eagles

Our two oldest boys are now Eagle Scouts!

Aaron started his project, a compass course at a local park, over a year ago.

But he needed help from Stick on AutoCAD to do the actual course drafting and Stick is constantly overbooked with work, so it took a long time to  finish everything. Aaron also had to talk local authorities, to discuss the project and get it approved by the city. Needless to say it was a big project.

Aaron turned in his paperwork to the Scout office back in February, and it took them a long time to review and approve the papers. In March, he finally had his Board of Review and passed, becoming an actual Eagle Scout. (The Court of Honor is just for kicks.)

Thomas in the meantime, somewhere in the middle of Aaron working on his project, learned about a project collecting missionary clothing for prospective missionaries in Zimbabwe. He got the project approved, the clothing collected, and the entire project finished while Aaron was still trying to finish his project. It's not that his project was any less important than Aaron's, it just came together quicker.

But then, Thomas was about to turn in his paperwork when we realized he had a few merit badges to finish. Once he finished those, he turned in his papers with just over four weeks until the Court of Honor where Aaron would get his Eagle presented.

Heavenly Father must have been looking out for us because by some miracle Thomas' papers were approved with less than a week to go before the Court of Honor.

He then went to his Board of Review and passed, becoming an official Eagle Scout.

Having been to Aaron's Board of Review, I was a little worried about Thomas. His project was significantly easier than Aaron's and I was worried it wasn't enough. But the part I forgot about the Board of Review is that they hardly ask about the actual project. They want to know what the scout learned through the project process, what was the hardest part, what they learned in scouting, etc.

Thomas really wanted to say that he got his Eagle when he was 13, (like Stick), and he missed it by five measly days. Close enough if you ask me!

The night of the Eagle Court of Honor, we started out with a regular Court of Honor, where Spencer got a few awards.

Then the meeting moved on to the four boys getting their Eagles.

This picture makes me laugh a little. We only have one pair of scout pants that fit the boys right now, so depending on the occasion, they share. (At $50 a pop, we aren't buying any more pairs.) We didn't anticipate that the boys would actually get their awards together, so we then had a pants dilemma. Aaron ended up wearing an old pair of Stick's scout pants, as you can plainly see by the bunched up waistband.

I bought this ribbon necklace at the Scout shop to help keep all the boy's various awards in one place. It's a good idea in theory, but in reality.....I forget to bring it every single time. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME! Including this night, when I had to send Rachel running home to get it for me.

Lookin' a little crossed eyed here Rooney!

We are super proud of the boys for their hard work. During the Board of Review, the Scout guy told us that only 1 out of 100 boys who start Scouts actually get their Eagle. He also told us that 93% of Eagle Scouts go on to missions and marry in the temple.

Now that we've had two boys finish, I've learned a lot and will be able to help the other boys be more successful. Both boys admitted the hardest part of the project was the paperwork. Simply keeping track of every single paper is really important. It doesn't matter to the scout people if your project took over a year to complete, they still expect you to have all the papers from start to finish. Not the easiest task for teenage boys, so next time we will be more prepared and get a system in place to help keep things organized.

Two Eagles down, two to go!

1 Comment

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So sad we missed the court of honor. I am a big fan of all this now, now that I know what it all means! Nice work boys! So super impressed. And I have put on and been in charge of tons of normal boards of review and we ask the same sort of questions. It's always adorable to listen to the boys answers. :)

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