Daniel's Eagle Court of Honor

This past Saturday evening was fantastic. I hope I never forget it.

Daniel had his Eagle Scout Court of Honor.

We had it in a friend's backyard. His best friend, Jacob Forbush. They have mis-spent many hours blowing things up and causing general havoc there. 

We had about 50 friends and family come for the event, it was so great to see how many people wanted to share this momentous occasion with him. 

This is part of his troop, 320, doing the Scout Oath.

We had two speakers. The first was Daniel's first Scout Master and also happens to be his best friend's dad. He shared some very special times they have shared over the years.

The second speaker was his current Scout Master. He shared with us some of the lesser known merit badges Daniel had to earn. It was a great speech. The one he is showing now is the explosives merit badge. Daniel mastered that one quickly. There was also the "crusty  underwear badge", "the book burning badge" and my favorite the "reaching for the stars and falling short of your dreams" merit badge. Ha Ha! Daniel and everyone else laughed so hard.

Here we have some very important men in Daniel's life giving him the Eagle Challenge.

My oldest brother, Carlos, drove down from Bellingham to give Daniel the Eagle Charge. This is similar to a swearing in ceremony. It was so awesome of Carlos to do this and I don't think he knows how much it meant to Daniel and I.

Here is his presenting Daniel with his Eagle medal, patch, and pins.

I got a mom pin. I was a bit disappointed it was smaller than Daniels pin. Ha ha ha.

I got to put his pin on him. I was so proud of myself for not bawling, because I really felt like doing that.

Daniel had a chance to give out a mentor pin to the men in his life that really helped him on his journey to Eagle. He gave one to his first Scout Master, Tyler Forbush.

He gave another one to Darrel Holmes who helped him a lot on putting together his proposal and putting him in touch of people he needed to get signatures from.

and he gave another to Wayne Nerger who really challenged Daniel to get his Eagle and helped him work through some of the more demanding merit badges. Wayne and Dan were very good friends and Wayne made a promise to Dan that he would do everything he could to make sure all three of his boys achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.

The ceremony was short and sweet because lets be honest, as with any gathering of people, it is all about the food. Daniel chose his favorite snacks, little smokies in b-b-q sauce, hummus and pita chips, pico de gallo, and chili cheese dip. Of course we had a costco cake as well. In hind sight I should have ordered two of those, it went quickly and Carlos was quick to point out he did not get any. Duh!! It was a gathering of Boy Scouts, that grab and growl rules.

The father's pin will be epoxied to Dan's headstone this weekend. Once and Eagle dad, always an Eagle dad.

Would anyone care for some Spam?

I have been hacked by spammers. 

They liked to leave really fun links to not really fun sites.

I was quite popular for a while.

Of all the posts I have, the one they seem to like the best..

Is Isaac's lamentation on boogers.

I guess they just love things that are slimy and gross.

From what I can gather from the data....

They are German

Love Windows Software

and prefer using internet explorer.

I am a Google Chrome person myself.

Never a dull moment

As I have whined about before, COPD is a very frustrating disease. It takes away lung capacity bit by bit. Anna's is dropping faster than we can keep up. 

She got a runny nose on Saturday. By Monday she was in the hospital on massive amounts of oxygen and hourly breathing treatments. 

All because of a stupid runny nose.

 For the past three months we have been taking part of a study. Anna meets with a nurse, a pharmacist, and a social worker to try and make her quality of life better. She loves these girls. She has taught them a lot about dealing with COPD and they have taught her a lot about managing her daily medicine routine, how to properly take her medicine and how important is it to stay on a good routine.

 The girls love playing with the stethocope and learning how to take each others blood pressure.

So we have increased to medicine. Had to start mega-dosing her on vitamin D because of the level of steroids and inhalants she is on are destroying her bone density as well as now having to watch her heart because this is starting to take a toll on that as well.

So what do I do.......I enroll her in soccer!! The best thing to do is too treat her lungs as a muscle. In order to prevent atrophy in a muscle is to work it out. She is having fun. She and Maria are defiantly not the star players on the team, but they sure are fun to watch. Will post more on that excitement later.