Trail Talk – 12/2/24

Welcome Back from Thanksgiving Break!

We will be starting meetings up again TOMORROW NIGHT, DECEMBER 3RD AT 7:00 P.M. just like normal! I am excited to see everyone tomorrow night. Before I get into this week’s announcements, I want to express my sincere gratitude and thanks to all members of Troop 244, past and present. All of you who turned out last week for my dad’s visitation and/or funeral, have no idea what that meant to my family. To see all of those scouts, scouters and parents there truly shows the impact and the legacy my dad created with Troop 244. His legacy will continue on in each one of us as we move forward with our scouting adventures and he will be with us along the journey! I firmly believe that. Thank you all for showing your love and support in these last few weeks, but especially last week. We talked about it a lot on Thanksgiving Day and it just meant so much to my sisters and me. Thank you!

One other thing, I want to talk about is yesterday’s Eagle Court of Honor! What an awesome celebration and ceremony! Thank you to all of the scouts, scouters and parents who came out to celebrate our 5 newest Eagle Scouts in Troop 244. Thank you to all of the scouts, scouters and parents who made it possible as well! The work that was put in to organize the Eagle Court of Honor was nothing short of spectacular! I felt honored to award these scouts: Roan Borton, Jack Kingston, Caden Dodde, Alexander Haas and Charlie Fox their Eagle Scout awards yesterday.

Onto this week’s announcements:

CITY BARBEQUE TROOP FUNDRAISER(TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3RD) – Don’t forget that December 3rd (TOMORROW), Troop 244 will have a Dine Out at City BBQ. This will go from 11am-8pm. Go and grab dinner before coming to the troop meeting that night! This is NOT taking the place of the troop meeting. Mention you are supporting Troop 244 when placing your order. If online use promo code GIVE so our Troop can receive 20% of the proceeds. Please RSVP to Friends of Troop 244 GroupRaise Meal at City Barbeque so there is enough food available for the extra patrons anticipated. Thanks. Any questions, please let me know. Lastly please share your socials so your friends can join us as well. Information is through email from my husband, Jeff Crawford, as well.

Registration – This is a process that must be completed every year for scouts and scouters to remain active in scouting. If you do not reregister you are no longer and active scout and CANNOT participate in scout events. WE MUST HAVE THIS DONE BY THE END OF THE MONTH! If you want your scout to remain an active scout, be able to attend meetings, outings and earn rank advancements then you must reregister your scout for another year. The Council started a new process this year of wanting each individual scout/parent to reregister their scout so you may have received an email about this! IGNORE THAT EMAIL! The troop decided, and it is possible, to go about our registration process like normal. Please pay your registration fee to Sherry at the troop meetings(December 3rd) and the TROOP WILL REREGISTER YOUR SCOUT! The fee for registration is $200 for scouts and $100 for adult members. You can also pay your registration online at https://bit.ly/pay244 I cannot stress this enough: THIS HAS TO BE DONE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. It cannot be put off. If you don’t pay your registration, the scout becomes unregistered and you have to go through all of the paperwork again. Please pay the registration now.

INFORMATION SURVEY! – If you haven’t clicked on and filled out this survey yet, please do. With my dad passing, there are a lot of “irons” in the fire we knew he was working on. We also know that a scout troop has a lot of moving parts and my dad, who was retired, treated scouting as if it were a full-time job. None of us are in the same place my dad was so we need your help! We need to figure out the things that you may have been working on with my dad, we need to figure out the best ways to communicate and we need to figure out how you can help! Please click on and fill out this INFORMATION SURVEY right after reading this week’s Trail talk and let us know. It is short and should only take you 5 – 10 minutes to complete.

HOLIDAY FOOD DRIVE – every Holiday season for years now Troop 244 has done a food drive to gather food for those in need. We gather the food together at the church throughout the month of December and then we bring all of that to Twelve Baskets. Twelve Baskets right now is supporting 400 families. We have received a few donations so far but we are still looking for more. Plan to grab some of the things you see on the flyer below and bring them to tomorrow night’s meeting, Tuesday December 3rd! We will continue collecting food until our Troop Holiday party at the meeting on Tuesday, December 17th. Please see the flyer below for more information!

TROOP HOLIDAY PARTY – Tuesday, December 17th at 7:00 p.m. The last Troop meeting in December is the normal time for our annual Troop Holiday Party! The PLC will work on planning different activities for the party. We will be asking different patrols to bring dessert, snack items and drinks(pop, lemonade, etc.) for the party! The Troop will order Pizza for everyone! This will be our closeout of the calendar year and our way to celebrate the holidays with each other! Please keep an “ear” and “eye” out for more information. Final donations for the food drive will be accepted this night.

Just a reminder that there will be NO MEETINGS over Winter Break this year. We will not meet on Tuesday, December 24th or Tuesday, January 31. We will resume meetings after Winter Break on January 7th.

Scoutmaster Minute – The scout motto says to “be prepared”. For me this means looking forward and seeing what can I do NOW so that I don’t have to do it later. This time of year we see sort of a “light at the end of the tunnel” as we look towards Winter Break coming up soon and the celebration of the holidays. For students and teachers at least, we see that we only have a few weeks left until we get a much needed break from the chaos of school. It is hard to think beyond that break at this point in time. However, I want to remind you all that once that Winter Break ends, we enter into a brand new year! The year 2025 has so much to offer us! It is helpful if we start thinking about things NOW, rather than waiting until after Winter Break.

A few things I had in mind include Merit Badges, Campouts, Summer Camp, Boundary Waters and the Mini-High Adventure. Why is it that we so often wait until the last minute to deal with the details of these important events. Scouts, you should have an idea of what merit badge you want to take at meetings when we get back from break. If you don’t finish the merit badge you are in now, you will stay in that merit badge until you complete it. We have several campouts coming up in the months after Winter Break. In January we will be going to Pioneer Scout Reservation. What do you, as scouts, want to do on that campout? Tell your SPLs and ASPLs, so they know. I am still working on the February campout right now. In March, we have a Museum trip planned to the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. How exciting to visit the museum honoring the ONLY President to ever earn the Eagle Scout Rank! April Campout details are being worked on right now but it promises to be exciting. In May we will go back to Pioneer to get our campsite ready for summer camp! In June, we will have our end of the year celebration at Pentwater! A week later, we will go to SUMMER CAMP! What can you do now, to start thinking about Summer Camp, instead of waiting until April or May? In July, we will head off to the Boundary Waters. What can you do now to start preparing? At the end of July/beginning of August, we have our Mini-High Adventure! Are you ready for that?

It may seem silly to prepare for things that are so far off in the future, now but when you think about it, the more prepared you start becoming now, the less you have to worry about later on! Be a scout, Be Prepared!

Let’s always remember “What Troop Does More!!” – 244