering after school where the boys learned to tie knots or something. That’s what brownies was like for me!

And then there’s the uniform. Thankfully, my neighbor across the street works for the Scouts and offered to pick up all the clothing requirements that Cameron would need. Again, I thought those shirts were just for special occasions. Didn’t know they had to be worn at every meeting. And then there’s a belt…and all those patches! My neighbor told me that Cameron could get away with going to his first meeting “as is” if I didn’t have time to sew on all the patches. Sew? I don’t even own any needle and thread. I went online to look up where the patches go, and oh my, it’s quite rigid. The pictures show where on the seam they should be placed, how many inches apart, etc. Very military-like! There's even an inspection sheet! I bet I’m going to have to actually iron this shirt as well!

But the good thing is, Cameron’s really exited about this. And Melvin was home today to take him, so I was really excited about them spending some time together. Hopefully this will turn into a regular “daddy” thing.

However, they left a crying Max, who said he was a boy, so he should be able to go to boy scouts, too.