Matthew is 12!

Matthew (our oldest) turned 12 years old last month.  Scott and I have been parents for quite a long time now apparently.  Here is Matthew on his birthday (looking very serious).  He had scouts that night so was wearing his scout shirt.   Our stake has already separated from Boy Scouts (they were chosen to pilot the new church program) so the troop is run by the community now.  So he has Young Men one night and then Scouts another night each week.  Some boys from the ward are in the troop too.  At first he wasn't sure he wanted to do Scouts but then he decided he'd give it a try and really likes it now.  We had to stop doing Aikido because it interfered with scouts.  He has been in four different BSA councils since he's been in scouts - Lewis and Clark Council in Illinois, National Parks (I think?) in Lehi, Monterey Bay/Silicon Valley Council in CA and now Trapper Trails Council in Northern Utah.  He recently went on his first big hike with the scouts.  They hiked Frary Peak on Antelope Island.  Antelope Island is so close to us.  The hike was 7 miles long and Matthew was pretty beat but made it to the top in spite of mud, snow and general exhaustion.  Good job Matthew!  We also registered him for junior high recently.  Matthew and I got to go over to the junior high, which is very nice and new looking, to register.  He choose some different electives including band and a STEM class.  I also signed him up for a summer school P.E. class that is highly recommended by all our neighbors as a funner and more varied alternative to P.E. during the school year.  So Matthew will start his first junior high class in June.  Matthew is also a deacon now and because of the church changes, has been since the beginning of the year.  He requested a suit, which he didn't have before, so he would look nice while passing the sacrament.

Here he is in his new church suit.

This was back at Christmas time.

On his birthday he requested crepes for breakfast.  I got up early to make them.  Here are our leftover crepes plus his cheesecake!

Singing happy birthday!

We had burgers and fries for dinner and cheesecake for dessert.

I think there were actually 12 pieces of cake.  How perfect.

I purchased this cheesecake and Scott made his famous blueberry compote topping that everyone loves.

Anna was sad about something on the birthday evening - possibly the birthday treasure hunt.  That often makes someone cry which makes me wonder why I still do it.  But I feel like the kids should be able to cooperate on a task without fighting with each other.  Matthew is usually very sympathetic to Anna.  I snuck a picture of him trying to comfort her.  What a nice brother.  You can also see the famous blueberry topping. Yum!

Matthew got some Magic cards as a present along with some other things.

He enjoys playing that game with some of his school friends.

We had a friend party for Matthew with some of his friends.  He had about five school friends over to hang out, have pizza and watch a movie.  I think they had fun.  Here they are playing the Portal board game.  Portal is a computer/video game Matthew played to completion.  He wanted and received the board game version for his birthday. 

On the weekend after his birthday we went out to lunch at Freddy's - one of our favorite birthday places.  There is one in Ogden so we drove up there.  It was kind of far, but we enjoyed our lunch.  Here are the boys eating.  Then we went to see Lego Movie 2.  It was a lot of fun.  Happy Birthday Matthew!!

Here are a couple more pics of Matthew.

Recently Matthew had a school presentation where each member of his class dressed up as a famous person.  The requirements were that the person not be American (or not born in America), must have been influential on the world in a positive way and be deceased.  His classmates chose people like Nicola Tesla, Mother Theresa, Galileo, Nelson Mandela etc. Matthew chose Satoru Iwata.  He is a former president of Nintendo.  I felt a little embarrassed at his choice since it seemed somewhat frivolous compared to all the people he could have done - he really wanted to do someone Japanese since he is interested in Japanese culture...and video games.  So I didn't make any effort early on to influence his decision but wondering if I should have.   I do think its important for kids to do their own work and come up with their own ideas for projects like this, so I don't know. Each class member got up and read a biographical poem they had written about their person.  Matthew delivered his poem with much animation and spirit.  Here he is reading his poem.

Here he is with his poster board about his person.

He did a good job.

Matthew was also involved in his school play recently.  They did the play Alice in Wonderland and it was very cute - the musical Disney version - they paid for the rights to use it.  Matthew chose to be on stage crew rather than act in the play.  The stage crew was in charge of making all the sets so the first few weeks they were painting a lot.  They had parents supervise but the kids did most of the work.  Here is Matthew with some of the sets.  We went to see his play this past weekend and the kids were excited to see him moving all the props and sets.  Good work Matthew!

