Battleship Campout

Ooooh, the eagerly anticipated Battleship campout with the cub scouts! Poor Lucas didn't get to go last year because his mommy has Mad Cow and didn't realize that daddy had a meeting and she was on call that weekend after promising to take him. True heartbreak....he actually cried when he got home from school the next day because his friends told him how cool it was. That's one of the few times I've felt that I'm truly ruining my kids by being a doctor instead of a stay-at-home mom. So this year the campout fell on another weekend that we were both on call, but SuperMommy to the rescue - I traded weekends with my partner.

Now Dean did this with Drew when he was a Tiger Cub, so he warned me ahead of time, but poor Lucas couldn't be cheated out of his turn, so I plowed ahead. We loaded up the car Friday afternoon and headed to the Battleship. Oh, look at the sparse Pots-o-Gold (portalets) which are lined up within inches of the road. Somebody steps out of there without looking both ways and they're road kill - wonder who thought up that setup. We drove around the parking lot looking into the big field of tents for anybody we knew and came up empty, so we headed back to Pot-o-Gold country and looked for a suitable campsite. That ended up being at the Vietnam Memorial, which felt sort of sacriligious (did I spell that right?), especially watching all the unsupervised heathens running around jumping and playing on the sculptures.

Well, it got down into the 40's pretty quickly after dinner, so it was a unanimous decision to get into Lucas's tent and hang out till the campfire at 8 PM. There's not much to do in a tent unless you have cards or a board game, but luckily we all brought a book. That's what we did for an hour and a half - what a lot of fun!

After the campfire we hit the Pot-o-Gold, where I held a flashlight up to the vent so the boys could see where they were aiming when it was their turn. Apparently Lucas could just barely see to aim, because the next morning was a complete revelation to him at the john (hey look, I referenced 2 books of the Bible in 1 sentence!). He went in but came out lickety-split, declaring that he was going to throw up. He said he couldn't pee while looking "at other people's leavings." He opted to hold it until we toured the Battleship, which ended up being an hour and a half later! That kid held it while we stood in line 15 minutes for hot chocolate and a danish, then broke down tents and packed my car. Thank goodness the Battleship ticket office had a nice gift shop and bathroom, and what a little trooper!

I can't tell you all the discussion and jokes about the Pots-o-Gold that followed later that day, but you can bet we exhausted that subject. Now we've got to figure out how Lucas will make it through Jazzfest or any other event where he might need a portalet....