So, I didn’t go on this excursion. But it’s clear that R and the boys had a great time.
The theme to the Klondike Derby was ‘Pirates’. Troop 22 won the race, and they won the award for most spirit. I have to say, the sled is a darned fine example of Pirate-y decoration!
Over the weekend, R finally got to the mythical Red Cross first aid class he needed. This class became the bottleneck to everything for him in scouting, it seemed. The class would earn him First Aid merit badge, finish his first class rank advancement, and finish off a minimum of one (and maybe as many as three) other merit badges he has in a partial status.
Ostensibly, this class is held each month at the Red Cross. The Red Cross has cancelled each class since October, 2009. So we’ve only been waiting five months to make this happen.
All we can say is “whew!”
Perhaps – speaking entirely as a parent – this breakthrough will motivate R to wrap up the stragglers in three other partial merit badges. Assuming he does, he could roll into his third summer camp looking like this:
Oh, and he’s still twelve. He still has five and a half years left in his Boy Scout career. Shoot. He’s only now hitting his stride!
Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world. The power of a paradigm shift is the essential power of quantum change, whether that shift is an instantaneous or a slow and deliberate process.
- Stephen Covey
Our newest international student arrived over the weekend. Her initials are MF, so that’s how I’ll refer to her in any posts. She’s from Japan. lives just North of Nagoya, and is studying English at Marylhurst for one month. Her English is terrific, and she’s a doll.
Even though she arrived on Saturday morning, MF stayed awake to get acquainted with her new family. Probably a good thing; she slept through the night and woke up about noon on Sunday. Good sleep will cure the jet lag fastest!
Sunday morning, C explored making crab cakes from Julee Russo’s New Basics cookbook. It was about a four hour process, as C worked through the recipe for the first time. This recipe really worked C’s cooking muscles. Not only did she make the crab cakes from scratch, but the Hollandaise sauce was from scratch, too. I suspect that C was a bit apprehensive about making something like a Hollandaise – it’s such a delicate thing. But as she figured her way through the recipe, I kept hearing her say things like “hey, this is pretty easy. As long as we don’t burn the butter, we’re fine.” And she was right. We had fun. MF helped; I helped; the kids helped and felt drawn to hang around the happy action in the kitchen.
The reward at the end of the whole process was some scrumptious food, to be sure. That, and a confidence boost for the lady of the house.
This was in addition to the homemade ham soup C made this weekend as well. I’m telling you, C seems to be discovering her inner cook in some new and delightful ways.
Since cancer, C has dutifully prepared meals, but not really been a cook. And for good reason, if you’ve been nearby through her process of cancer and recovery. But now, she’s feeling better after the most recent surgeries. And she’s cooking as a result. Cooking with a complexity and completeness in her meals that she never aimed for in the past.
* * * *
R had a bit of an active weekend, but in low-key sort of way. The annual Troop 22 fund raiser – the Laurelhurst neighborhood Tree Chip – raised a record-setting amount of money this year. R and I helped out throughout the day, covering a pick-up route, and then helping lop the trees for hauling away. It was cloudy and cold, but not uncomfortable. And, it’s gratifying to see R slowly begin to take his role seriously. He performed his job on the route admirably, and stuck with the tree lopping right to the very end. Toward the end of the session, he jumped up in to the dumpsters full of tree branches and helped pack everything down – a bit of playful work there at the end for a kid who’s come a long way.
R also attended X’s birthday party on Saturday evening. He got his compatriot fix; left him happier and more satisfied, to be sure.
Sunday afternoon, R tackled a large school assignment, completed it, and had some Wii and family time before bed.
* * * *
As for M, she had a great weekend doing not much. She shopped with C and MF on Saturday. On Sunday, she announced it was ‘pajama day’ and proceeded to finish her homework, do some personal art projects, send an electronic card to Grandma Gin, and play some Wii with her Dad and Brother before dinner.
Everything on the down-low.
* * * *
I so hope this becomes a theme for 2010 – quiet weekends with some down-time and some quality family time. Activities like cooking together, getting mental recharge time, calming the heck down. The year’s still in its infancy; but we’re well on our way to creating the new approach.
