Blue & Gold

I wish I could be an Eagle Scout. I've already earned it once... and I'll earn it 2 more times when the younger boys get older,... so shouldn't I get to claim it?
Till then, I'm having a blast in cub scouts and I think I'm a pretty decent leader. My boys seem to genuinely love me and are willing to try most any crazy thing I suggest... at least once.

Wednesday night we had our Blue and Gold Banquet. This is a special pack meeting ("pack meeting" is the awards ceremony we hold every month to pass out awards they've earned over that month) that celebrates the anniversary of Cub Scouting and gives us a chance to really do it up big. It's not uncommon for lots of money to be shelled out for banquets like these, but we always manage to keep our costs down, and that's a point to take pride in all by itself!

Our boys had suggested we have a talent show. That caused me to think a bit, and I thought morphing that idea a little and turning it into a Variety Show would be a great theme for our banquet. So I suggested it to the rest of our cub leadership and the ball was set in motion. We had a variety of colorful decorations and a variety of pot luck dishes to eat from. We had all the families plan on doing an act of some kind (their choosing) and the leaders all planned to participate in silliness.

We also had PLANNED for a good friend and church member to be our MC for the night. He has a perfect voice for things like this and makes the best narrator you ever heard! He was going to do magic tricks in between our kids acts and we were SO looking forward to that. As luck would have it, he had a heart attack at church on Sunday, so he spent the banquet time in the hospital! (He's ok, no blockages and he's home now should any of you want to just call or facebook him and tell him you're thinking of him - yep, Jimmy.) So we're out an MC and nobody else to cover that. I get a phone call Tuesday afternoon and am told all the other back up plans have fallen through,.....so they want ME to be an MC!

I AM NOT EVEN FUNNY!! I was gasping and couldn't believe I got asked such a thing! What else can ya do though? Gotta fill in, so I did. After all, a scout is trustworthy, helpful, kind, loyal...all that stuff.

I googled silly one liners, and I actually pulled off about 3 of them! (Yeah I was bad as MC. Maybe they won't ever forget that and never ask me again!) We started the kids performing and we had a little guy write his own skit for his brother and sister to do with him. The next kid had a short skit/joke/stunt he did with his brother and his dad. They were all so cute and I was so proud. In between, we had a couple leaders work with me and do little run-ons....which is an act that is about 2 sentences long,...like one was 2 leaders walk on stage shaking tree branches and making the leaves fall on the floor. I shouted "hey ya'll get off stage!" and one of them yells back "we're just LEAVING". Silliness... it was fun. We get to the end and we have a little 8 year old do a comedy act and another (large) family be a circus and another family do a weather show from their own little tv set.

Then it was up to my family. I remember doing the hula with my mother and sisters in this very same room when I was a kid. I remember my mama sitting on my daddy's knee for one of these shows and she sang while daddy chewed gum (he wasn't the best ventriloquist either, but he made us laugh!) and I couldn't let my family heritage down.

I have a friend from childhood who is great to blend musical arrangements for me and he mixed up some songs and merged them into one song for me. I played it on my laptop and my family danced... in the dark.....Pictures.... and then the video at the end, but it only recorded well for the first part. The end didn't video quite right...crazy camera.