Committee Meeting & PLC / Troop Meeting this Thursday, January 3rd, at Sacred Heart Parish Hall - 6:15pm Committee / 7:00pm Troop

Hello Troop 20!

There will be a committee meeting and PLC meeting this Thursday at 6:15pm at Sacred Heart Parish Hall.

Immediately following the committee meeting, we will have our regular weekly Troop Meeting from 7:00 - 8:30pm.  Please remember that we line up for our opening ceremony at 7:00PM so you need to plan to be at the hall about 10 minutes earlier, in Class A uniform.

Here are this week's announcements:

Merit Badges

Citizenship in the Community

• Mr. McKinnon will be continuing the Citizenship in the Community merit badge this week at 7:15pm.

Any other Merit Badges

• If you have completed any work for Communications or Personal Management that needs to be checked off, please see Mrs. Swindle during the meeting.

Cooking

• Mr. Holt has graciously offered to teach the cooking merit badge, start date is currently TBD.  This week, we would like to get a roster together for who would be interested in participating in that class so that we can start to look at schedules and see how soon we could offer the class to our Scouts.

Ski Trip:
We have extended the signup for the annual ski trip to this Thursday, January 3rd, 2019.

At this week's Troop meeting, we need to have commitments from everyone who wants to go to Mt. Abram the weekend of February 8 - 10, 2019.

The Troop 20 Ski Trip weekend is a great opportunity for Scouts.  The mountain offers 10 beginner, 21 intermediate, and 13 expert trails.  The group package gets us discounted lift tickets as well as equipment rental and the ski school is excellent for those Scouts that have not yet learned to ski.  This is where many of our Scouts first learned to ski and they've been having fun ever since!

IMPORTANT:  If parents and siblings of our Scouts are also interested in participating in this trip, please come and talk to us on the 3rd.  We can include your numbers to help us get the group discount for all and we can determine if our lodging works for everyone.

We rent a local American Legion hall (Jackson-Silver Post 68) to use for lodging and meals, which is located only 2 miles from the mountain so we can be on the mountain in ~5 minutes!  Scouts bring their sleeping bags and crash on the floor of the hall, adults typically bring sleeping bags and cots.  We have use of the hall's large kitchen to cook meals and there are bathrooms, but no showers.

We typically leave from Sacred Heart in the late afternoon on the Friday (Feb 8), stopping on the way up to get something to eat so it's approximately 4 to 4-1/2 hours to get to the American Legion Hall.  We make breakfast at the hall Saturday morning and then head to the mountain to ski all day Saturday.  We bring food to have sandwiches, chips, and drinks on the mountain and then cook a good dinner Saturday night.   On Sunday, we make breakfast at the hall again and after thoroughly cleaning the hall and kitchen, we head to the mountain.  We'll have sandwiches again for lunch and then we usually leave mid afternoon to return home.

Scouts should be talking with their families about going on the trip and for everyone who wants to come and ski, we need a $50 per-person, non-refundable deposit at the January 3rd Troop meeting.  We would love to have our Scouts, their parents, and siblings join us for a fun ski weekend.  This is one of the annual events that Scouts remember forever!

Cyber Chip:

We would like to finish up the Cyber Chip training so our SPL is asking that Scouts please write up your contracts to bring home to be signed by your parents