Here’s a case-in-point to that end: we’re planning a family ski day in a couple weeks. C got our gear sorted out over the weekend, thereby resolving more than half the logistical issues for the first trip of the season. We’ll glide into that ski day with a lot less stress because we’ve planned ahead. Nice.
So, the Typhoon seems to be seeking the calm. Perhaps that will result in fewer posts to the family blog. Afterall, when not much is happening, there’s less to share. It’s a paradigm shift, both instantaneous and slow/deliberate.
At the troop meeting tonight, R was elected to the position of Assistant Patrol Leader. Not bad for a Second Class Scout (nearly First Class) in his second year of scouting!
R’s walking a bit taller tonight. Good for him.
This year’s Troop 22 Family Camp was this last weekend. We missed it last year, because we were in Disneyland. So this was the Typhoon’s first chance to go on a Family Camp. And given that we currently on a sort of hospice for our aging Akita, Akiko, we made sure to take her along for what is perhaps our last campout with the family dog.
Paulina Lake, inside the Newberry Crater, is a gorgeous alpine lake nestled into a collapsed volcanic caldera south of Bend, Oregon. Full of interesting geologic features, gorgeous views and a thriving trout population, it was a great choice for a family campout.
Last Fall, we picked up an expedition tent from Next Adventure. Not one of those classic heavy, canvas expeditions, this one (pictured below) is nylon, utilizing a tent/rainfly construction and based on four huge poles that create a cavernous barrel-shaped interior. From end-to-end, this tent is over twenty feet long and divided into two sections. The smaller front section is called a ‘porch’. Lots of windows and a panorama view would make for a great place to hang out bug-free. The larger, more private section has room to sleep all four of us, plus the dog.
So, its a nice tent for comfortable car camping. Ideal for Badasht and for the family camp. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that the rain fly does not completely shade the ends of the tent. Not a problem for summer showers and the like, but a design weakness for prolonged rain.
Now, central Oregon in June is predictably pleasant. Campers can expect sunny weather interrupted maybe by a thundershower. So the irony should be evident that it came to pass that we experienced a series of thundershowers, followed by a weather front that rained about an inch on us between Friday dinner and early Sunday morning. The rain wasn’t constant, but it did indeed rain more than not.
Saturday morning, while it rained a bit, R had the first Board of Review of his scouting career. For those who don’t know, a Board of Review (BoR) is the last step to achieving a new rank in scouting. Three adults hold an interview with the scout, verify not only that he both accomplished each requirement, but also to test his understanding of what he did, and his overall poise. Pass the BoR, and the scout advances in rank. Fail the BoR, and the scout must wait a short period of time and try again. R went into his first BoR with a rank of Scout (lowest). His BoR simultaneously passed him on Tenderfoot and Second Class ranks….two ranks in one sitting. Nice!
So the Typhoon was in high spirits mid-day, when the weather broke enough for the troop to hike one-mile from the campground to an impressive lava flow chock-full of Obsidian. This photo gives a lay of the land.
Paulina Lake is on the extreme left of the photo; with East lake in the background. Our campsite would be on the closest edge of Paulina Lake, just at the edge of the photo. The lava flow is the gray region throughout the center.
About the time we got back to the campsite, it started raining again, with that steady pelt-pelt of a rainstorm that doesn’t plan to end any time soon. So we had made good use of the break in the weather for the side trip.
Afternoon play activities did NOT stop for the rain. There was just no sensible way to keep those boys and their siblings cooped up in their respective tents while it rained. A pack of 25 rain-soaked kids was a foregone conclusion. No big deal as long as there’s one dry set of clothing and a dry tent to return to…
Saturday night’s social activity was a troop wide chili cook-off. We all had a lot of fun with that, and the chili all turned out wonderfully. Lots of good team-building and bonding took place. Of course part of the bonding was because we all had to huddle under the cooking fly shelters to escape the heavy rain from the weather front that settled over us.
Everyone ate, everyone got wet, some were soaked. Typhoon children were among the soaked. I was somewhere in the middle of helping with kitchen cleanup, when C let me know that her after-dinner tent inspection showed significant leaks from the zippers and seams on both ends of our tent. While we didn’t have water running through our tent area (drainage rivulets had started to appear all over camp by now), there was definitely a steady drip-drip-drip onto the floor. The rainfly was doing its job; the leaks were only from the uncovered ends of the tent. So that was a good news / bad news situation. Seam sealer would fix the leaks, but we’d have to get through tonight without it.
Except that C’s inspection found that an unspecified child in the family had unzipped some of the covers over the porch screens, opening the windows and letting the rain come in unabated, soaking the dry change of clothes, sleeping pads and the feet of the childrens’ sleeping bags.
Ugh.
So it came as no surprise that, at this very moment, both children appeared, overwhelmed suddenly by the cold wet condition of their clothes, near tears, begging for us parents to suddenly make them warm, dry and happy again.
There is just no good way to break the news to two soaked, shivering children that they’d been a bit negligent with the tent and, as a result, the dry and warm belongings they were depending upon were now wet and cold. It wasn’t a pretty exchange. There was some discussion of breaking camp right then. I said a firm ‘no’. We weren’t the only family having that talk at about that time. One family did leave then; their backpacking-style tents were leaking significantly and all their belongings were dripping-wet soaked.
The mitigation process took some coordinated teamwork . C directed the re-arranging of the tent’s insides, while I stood in the rain, protected by my Gore-tex rain coat, holding shoes and clothes up to the fire until the drying process reached an equilibrium with the rain still falling on the wet items. When we’d finished, we had four functional sleeping bags, two kids in dry pajamas inside those bags, and a merely damp dog lying on her dog bed covered by a dry car blanket.
For most of her life, the idea of putting a blanket over Aki was just plain impractical. That night, however, it was different. The moment I put that blanket over Aki, she gave me a look of appreciation like none I’ve ever seen before. Normally she moves around overnight, finding a couple places to sleep besides on her dog bed. This time, she stayed put. Seven hours later, the blanket was still in place with just her muzzle poking out. Just as I left her; she didn’t move a muscle.
Once we finally got everyont tucked into bed, it was M who was the first to fall asleep. C and I spent an hour or so with R, the new Second Class scout, listening to the rain outside, debriefing everything that went on during the day. It turned out that he was the one who left the tent windows open. He felt terrible about it. We talked about learning lessons the hard way. Both C and I had camping-in-the-rain stories to tell that out-did R’s lessons of the day. It made him feel better to know that we didn’t judge him harshly for his mistakes, and it helped him better understand that the guidance we give him on how to be successful is based upon our own personal experience. He’s increasingly learning that listening to experienced elders will save him the discomfort of learning the painful lesson for himself.
Everyone slept okay. Nobody was uncomfortably cold overnight. The rain stopped sometime after midnight, leaving us a damp, misty Sunday morning with raindrops still dripping from the trees overhead. At 7am revile, half the camp was already packed up. Everyone was uncomfortable and ready to get warm. Not a single person seemed inclined to linger longer than needed. The big-event Sunday breakfast was cancelled and by 8:30am, we were on the road. We had a soaked tent, a 30 gallon trashbag full of soaked clothes, a damp dog, and two cold kids as we rolled out, heater going full blast. As quickly as we got packed up and on the road, we weren’t the first family out. Others skedaddled like they were running from a forest fire.
Half an hour of drying time in the car, and everyone’s spirits were on the rise. We stopped for a big hot breakfast at the Black Bear Diner in Madras. Full stomachs finished off the recovery.
By 2pm, we were home and unpacking the car.
By 4PM, sleeping bags were already fluffed dry. The tent was set up in the backyard, ready for seam sealer.
By dinner time Sunday, the sun had dried the tent, and R and I had applied five tubes worth of seam sealer to the miles of stitches in our massive cathedral of a tent. It’s going to be dry in the future, I can tell you that.
