Eagle Project Bag Pick-Up

There were more people that showed up for this week, which is good and bad. This week is much easier because you didn't have to go door to door. You just drive around looking for those blue bags on the front porch. So we were worried about what we would do so Matthew came up with the idea that we could go pick up all the bags and then come back and move all of those books from the house to the garage on these two different tables and people could then box them and count the books.

When the new bags of books came in, I wasn't able to check to make sure they were new or like-new fast enough so I am sure some are boxed that aren't necessarily new or like-new or even K-5th grade levels, but oh well. 

Books were all over the place, and boxes were flying, people were everywhere. It was crazy and I forgot to take pictures since I was just in the middle of it all. I should have and wish that I did, it was pretty crazy.

Also, some were painting the bookshelf.

This took the longest.

We had more help this week.

We ended up having about 15 other people besides our family. 3 were the same from the previous week. Wonderful Sharon, and then the Millers weren't sure if they were going to be able to make it or not, but they ended up making it and it was awesome. I didn't get to talk to them as much before they left the week before so I was happy to see them again.

After we were done I had to take pictures of them with Matthew and also with my kids. We didn't have Michelle when Aaron was on his mission, Allison was only 4 and Matthew 6. 

After pictures, I brought Aaron and Alexis inside and pulled up the pictures I had of Aaron pulling out Matthew's tooth and of Aaron and his companion, using "light sabers" (pool noodles) and fighting when they were at our house that night. We all had a great laugh about how young everyone looked.

In an Eagle Board of Review that I sat on recently they asked the candidate if they had food for their helpers. He said that if you keep your helpers happy than it will be a more successful project. Since I was put in charge of food, I made sure we had lots of snacks for everyone. Then anything that didn't get eaten could be used in lunches, so it was a win win:)

We put two coats on everything else, except the bottom, but Michelle really wanted to paint all morning so I dipped the brush and then let her do the bottom part. She did about 3 strokes and then was done, but at least we have a cute picture of her painting the bookshelf for "Matthew's Eagle Pwaject".

We tried to make it a navy blue but it ended up being a deep purple or some color like that.

I was really worried about it and was more than ready to go try again for a navy blue but I sent the librarian a picture of this and she said it is perfect, so ok.

Matthew wanted to have a little plaque to go on the bookshelf. So I went online. In the Eagle project worksheets it mentions that you can get one through the scout shop. I tried but the smallest thing there was was 8x10! We definitely do not need it that big.
I started searching online and found one through Etsy, I think. I was expecting it to be smaller than it is, but oh well. Nothing I can do about it now. It does look good against the dark color though.

At the end of April, Matthew went and picked up all the Book Drop Boxes

He has contacted the school and let them know that he has all of his books ready and his bookshelf ready to be delivered to them whenever they are ready for them. He has about 28 boxes or books that are new or like new and then probably another 5 or more that are definitely used books. He ended up picking up more bags later that Saturday, another person stopped by our house and gave us a whole box FULL of brand new books of all grade levels!!! He will be donating over 2000 books to the school!!!! Probably about 1800 of those will be new or like-new and then another 300+ would be used or worn books! 

PRETTY IMPRESSIVE!!!

I am excited to get a date from the school so we can deliver them!!!

Eagle Project Building a Bookshelf

The three boys, (Nathanial Eliason, Jay Blaser, and Ethan Hills) that needed a night of camping and wanted to help Matthew with his Eagle Project came even though it was going to be rainy. These three boys are all really good boys so I was happy to have them here and I let them use my power tools because I knew I could trust them. Nathanial is the Deacons quorum president, Jay is the 1st Counselor, I believe, and then Matthew is the Secretary) Ethan is in the other ward and he is a Teacher, he turns 14 in May.

Matthew had all the wood already cut (Home Depot donated ALL of his wood and a really cool tool, called a Kregjig, and some other supplies for his PROJECT!!!!  SOOO SOOO COOL!!)

The boys had to sand all of the pieces and then they put it together with screws AND glue. That bookshelf is SOLID!

I did assist them, but it turned out pretty good, I think.

Ethan is actually taking shop class in school and Nathaniel works with his dad in the shop a lot so both of those guys were AMAZING workers.

It only took them (us) three hours but they finished it!

It was 11:30pm by that point and half of them were ready to go to bed.

Chris was impressed with their bookshelf and now wants to "commission" Matthew to make one for him:)

Matthew's a TEENAGER!!!

It is hard to believe that we have a TEENAGER!!!!

How can I be that old?????!!!!

It really is CRAZY!!!!

With the way that he has been, I definitely have not been looking forward to him being a teenager. 

We were suppose to have the campout the weekend before his birthday and that was kind of going to be his party. When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted he said, could you maybe make a Switch cake? I hadn't seen one before but I told him I would give it a try. 

I am actually pleased with how it turned out.

He was also very happy with it, so that is what counts.

If you don't know what a real Nintendo switch looks like, here it is.

My portions were a little off, that that is ok.

It was kind of raining this day, so I think some kids didn't come because of that, but that just meant less boys for me to have to keep track of, which was a good thing for this case.

