Cub Scouts and Scouting busy life

I have been busy with Scouts lately, My calling in church is working with the 9 year old "Bear" group of Cub Scouts. I just had 3 of my scout turn 10 and just got 2 new ones and I'm just starting my 2nd year in cubs.  I've done scouts before, but as a Cub Master, or as the Primary President overseeing scouts, 3 years or so of Day Camp director, or as a Mother helping her sons. 


It's a lot different actually working with the boys on a week to week basis, you get to know their personalities, up and down, and the quiet and noisy moments, I'm so grateful that the good comes much more often than the stress times. 


This month we are working on decoration and invitation for our "Blue and Gold" coming up this next month. Since I love to craft, I had to make the boys do it too. They seem to like it too, anything that keeps the boys hands busy is a good thing.  I'm actually excited how our invites turned out for our Blue and Gold.  I was too busy helping the boys make theirs I didn't get a picture of them working on it, but here is what they looked like.

I got the idea from a pinterest friend, I found on the internet this made out of wood and wanted to make it, but not knowing the budget I didn't have the okay. While I was cleaning out my garage the other day, I had a bunch of boxes I was needing to take to the recycling bin and the thought came to me to make our flames out of them. It worked, Not as nice, but they turned out just fine for our table decorations for a one hour Cub Scout night. The boys still have to make logs to go with our flame. And as far as the invite go, we attached  and rolled them around the wood marshmallow and place a clear hair rubber band around it. The boys were excited about them.


Here's a picture of my pinterest find. It's very cute, and still might make one just to have around for my Grand daughters play tent we have at our house for when she comes. And the wood marshmallow would fit perfect with the play food I plan on making for her kitchen.

http://sewcakemake.blogspot.com/search/label/Woodcraft?updated-max=2011-05-17T08%3A16%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20

Duane and I have also been busy with our local Boy Scouts Merit Badge "POW WOW"
tomorrow will be our last week of classes. I've been in charge of the paper work, and Duane has been in charge of the Teachers, classes, and Food. 

We've been working on this since August, and we hope it all ends tomorrow liked planed.  That's one thing I have noticed, is no matter what kind of time frame you are on, or things you asked for to be turned in, just does not happen, and at time it like we spend more time figuring out how not to do it then just doing it. One day I might be able to figure this out.  I told Duane that I must be a very strong "A" personality because it a lot of these thing bother me. He said yes, "most of us are like that." Where in the world did I pick up this type of personality? I wasn't like this growing up. That's a whole other blog date.


We have had some great teachers for the Pow Wow, some of the classes have almost if not 50 boy in them. I have taught Pow Wow classed close to that size before, and it's not the easiest to do. Especially on some of the serious merit badges. It's amazing to see which teacher can come up with ways to make these classes still fun. Pow Wow goes for 3 Saturday in a row. I've racked my brain trying to find a new way to say thank you to all those who have taught and I finally came up this these:

Stress ball and Trail mix, It's kinds cheesy but that's what I do well. I've made 30 of these, and for some reason I'm feeling I might not have made enough. There are so many people who jump in and help all the time. When everything is said and done, there should be over 500 merit badges earned this month. We had over 115 boys sign up.

Hanging Hearts

I've been working on a project for my front porch,

and for some reason I decided to take step by step pictures of my project.

This project is very simple:

Steps for Hanging Hearts:

Draw out a shape on a piece of wood and hammer nails along the path of the drawing.

After you have all your nails in take some wire and weave in and out of the nails.

Do several layers of this step, with each layer on the opposite side of the nail.

If you find yourself with your wire on the same side, circle around a nail and change which side of the nail you are weaving on, or just skip one nail to make it work.

After you have several like 6 or 7 layers, pull the wire off the nails.

Trim you wire with a long piece on the end and take that long wire and wrap around the layer of wire all the way around your shape to hold it together.

It will look something like this.

Then you decorate in any way that you want, I just added a small thin ribbon around mine.

I also spray painted a few, I found when spraying the red I had to do a coat of white first so that the red would show up.

 these are my heart hanging on my front porch.

I  also made an pillow like one I saw on pinterest to put on my front porch with my bench. 

Here is what my front porch looks like with my decorations for Valentines. I have more things I want to.

2011 Thurston Family Photo

We tried to do family pictures again this year... Can I say dysfunctional Family! I asked a friend to come snap pictures for us and that it wouldn't take very long since my kids are all grown, I told her the only problem we would have is the Adult looking at the grand kids instead of the Camera. Boy was I wrong.  See the three on the end together? Well apparently they still can't stand together without the boys giving their sister a hard time. So this is like the very first shot we got without time of finishing the setup I wanted for pictures. I think if I had the strength to strangle one of my kids, this would have been that day. It took me a good week before I could decide if I even like any of the pictures even a little bit. No fault of Amy, but because of the one who thinks their the funniest one in the family. After a few tries and lots of time I finally let Amy go home, she had two kids sitting in the car the whole time patiently waiting for this very short photo shoot. Then I took some myself, and then had MaKayla's friend snap some too. He had a hard time holding the camera still so we got some camera shake going on. But here is what we ended up with. Maybe after all the threats to my loved ones, next year's picture will work.

My most beautiful Grand Daughters!

This was suppose to be a photo shoot of the girls together. 

 The happiest one of all, Lydia

  Andi wouldn't hold still for 2 sec. 

We feed her too many fruit snacks while her mom curled her hair. And no way we we're going to get them in the picture together.

Field of Flags

The City did their annual Field of Flags for our past, present and future service men and women, and their families. 

I'm am so thankful for all that they do for us and our freedom that we enjoy every minute of the day. And to those many who have served but we also have Alex who has volunterred his life to the service of his fellow men.

We took advantage of such a great backdrop to take a few pictures of our Soldier and our new official EAGLE SCOUT!!!  After two year since Hunter's eagle project has been finished, he finally decided to finish the paperwork and get his Eagle. I'm so proud of him for finishing it. I was not going to do it for them, People would always tell me to get it done. I would just tell them it's not my Eagle, it's his. Besides he might want to drive one of these days, he'll get it.

He finished his paper work 100% just before School started this year. 

Hunter choose to wait for Alex to get home from his AIT training and Airborne school for the National Guard and have his Eagle award on 11-11-11 it was his dad's choice to do it at 11:00 am. I know it stopped family member to not be able to attend having it at that time but it made it so his two sisters could make it due to work schedules. We felt it was most important for them to be there. It was a wonderful day.

Feild of Flags

Frisby Photo Shoot

This had to one of the easiest photo shoots I have done. But what could go wrong with such cute kids with great smiles. They made thing so easy for me.