So it was quite a trip. A lot of lessons learned. I’m glad we went.
Could make for an interesting Boy Scout project in some fashion.
Twelve 4'x8' panels of plywood, insulation boards, etc., are all that are required to make this shelter. The roof panels are derived from six of the sheets by cutting one corner-to-corner diagonal cut. The developers of this design have put it into the public domain. [link]
It dawns on me that I've not posted M's Brownies Try-Its work to the blog. So, lest I be accused of favoritism where there is none, here is M's Brownie Try-It roundup to date:
[mt st helens image missing]
R's first summer camp experience was a resounding success. He came home with three merit badges completed (leatherwork, woodcarving, basketry) and one merit badge requiring only one more activity (orienteering).
That's a darned good show for any scout, let alone a first-year who isn't even officially eleven years old yet.
He also completed a number of tasks for his Tenderfoot, Second Class and First Class ranks.
AND he had a bunch of fun.
The troop has a program called 'bead bucks'. Boys who do job/chores/tasks earn bead bucks for their extra contribution. Bead bucks can be redeemed at the troop store for supplies, snacks, knives, etc. R worked hard, gathered up 20 bead bucks, and bought a brand new Swiss Army pocket knife of his very own. I wasn't there, but I was told that he was immensely proud. Of course, one of his leatherwork projects was a knife sheath for his new blade!
C spent three nights at camp with R to start the week off in an organized way. Her original plan was to spend two nights, but she enjoyed herself so much that she chose to stay an extra day. That's always a good sign.
I showed up for the last two nights, and helped tie up all the loose ends that C so expertly got started. My job was darned easy, what with all the direction the boys had received in the early part of the week. I just stepped in to a well-running machine that others had built, greased, and gotten rolling.
I started a photo show for R's camp photos, and will include some of M's Brownie camp photos as well.
Follow-up on camp mail: R got a package from me, and some cards from Grandma. I think he got a mail call on four separate occasions. That lifted his spirits!
R will be at Boy Scout camp July 5-12, at Camp Meriwether on the Oregon Coast.
C will be attending with him for a couple days at the beginning of the week; I'll close out the week with him.
At flag ceremony each day at camp, the troop staff does a mail call. Given that this is R's first full-fledged BOY SCOUT camp, I'm posting how people can surprise him with a piece of mail at camp. It's always a surprise and a sort of a badge of honor to get mail while at camp. Mostly because everyone knows the mail had to be sent almost before camp began in order to arrive on time.
So, if you're interested in dropping him a note of encouragement or connection, here's how you do it:
[MAILING ADDRESS REDACTED - TIME EXPIRED]
To arrive by Friday of camp week, you'll need to mail your last item by Monday's early post. In other words, if it doesn't go into the mail by July 7, you'll probably miss him. My suggestion is just a quick postal card or a short note/letter.
I'm sending a small care package, hopefully timed to arrive before I get there.
Tonight was the first Boy Scout Court of Honor R has attended with Troop 22. I didn't grab the camera, so I don't have any photos, unfortunately.
This morning, as we got ready for school, R exhibited strong signs of a sore throat and a very stuffy nose. We discussed the likelihood of missing school. In the context of figuring out how serious it was, I said, kindly, "No school today, no Court of Honor tonight" R responded with "I can definitely go to school." I definitely don't think he's faking a stuffy head or a sore throat. But I think its telling how badly he wants to participate in Scouts.
At the Court of Honor, all first year scouts were assigned to their patrols. R is now a member of the Shark Patrol
R received the following awards and distinctions for his uniform:
I was approached about 'suiting up' as an assistant Scoutmaster for Fall 2008. I'm open to the idea, but haven't consulted with C yet.
So, I get a wild idea and search for Troop 240 in Hillsboro, Oregon. Yep, they've got a website. Cool. I poke around just a little, and find a full roster of EVERY Troop 240 Eagle Scout. Really. It's true. Right here.
Am I on it? You bet your bippie! Here's an excerpt:
I won't mince details here, but I actually got my Eagle in 1981.
