Merit Badge Contest - March updaet

Well, here's the status of the merit badge contest we're having for the first 6 months of 2009:

Connor Wright - 2; Family Life, Personal Management
Rhett Harris - 1; Family Life
Derek Williams - 1; Personal Management

Last years pending awards:

Landon Young - Communications, Camping, Physical Fitness
Derek Williams - Geology
Quinn McClune - First Aid

Gardening and graduation

Well, tonight was interesting. I packed up pots, seeds, plants, flats, dirt, gardening books, canned foods and whatever else I could fit in the truck. My goal was to introduce the scouts to the gardening merit badge. There were 5 boys that showed up, of which one went to another class and the other went to play basketball, leaving 3 scouts and 3 leaders; great 1:1 ratio I guess. I discussed a little bit about propagating plants from cuttings as well as transplanting seedlings. I was hoping the boys would want to plant some seeds for their gardening merit badge but the interest wasn't there. We transplanted some lettuce plants and ended without too much interest. Laurie baked a birthday cake for Tyson, who will be turning 14 this Sunday. I don't know where the other 8 boys were tonight, some at basketball and others not interested. The boys finished the evening playing basketball, which most boys had great interest in, go figure.

PS. Connor Wright had his scout master conference for his Life rank advancement. Congratulations on attaining this rank. Connor has served as a patrol leader, has participated in over 6 hours of service projects and has earned the necessary merit badges. He'll be eligible for his Eagle in 6 months, pending meeting his 20 days of camping with the scouts. Go Connor!

Railroading and Coin Collecting

Well, tonight at scouts we discussed the status of coin collecting in the troop. All of the state quarters are finally out, while some new quarters for United State Territories are coming, along with four Lincoln coins celebrating the 200th birthday anniversary. Finally, the BSA is going to have a special coin celebrating the 100th anniversary of scouting in America. Lot's of fun things for scouts to collect lately!

We also, in anticipation of the annual Hostler Railroad Festival, held at Ogden's Union Station, the first weekend of March, had a wonderful tour of Bob Schaffer's model railroad at his home. What a neat hobby he demonstrated. Five of our scouts participated in this event.

For those interested, the railroad festival is conducted by a local railroad hobby group and is a fun family activity. The cost is free for 12 and under, while adults are five bucks. You may want to avoid this event in that the hobby is pretty expensive and we wouldn't want to create a burden on our budgets during this economical crisis. (Just kidding. It's Thomas time, go have some fun and see the wonderful job these hobbiests do in the railroading business.)

We lost two of our scouts to basketball tonight - they missed out on a good time.