Cub Scouts in the Christmas Parade

Here it is....the unveiling of the Cub Scout Christmas Parade float. Which had taken up residence in our garage for the past 6 weeks. Truly a fun experience. Several of the boys had hands-on in painting and wrapping the presents. It was a sunny 40 degree Sunday, as about 20 cub scouts and their parents, walked the 2 mile parade route.




Did you know that in Feb 2010, the Boy Scouts of America will be celebrating 100 years as an organization.

"Celebrating the Adventure -- Continuing the Journey"

That was the theme of our float. Although Cub Scouting didn't start until sometime in the 1920's, our young scouts wanted join in on the celebrating. As soon as I heard that the theme for the parade was "An Old Fashioned Christmas", my creative mind was racing. Bam! There it was in my head. A Christmas letter to Santa written by a scout in 1910. The wishes of a Boy Scout in the early 1900's, were not all that different than those of a modern day scout. A tent, compass, pocket knife, boots, warm socks, canteen, mess kit, and the glorious......

........BB gun!

In our research in writing the letter, we discovered that a Boy Scout, 100 years ago, would have carried an Acme Whistle and a Pocket Signal Disk. The disk had the whistle signals and morse code. OK so there were a few differences. For most boys now, if a Nintendo DS or a cell phone had morse code then they would certainly know about it.

I had some help from others. Another Cub Scout Mom & I painted for a few nights in the chilly garage. Her clever contribution is the letter. She wrote it with her right hand (non-dominant) so that it would seem child-like. It turned out really great.

We had a den meeting at our home which consisted of putting primer on the plywood, each other, and the floor. I'm waiting for it to get warmer, so I can clean the floor.

My children had a lot of terrific ideas. They painted, held boards, decorated the tree, wrapped packages, and ate candy.

There were several other Cub Scouts that came over on a night to wrap presents & decorate the tree. It's such a busy time of the year, that I was pleased with all that were able to come. I think having hot chocolate helped !

Then there is the master builder ! My sweet hubby. Mr B. We couldn't have completed this float without his engineering & expertise in float building. I told him the way I wanted it to look and he graciously did it all. Even on Thanksgiving weekend when many others were still consuming chicken and physically attached the couch watching football.

(There were also Reese's Peanut Butter Cups involved.... :-)

He told stories of the float building that had taken place in his family garage for many, many years while he & his brothers were in high school. Remember Jan ? He was thankful that this float didn't involve chicken wire and tissue paper!

Here's Mr. B on parade day. Driver of the float. He definitely had the warmest spot for the day. Well deserved too. He put in lots of hours on this day and many days before. He arrived early to get us a great spot in line, so that we weren't waiting so long.


Mr. B. is a hunky-looking Cub Scout Dad, I might add. Hubba. Hubba.






Here are a few pictures of the process....


A warm day on Thanksgiving weekend.



Pack decorating night. My boy is the one in the hat. He's so proud to be a Cub Scout that he wears his uniform any chance he can get. Even on this night when no one else did. Ben did.



Mr. B in the midst of it all. Decorating the tree ?




Here he is, handing out candy during the parade. (Have you ever been to a parade where you can't throw candy ? Well we have. The boys really worked hard & truly walked more than 2 miles handing out each and every piece).



Cub Scouting is FUN with a purpose.
This is certainly a great description of my Ben.