Back from scouting

Kabouter's first two years of scouting were each year interrupted by long periods of absence due to all the pandemic measures.  Needless to say he was not wildly enthusiastic about scouting and he left for each camp with an amount of stress and fear. 

This year he managed to attend the meetings more regularly, and he had moved up to the Cub Scouts. He attended the weekend without any of his school friends and made new cub friends and really made the click. 

I was a little suprised when the stress started rising again the weeks before the scouting camp.  He frowned when the theme of outer space was announced.  He sighed when he heard the Cubs camp is longer than those previous years.   He worried losing all his stuff again like previous year.  (I fear I lectured him too hard on that).  ...  We talked again about being a bit afraid each time he leaves somewhere unknown, how natural that is and how it always ends up being fun...the same talk we had previous years. Gosh he is so similar to me so I understand.

So Jan drove him and his school friends off to the camping location. No tents this year but small classrooms where they'd camp out in this year's biggest heat wave.  

As a parent it were 8 long days without news updates.  While the news seemed to fill up with scouting group incidents, we only heard silence, which had to be a good time. Last year the leaders had sent us pictures of the terrains but that's when so many camp locations were flooding and had to be evacuated.  

And then it was time to get him back!! Hurray for me.  I was really glad to see him again and anticipated a grumpy non-talkative hangry teen but he was rather talkative and cheerful.   As predicted, he had a good camp, he had fun.    And as predicted the cat got the first hug when he came back. I know my pick-order in his family hierarchy :D.