Sunday morning project

Mary volunteered us to fill the need for a big rocket for the book fair decorations at the school. Will for scale.

The base has a yellow bug light to look like exhaust.

Mission accomplished.

Quotable

Mary to the boys after another successful Halloween:

"When you guys are older, like 15 years-old, if you go trick-or-treating, you have to have a real costume. Not just something lame like a letter jacket."

Walking on the bottom of the sea

This is what a good bit of the lakes at the YMCA look like now. I guess they only got thunder out of those storms last weekend too.
We walked over to one of the islands after Dave's soccer practice.

After crossing the stinky, cracked dirt, the next challenge was climbing onto the island.

Toys'r'us

Heard from Dave when we wandered into the Babies'r'us part of the new combined store:

"let's get back to the Toys 'r 'we"

The timeline of Will

Dave's first homework from the new pre-k school

Recruited

Tonight was the Cub Scout info night at Will's school. Will and I walked over and the kids went outside to play some games while the pack leader (the Cub Master) talked to the parents for about an hour.

It was the standard stuff about why Cub Scouts is a good program, but as he went on, I realized a few things:

1. Mary and I are the parents of BOYS. Granted I had the prime viewing angle to know this about both of them from just about their first moments outside of the womb, and their behavior is totally boy-type behavior, but several times tonight, the Cub Master referred to the program for your son. Your son. I dawned on me that even on the soccer teams, baseball, basketball... they've all been boys and girls. No distinguishing it as an activity for boys. For your son. Like I said, I know they are boys, this just kind of emphasized it for me.

2. It's been a long time since I was in Scouts, and almost every memory was from Boy Scouts, not Cub Scouts. I can't say that I really have all that many memories of other stuff during those Cub Scout years either, but I don't feel like I have a lot to go by. Maybe a few memories from Webelos meeting in Todd Grave's garage, and our Halloween party at the Shehi's house. I could probably tell you where Alex Lyle's house is by Candleridge Lake, but I don't remember much about our Wolf den meetings there. This is important for #4 below.

3. The cub master said that someone told him once that what a kid gets out of Cub Scouting is directly related to the effort that their parent puts into Cub Scouts. This immediately made me think of the Bird Study Merit Badge. With HOURS of field study in different environments, classifying and logging different birds, it is easily one of the toughest badges out there. At least it was in the early '80s. I got a lot out of it because my parents put a lot into it. They put a lot into many things that we did, but during the meeting tonight, I was really thinking about bird study. I was thinking about being out at the General Dynamics Recreation Area along the creek just above the low water crossing and where the creek joined the Trinity River. I was thinking about a hot summer morning under those pecan trees and the racket of the cicadas. I remember walking back around the bend in the creek by myself to meet Mom and John at the playground back behind the ceramics building. I spooked a Great Blue Heron who was probably looking for some breakfast along the shoreline. He took off and flapped his big floppy wings slowly away downstream. It was truly a cool moment. So it didn't turn me into a life member of the Audubon Society, but I've always appreciated a Great Blue Heron standing in a creek or silently loping by in the sky trailing his long legs behind. I'm unable not to point one out to anyone around when I see one.

4. I was pretty sure that if they needed someone to lead a Tiger Cub den, I'd have to volunteer despite the fact that I think I'm a little intimidated by other people's little kids. My memories are of the Boy Scouts, not Cub Scouts. My experiences coaching kids in baseball have been challenging. What do you do when a kid would rather just throw the ball over your head EVERY TIME (on purpose) than throw it to you? I still don't have a good answer for that one.

But, I was always good at Scouts. In soccer or baseball or basketball, I was about as good as I wanted to be, but in Scouts, I was really good. I could do the Scout skills, I was comfortable outside, I could lead a group of boys to get things done. How much will that come into play with a group of first grade Tiger Cubs? Maybe not all that much. But for all of the good stuff I got out of a kid's scouting career, I don't think I have a choice.

Will is excited that I'm going to be the leader of Den 6 in Pack 174. I'm excited about what kind of Scouting career he might be starting on, and what cool opportunities he'll experience and levels of confidence he'll gain. For me, I really have a feeling that it's time to repay a debt that has been sitting quietly since I was 18 or so and finished up Scouting when I went to college. For those leaders that influenced me like Mr. Graves, Shehi, Parmelee, Schmidt, Brietling, Sherwin and my dad (who was always cooler when we were camping, even if he did bestow on me the Ding-a-ling Award one time when I feel off a log into a lake during a day trip. It was cold, but I wore my award proudly. If you can't laugh at your own mistakes...). Plus the other scouts in my troop and on summer camp staff that were equally influential.

Anyway, this is a long rant that's probably more for me than anyone that might have read this far, but it was an interesting night. Amid the slides about Cub Scouts, I was really diving deep into memory lane and getting pretty excited for the journey ahead for Will, me, and our whole family. We'll all have to follow the Cub Scout motto, to Do Your Best.

Fires in Bastrop,TX

Not that often that a national news story is visible from my in-law's front porch.These fires are about 30 miles away.