Our Tiger Scout

With an Eagle scout for an uncle, grandpa, and lots of great uncles and cousins, we were excited for Collin to start Cub Scouts in first grade.  The night of his first meeting, we were hosting a church group at our home, so my sweet Uncle Bobby took Collin to the den meeting -

And this last weekend, we went on our first camp out and first family camping experience.  Collin, Cas and another dad and his son went up on Friday night, and then Maya, the mom, the sister Cate and I joined on Saturday morning.  Maya was equally excited about watching a movie in the car on the ride to the state park as she was about the actual camping experience.  

You never know what you're going to get in Texas in October - the previous weekend had temperatures in the 90's - but we ended up with a gorgeous fall weekend.  When we arrived, I learned that the boys had been running around through the woods until 9pm Friday night like maniacs, and that Cas had slept so late on Saturday that he almost missed breakfast.  Who sleeps well in a tent and sleeps late camping?  The gifted sleeper, Cas!

Saturday morning the boys went on a 2-mile hike, and we arrived in time for lunch and group activities like tug of war - 

Walking on a slack line and racing through an obstacle course -

Maya and Kate - just two months apart and friends from their brothers' baseball and now soccer - played together all weekend.

Saturday afternoon we carved pumpkins for a contest.  Then we tried to get the exhausted and melting down Collin to nap - unsuccessfully - but got Maya to crash for a nap in the tent.  Soon it was time to get dressed in his cub scout uniform for the dinner and pack meeting.  I had heard dinner Saturday night was catered, but then I heard it was hot dogs.  Fortunately, it was hot dogs and fruit for the kids, but catered BBQ for the adults.

I had laid out cute Aggie clothes for Maya and had fixed her hair in the morning.  We forgot her jacket at the house and her hair got a little wild in the woods.  Our little nut and our happy boy -

The little sisters -

In earning his bobcat badge, part of the pack meeting ceremony included painting the boys' faces to represent different qualities (ie blue, look to the sky, enjoy and take care of nature sort of thing)

Then the boys were able to paint the parents' faces - Cas took one for the team here -

First badge ceremony.  Our troop took over a huge loop in the state park campsite with 250 campers!

We're excited that Collin is entering the world of boy scouts and we hope he (and we) build great friendships and learns lifelong skills.  After we put the kids down on Saturday  night, I enjoyed sitting around the camp fire and getting to know the parents of first grade cub scouts a bit better.  It was a pretty successful first family camping trip!