Scouts

I am very pleased that our boys participate in the Boy Scouts of America program. Although there is a lot I love about it, this is what I love most.

Boy Scouts is a place where younger scouts look up to and are mentored by older scouts. It gives the younger boys great examples of what to aspire to. It is positive role modeling and ‘peer pressure’ at it’s ‘best’! On a weekly basis, Gavin is exposed to teens who are earning coveted merit badges, studying hard, and completing community service. Scouting does a boy good! (Mikey is still a cub scout and that program is run differently. Ethan completed his scouting career with an Arrow of Light.)

I’m glad I got this picture, because in the next few years that sash will be covered in awarded merit badges in a wide variety of topics and the bottom of it will be settled somewhere around his hips – not almost to his knees 🙂

S’mores

I love nights like this!

I think they have the potential to be recounted beginning like this, ‘remember in the summer when….’ Sure it’s a sticky endeavor, but as Head-Memory-Maker, I feel it is important 😉

State Parks

NJ State Parks – use them! They are inexpensive – they charge by the carload or buy an annual pass. The parks host activities, and there is always swimming, hiking, camping, boating, fishing, and play parks. Some have monuments and classes and they are all beautiful. I have pictures of myself as a toddler in this park!

I swear, I might be solar-powered. It’s summertime – and we’re nailin’ it!

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby