In the World of Scouting....

Gabe has been making great strides in the world of scouting.  He has a goal to become an eagle even younger than Jayd.  Jayd was about 2 weeks past 14 when he completed his Eagle award.  Gabe is shooting to be done by the time he is 13.  So, over Spring Break, he completed his Eagle project.  He removed, built new shelves and replaced them in the music "closet" at Allie's high school.  It was a fun project, partly because it involved the whole family.  Allie was often the go between the music teacher and Gabe, Jeff needed to add his engineering skills to help assure that the shelves were strong and sturdy, and I just did a lot of grunt work, driving Gabe around, getting prices, etc.  We did the project in three stages, removing the shelves, building, sanding and painting the new shelves, then installing the shelves back into the room.  It was well run and efficient.  I thought that Gabe did a very good job with his project and the shelves look great!

He was also inducted into the order of the arrow.  A somewhat secretive club of the scouting organization.  He reported that he wasn't allowed to tell me!  But it was excited to be included.  You have to meet some minimum scouting requirements, but then your troop has to vote on who will be the inductee, so
it is an honor to be included.

Easter

We had a fantastic Easter weekend last week.  We invited Jeff's brother and his family up for an easter egg hunt.  They are a little younger than our kids, and were thrilled to run around the yard in search of those colorful plastic eggs that hold so much delicious potential.  Allie had a great time hiding the eggs for her younger cousins, she came up with some quite creative ways to hide them!  We even collected a basket of real eggs, apparently no one had gotten the chicken's eggs from the coop for several days.
On Sunday, Allie donned a new Easter dress.  It was lovely, one of my favorite Easter dresses.  The colors were a little more befitting a teenage girl than the traditional pastel, but Allie wanted to pay homage to the spring season, so she found a pattern that depicted lively butterflies.  They style suited her figure perfectly.  She looked very beautiful.  Gabe was very dashing in his suit with the handkerchief lovingly pressed in a decorative fashion.