Matthew is a great big brother and puts up with a lot from his younger siblings. 

 We love you Matthew!!

Pinewood Derby

The pinewood derby was a little early this year which means Matthew got to do it one more time before turning 11.  It works out 'cause with all the moving he had only done one other pinewood derby before moving here.  Then he got to do one last April and one this year just before turning 11.  The Webelos leaders helped the boys make the car which was nice.  Here's Matthew with his car.

Scott and I waiting for the races to begin.

The pack committee went all out.  They had fancy decorations and quite a nice cake!

Everyone was excited about cake.

Matthew with his Webelos leader post race.  After the races Matthew got to race all three of his cars from the past years.  We found out last years car was the fastest.  :)  And now we are off the hook for pinewood derby races until Grant turns 8.  He'll be 7 in April.

And here are a few bonus pics of recent adventures.

Emma practicing her two wheel bike.

John scraped his knee and his face running home from the mail box one day.  Poor John.

Emma and Scott having time together.  We've started a new thing a few months ago where one week of the month is Dad's week and one is Mom's week.  Each day of the week one kid gets to spend 20 minutes extra with mom or dad (depending on who's week it is) doing whatever they want, within reason.  Most kids choose to play video games or watch you tube videos.  The kids get really excited when its their day.  Since we have five kids Matthew goes on Monday, Anna on Tuesday all the way through Emma on Friday.  That's also how we decide who says the prayer at dinner each night.  Scott does Sunday and special occasions and I do Saturday.  This extra time seemed like a good idea at the time but as a result I have played a lot video games with the kids lately at their request.  And I have to endure such comments from them as, "hey mom, you didn't come in last this time!"  I'm not a big gamer.  :). But I'm trying to not worry about that and enjoy the time together learning about something they are interested in.

Scott and I have spent lots of time cleaning the house lately.  Cleaning up the office was a big task.

Here is the after.  Still kinda cluttered but much better.

Scott and the kids work on puzzles sometimes on Sunday afternoon.  We have church at 9am now which I am happy about.  Better than 1pm.  Scott and I are still teaching the Sunbeams (3 year old kids) and we have Emma in our class this year.  We have about 4 other kids and Emma is pretty well behaved most of the time.  More adventures to come...

Pinewood Derby

Matthew had a fun time participating in the Pinewood Derby this year.  We realized this is the second and last pinewood derby for him.  Because of moving around (three different packs in three years for him) the timing of one derby was not in his favor.  He never got to derby as a Bear, but oh well.  And he's in Webelos now!  We were proud of ourselves too 'cause we made his car without power tools (coping saw and sandpaper).  Here he is ready to race.

His is the middle red car.

Here he is showing off his car.  He got the "Fast and Furious" award for his sleek design.

I was in charge of a few Pinewood Derby races back in Colorado.

I know its tough.  And we had some technical difficulties tonight, but it all worked out.

Middle red car again.

He got first and second place in his heats.  The only person he lost to got second place overall.  There was no timing system so we estimate he got about 4th overall based on his placement with the one car that beat him.  Anyway, it was lots of fun.  Way to go Matthew!!

Blue and Gold Banquet

Matthew is in Cub Scouts now and he is very excited about it.  He has only been going for a few weeks (since he turned 8) but he likes it a lot.  He just missed the Pinewood Derby but got to go to the Blue and Gold Banquet this year.

I was a cub scout leader when we lived in Colorado and had mixed feelings about it.  The boys I worked with were great, but some of the leaders (or leader expectations) and the BSA admin stuff got annoying.  I learned a lot about scouts though and fully expect I will probably be doing scouts again some day.  We'll see.  I was glad to be off the hook for this one though.  I am the primary presidency member over scouts for our ward, but I didn't have to do much for this event.  Nice.

And they did a great job.  They picked a wild west Wanted theme.  It was very cute.  Each boy had a reward poster.  Here's Matthew's.  His reward was only $1.  He must not be that dangerous.

 

Our ward is not very big so the scouts from the two wards (congregations) that meet in our building meet together for scouts.  So Matthew got to meet some new boys when he joined scouts.

 Matthew in his uniform

They had horse race relays.  And they let all the siblings participate once the scouts were done.  Everyone loved it.  They did some skits and sang songs.  And handed out awards.

 Matthew earned his Bobcat badge.  Here he is pinning the Bobcat pin on me.

We tried to get a picture of him shaking hands with the leaders, but it turned out kinda blurry.

