Pow-Wow

Last Saturday was our annual Cub Scout Pow-Wow. This year's theme was "Are You Smarter Than A Cub Scout?" A new location this year, Evergreen Elementary in Allendale. Thought about stopping by to say hi to Eric while I was in town, but I don't think he would have appreciated a visit that early. And by the time I was done, he was working in downtown GR. Oh well, I saw him the next day.

My first session, was (you guessed it) Geocaching. I had about a dozen scout leaders that wanted to learn about caching. I went through the Geocaching 101 presentation that I have on power point (the same one I used last weekend) and showed examples of cache containers, swag, and other caching related stuff. I had hidden my red ammo can out on the school grounds, and after the power point, we went outside to find it. There was a GPS receiver for every two scouters, thanks to the council's supply. Took them a few minutes but most had good luck with finding it!
Gave away one more geocoin at the end of the session. I have yet to win one myself. Most likely, I'll be allowed to keep one anyway in return for all the work I've done on Get in the Game; but I'd like to win one fair and square.

After a break for lunch (yep, brought my own. Down to 145 today (Wed. the 20th) as I enter this) I set up for my Cub Cooking session. Didn't have any cubs to cook, so just had to do some cooking demonstrations and fun stuff. Our first task was to make gingerbread in dixie cups. 3 T of gingerbread mix, 1 T of water, mix in a 5 oz dixie cup, and bake in a 400 degree electric skillet for 15 minutes. Really works (and smelled good too.) Have to admit I had a cup - not very much in the way of calories with such a small portion.

2nd up was butter. Surprising that more had never done this before. Baby food jars, half full of heavy whipping cream, shake until butter forms and the buttermilk separates from it. Add a little salt to taste, and eat on crackers. Ummm, good!

Next was ice cream in a can. In hindsight, wish I'd had them make individual ice cream in ziplocks - the cans were noisier and took longer, plus didn't freeze as well. We ended up drinking vanilla shakes....

And last but not least was armpit fudge. 1/2 c of powdered sugar, 1 T butter, 2 tsp cream cheese, 1 T cocoa, and a dash of vanilla. Put into a ziplock bag, squish it around (put it in your armpit to soften it) and you have fudge. Ok, true confession time. I did do this and ate it, too. Saved my extra calories for the day. Oh, it was good....but I don't miss chocolate as much as I thought I would.

After pow-wow, I decided to catch a few caches, of course, on the way home. Stopped in a nearby cemetery for one called "The Search." I had to gather some information from several grave sites, then project a waypoint from another grave to the final (not hidden by a grave.) Got all but one piece of info, drove around to where the missing piece was, got it, then sat in the car and tried to remember how to project a waypoint. Looked up and I was blocked in by two cars. Turned out that the first car were also there caching, so we teamed up, finally figured out the projecting a waypoint thing on about the third or fourth try, and found the cache.

I found two other quick caches on the way home, then spent a quiet evening at home with Steve. Nice day.