Boy Scout Sunday

Oh hai. Not much has been going on in life which makes it semi-pointless to journal. Doug picked up a part time 13 week gig which hopefully will make a huge difference financially in our lives. I am redoing cateringman's website so I spent a day with him photographing a bridal tasting (no brides were tasted, smartypants) yesterday. I feel like we're keeping busy and almost kind of crazy. Which is good.

When it comes to the kids though, they're keeping us on our toes. Especially the boy. You would think February is a month that Scouting activities would be minimal. You'd be wrong.

You knew in the last entry about Geoff's trip to the Deep Freeze, and the whole run in with the other parent. I'm pleased to report that whole mess worked out well. Geoff ended up getting a ride home from that same dad, and I think that he proved himself to be not a psycho, and just a boy. Not a perfect boy, but also not a monster either. I think that part of that is because of prayer and mojo that was sent to him by many people around the intertoobs.

So thank you dear friends for your ongoing spiritual support for my kid.

He's been REALLY intensely interested in God in the past several weeks. Thank you "History Channel" presentations on the Seven Deadly Sins and The Ten Commandments. I have spent more time with him in the past two weeks talking about things like the difference between "pride" and "vaingloriousness" and why there are protestants and Catholics, and why there are so many different types of protestants... and why we don't cross ourselves in our church but some other people do.

This weekend the kids did "Scouting For Food" on Saturday, and today was Scout Sunday.

I volunteered to organize the Scout Sunday festivities, and decided that instead of doing it at the same church that sponsors our charter, and go to our church instead. Our pastor is an Eagle Scout, and he really does love scouting. And one of the parishioners is the District Chairman, so I figured they'd both be pretty into it.

I thought maybe five of our guys would show up.

There were were about 15 from our troop, and about 10 from Newburyport, and one from the Newbury troop who just became a boy scout last night in his Arrow of Light ceremony.

At one point, I thought maybe there were more scouts in the audience than there were parishioners. When our pastor walked out to begin the service he was shocked at the amount of people there.

We had two of our guys play guitar and one played trumpet for Taps at the end. We then had tours of the church, top to bottom. Our church was a very important church in the Great Awakening in America, being founded by George Whitefield. If you like American history and stuff, you'll know about Whitefield and the Wesley Brothers and the Great Awakening. In fact, Whitefield is buried in the basement of the church. The boys had a great time touring the church after the service, and the weather was luckily nice enough that we could go up in the steeple and hang out up there for a bit. Some of the guys were freaking out a bit, overwhelmed by the height of the building. Others were eating it up.

"Hey Mr. G___," said one boy, "What would you give me to jump off of here?"

"About ten seconds," said Mr. G___.

"A really nice memorial service is what we'll give you," I said. "Maybe even AT this church. It'd be only appropriate."

All told, this was a tremendously fun event and I'm really glad that the kids went and had such a good time.

Pictures are here.

Tonight we're going snowshoeing with the troop. There's a local "Stonehenge" and they do night-time hiking and snowshoeing with the full moon. We reserved the trails to ourselves for tonight. Luckily it is about 40 degrees out right now, but it's kind of windy and I'm worried that we'll freeze to death once the sun goes down. Hopefully it won't be awful. Cross your fingers.

And on that note, I have to find my thermal undershirt and my fleece jammy bottoms so I can put them on under my pants. Pray for me tonight. I don't know how hard snowshoeing is, but I'm hoping I get out there and don't immediately say "this sucks!!! get me outtahere!"

heh.