Ethan is still taking swimming lessons, and he seems to be making progress. We will have to take him to the pool sometime before pack meeting to finish signing off the Aquanaut badge. Hopefully he will be able to do well enough to earn it.
Category: Our Family
Ethan’s 11th Birthday
Ethan had a simple birthday this year just cake and presents after dinner. I made purple frosting for the cake. Ethan really wanted fondant, but I didn’t have time for that, and I had lots of whipped cream, so I made a whipped cream frosting instead.
With turning eleven, Ethan will move on to the big boy scouts, so for his present this year we got him his scout shirt, sash, and book.
My Cub Scout in Training
Adam found Ethan’s scout hat lying around and decided to try it on for size. 🙂
Ethan’s Conservation Project
To earn the cub scout World Conservation award, Ethan had everything completed except participating in a den or pack conservation project. Well his den and the pack haven’t ever planned a conservation project so it’s not like we just never participated. We have actually worked on this award while he was a wolf and a bear too, but never actually got it finished before his birthday, and as the requirements change with each rank, that meant starting all over again each time. With his eleventh birthday coming up in just a couple of days we didn’t want to get this close to finishing the award and not finish it yet again, so we discussed possible conservation projects, and let Ethan decide which one he would like to go ahead with. He decided on making bird feeders to feed the birds that stick around for the winter. Next we explored the different options for bird feeders that we could make and we decided on one that uses gelatin to make the bird seed stick together and you press it into a cookie cutter to make it into cool shapes to hang from the trees. Then we invited all the cubs in the pack to come over to our house to make some. We had about 5 boys show up, plus Ethan and Jeremy which makes about 7 from our pack. Then we invited cousins Lars and Daniel to come participate as well since they are also scouts. I mixed up the bird seed with the softened gelatin and we explained to the boys what we were doing, what the award was and how to make the bird feeders that we were making. Then I had Ethan pass out the seed.
I’m excited to finally have the requirements for this award finished, and I’m so glad that several boys from the pack came to participate. I was starting to fear that nobody was going to show. 😉
Time with Cousins
I mentioned in my last post that Tyra and Jeremy weren’t home because they were having a sleepover at cousins, so we had to work out some way of collecting them this morning. Being the first Saturday of the month we decided to meet cousins at the Home Depot kids workshop.
The kids got to build block calendars, a fitting project for January. We also saw and got to chat a bit with Kyle’s cousin Tori and her family.
When the kids were finished with their projects, we invited Lars, and Daniel out to our house to participate in Ethan’s conservation project, and so they came home with us.
The kids pretty much spent the day goofing around, making forts out of the new set up in the girls room.
Later in the afternoon we rearranged the furniture in the living room to create a circle as close to 10 feet in diameter around as possible, so we could work on the marbles pin for Ethan, and the belt loop for Jeremy. And hey Lars and Daniel are cub scouts too so we figured we might as well do something they could get credit for as well!
Kyle ordered pizza for dinner and Laurel and Roine picked it up on their way out to our house. They brought Alex and Sylvia with them and after finishing up the game of marbles we finished the evening up eating lots of pizza with all the cousins.