June & July! All had excellent times! Camp Frank Rand was everything we expected and more. There were 23 scouts and 9 leaders to make the journey. Congrats to JR for his first summer camp as an adult leader. July brought Laser Quest. Totally Sci-Fi! I believe that may be on the calendar next year. Greg Osborne and Justin VanderWilt received their Eagle rank. What a fantastic ceremony. They really did a great job.

August will bring troop elections on the 15^th. Patrol elections will be on the 22^nd. But the big one will be our annual planning meeting on the 19^th. This is where you get to plan the events for the year, so plan on attending.

Our court of honor is September 5^th. Winter camp will be at Lost Pines. The dates have changed to December 20^th – 24^th. We do have several fundraisers on the books for October and November, so plan on participating.

SM Minutes:

Did you know that car manufacturers try out their new models on some of the worst roads in the world? They can't find any ordinary roads that are bad enough for the purpose, so they build special tracks with ruts, bumps, and potholes that are incredibly bad.

Now why do they do that, do you suppose? That's right, they want to give their cars the toughest possible test so that they can learn about the weak spots. The idea is that they will fix the weak spots before the cars go on sale.

Are you like a new car model that never was tested? Are you cheerful when the going is easy but a grumbler and griper when there is trouble? Are you like a shiny new car that falls to pieces when it gets a tough road test?

In a way, Scouting is like a road test. We challenge ourselves with camping trips and other adventures such as a lock in @ Laser Quest to see whether or not we can take it. We’re not talking about physically, but mentally as well. As Scouts we like to find out what our limits are, and if we find weak spots, we try to correct them.

That way, we'll be ready for life's bumps and potholes. Then people will say of us, "Those guys can take it".