But his two closest kids from his Deacons quorum came so that is what really mattered.

When the boys got here, we had dinner and then had cake and ice cream.

He was pretty excited. For his 13th birthday he got an Eagle Project! yay!

Just kidding, he got more than that but that is what we have been focusing on lately around this house.

FOR THE RECORD........

Ever since he has become a TEENAGER, which was on Easter this year, he has been better than he normally has been. We would ask him to do something and Chris and I would "bet" that he wouldn't have done it and he actually did. He has just been better overall......which is REALLY weird. I know that we have relaxed on him a whole lot more, but still, he is better, since that magically birthday!!!

We asked him a couple days ago how it has come to be that he has been being better. Not that we are complaining, just curious....He said that he hears about how horrible teenagers are and so he wants to try to be the opposite of that, and not be like everyone says they are..... OK!!!!! We can handle that!!!!

He has been a teenager for almost 2 weeks now and he gives me more hugs, he has been telling me thank you for things more, he has been telling me he loves me more, generally just trying to be a better kid!!!! 

HALLELUJAH!!!!

We will take this TEENAGER!

Eagle Project Bag Drop-off

I have been anxious for this day, April 20th for about 2 months.

This was the day, Matthew's troop committee agreed upon to do this first week for his Scouting project. Matthew has already been collecting books but as an Eagle project, you have to show "leadership". Even though he assigned people to go check the book boxes and assigned people to get the word out or what-not, they said he still needed to do something else to show that "leadership". He decided to do the similar thing they do for Scouting for Food. Where one week, they go around and hang bags on doorknobs that tells them what it is for. Then the next week you go back around and collect whatever people left out for you.

Matthew got 500+ bags prepared because if a lot of people showed up, he wanted to make sure they had something to do.

We always do our neighborhood for Scouting for Food so Matthew printed out maps and made routes for Scouting for Books as he named it.

While we are in the middle of actually doing the work, I forgot to take pictures, so this was the aftermath of it.

Sadly we were going to have a bad storm come through our area. They even let the kids out of school half a day early because of it.

We were suppose to have a campout in our backyard so that the boys would get another night of camping and then they would be here to help Matthew build a bookshelf Friday night, then go help deliver bags on Saturday morning.

Because of the storm, we changed the campout to the next Friday night, but the Saturday portions were going to stay the same. 

The storm actually ended up missing us Friday night, and like it was predicted earlier, Saturday was still a gorgeous day. 

We are a pretty solid family in the ward, and we had it sent out in an email, and it was on my facebook. We have been to the other Eagle projects....but very few people showed up. I was REALLY disappointed in the turnout.

I bought two dozen donuts, pantries, muffins, juice and milk.

There were only a few people that showed up, the Scoutmaster and his 6 year old, 1 boy for the troop and his dad, of course my best friend, Sharon, came because she is that awesome, and then an old OLD missionary that served in our ward about 6 years ago and his wife came!!! We are not a big missionary family. We just don't do missionary work well. We used to have the missionaries over for dinner more and this one time, Elder Miller said that he wanted to be a dentist when he got off his mission. We asked him if he wanted his first patient? Matthew had his first loose tooth and so Elder Miller went and pulled out Matthew's first tooth!! He used to live in California, but after he met his wife and finished up his undergraduate degree, they moved to the Richmond area last summer so he could attend dental school out here. We have a good one here. They drove about 45-60 minutes up here in order to come help us so that was SOOOOO cool!!! I loved meeting his wife Alexis and they are such a fun couple! It was SOOO SOOO cool to have them come. 

Like I said in a previous post, I don't feel like I am important enough for people to put effort into coming to visit us, so for "Elder" Aaron and Alexis Miller to drive the hour up and help out for two hours and then drive back, that was just incredible.

So with the few people that we had, and the routes that Matthew had for us, it took us two hours to get it all done.

Sine Matthew was the leader, he had to stay back at the post so that if people finished he could direct them to the next spot. He didn't really like just sitting there doing nothing while everyone else worked, but there wasn't anything for him to do. We told him, that is what the boss does sometimes, tells everyone else what to do and then just monitor it after that.

Here is the flyer that Matthew had on all of the bags.

With the amount of flyers that her personally handed out to teachers and other people, as well as making these, and the flyers on the book boxes, we went through a lot of ink, but it was for a good cause, and we could print what we wanted when we wanted. We didn't have to go anywhere.

Matthew's goal was 500.

When we were getting down to the last 2 weeks left in this thing we had all the books on this table. The table was starting to bow, though you may not be able to see in these pictures.

Matthew assigned Chris to bring home boxes from work. This isn't all of the ones we used to fit them all, but it was a good 2/3 of them.

This angle helps you see that some are 5 stacks deep, but most of the rows were at least 3 or 4 deep.

There are probably about 1300 new or like-new books here!!!

Egg Hunt

We have playgroup on Wednesdays and the week before they had us bring 12 stuffed eggs. 

It was such a great idea. All the kids got to go home with 12 eggs.