He's too quick for me.

They served sloppy joes, baked beans and potato chips.  They also had barrel shaped punch drinks, water and cupcakes for dessert.  I was taking notes and taking pictures of everything...just in case I need a blue and gold idea down the line somewhere.

See pictures from blue and golds I've been involved with HERE and HERE.  I think his one was better just by virtue of being simpler.  Or maybe I just feel that way because I didn't have to plan it.  :)

The Cub Scout Circus

Sometimes working in Cub Scouts is a circus

Tonight was our Cub Scout pack Blue and Gold dinner.  The planning of this event has seemed unduly stressful to me.  It was more the managing of the personalities of the committee than anything, but somehow we made it happen and it turned out pretty good. 

I'm the pack committee chair for our pack, going on two years now and this job has definitely had some frustrating moments for me, as I guess all church callings do.  The lessons I've learned from doing this job in general could fill another blog post, but let me sum it up with this one lesson:  

You can't please everyone, so don't try.

The theme we chose this year was the circus.  Here are some of the decorations as we set up.  Looking back I think there are some easy ways we could have made it look a lot more circus like.  More lessons learned for me

 Some of the set up and several of my kids running around

 The dinner line in full swing

As a committee we decided to serve corndogs as our main dish. A few of us, including me, thought it wasn't the greatest main dish idea, but everyone seemed to really like them at the dinner.  We cooked over 100 corndogs (actually Scott cooked them...thank you Scott!) and nearly all of them got eaten.

 Eating

This is our new Cub Master.  He is very earnest and has many questions for me.  I've been doing this long enough now that I know the answers.  Amazing.  This is only his 2nd pack meeting ever and everything went well.  Phew!   We hadn't had a Cub Master for 10 months before we got him, and I ran most of the pack meetings during that time...and several before that since our old Cub Master had to travel a lot.   

Another lesson I've learned doing this job: job continuity is important.  A lot of the Cub Master knowledge we had has been lost because there was a 10 month gap in which our old Cub Master moved away.  Something to think about.

 One of the boys earned his Bobcat badge!

 The Webelos doing a skit.  Their skit involved toy guns...they were in heaven!!

And the scout leaders being recognized by the stake.  I was called up to be "recognized" shortly after I took this picture.  I later overheard the stake rep talking to another person about how it was VERY IMPORTANT to let the ward leadership know that a pack committee chairman has to have certain  qualities/be of a particular type.  Interesting.  I didn't hear what those qualities were or if I had them.  I was too busy doing stuff.  

In any case we made it through this year's Blue and Gold dinner.  The cub scout leaders all worked together and the boys had a terrific time, and that's what matters.  And like many other events, there were a few lessons learned:

1) People like corndogs more than they want to admit that they like them.

2) Balloon animals make kids a little crazy, particularly balloon SWORDS*

3) People don't like cupcakes as much as we think they like them

4) Popcorn might be a bad idea for a scout event

5) It doesn't take as much time to set up as you think when you have LOTS of people helping.**

So Blue and Gold is done for another year.  Hooray.  I won't be around to do it next year since we are moving, but I have a feeling my work with cub scouts is not yet done.  I have three sons after all.  ;)

*The balloon animal debacle of 2013 is another story that could fill a blog post.  I don't even know how to sum it up except to say that we ended up with balloon animals (made by one of the scout parents) on terms deemed acceptable and appropriate to me.   The "terms" were much in question.  In retrospect I wish we hadn't had them though.  They made the boys too rowdy.

**I learned this lesson last year.  Last year for Blue and Gold we had a bunch of scout leaders show up to help set up and 90 minutes to do it.  With everyone helping we were done in 45 minutes and then stood around with nothing to do for 45 minutes.
This year I asked if people could come an hour early to help set up (I was coming 2 hours ahead to get things ready) and one person (let's call her my "problem child") got mad and sent emails around about how irresponsible I was to only leave an hour to set up and how she didn't want to set up "right before."  She wanted me to meet her at the church FIVE HOURS prior to the event to set up.  I told her it wasn't going to happen but she could go set up at that time if she could get a key.  She and another leader went and set up for about an hour early in the day and then left.
At five I showed up with my crew and everyone was mad at me because everything was already set up and there was nothing to do for an hour but stand around.
(Mad face)
I submit that no matter when it was done there was still only an hours worth of set up.  Oh well.