Aidan's Summer

Scouts, scouts, scouts! Aidan's summer is all scouts!

The first week out he volunteered 8 hours a day, five days in one week helping the cub scouts. He baited hooks, untangled lines and every once in a while, helped unhook a big one.

He spent the next week getting three merit badges at scout camp and the very next week flew to Utah where he finished his swim badge, started his gardening badge (composter) and worked on home repair badge (already finished once.) Hiking, painting, and cooking merit badges progressed fine.

I think that he's ready to go back to school to get some vacation time.

Working for Mission Money

Ian's challenge this summer is making money for his mission and thus far he seems up to it.

He has split wood, removed, repainted, reglazed the storm windows and mulched the trees out front. He helped cousins paint grandma's picnic table and worked with grandpa to repair Grandma's concrete step. He removed the front planter, rebuilt the front planter and rocked and moved dirt. Split more wood, scraped and repainted the deck. He has pruned and burned all the acreage, doctored the trees, split wood, stacked it, cleaned the garage and the shed, swept the chimneys, caulked mortar joints, reflashed the leaky chimney, split even more wood, and stacked it. He has deweeded, debugged, and removed and restrung the swings, while debriefing all the cousins.

He sings while he works and most of the time, the neighbors don't protest--and Mom only wishes you could hear every verse of the Song of Angry Men sung in a rich, deep, baritone. If only I had pushed video on that camera.

Look out Alaska.

Ian's Mission Call

Ian's mission call story is a true study in patience--as I hear many are.

Dia waited a month while her papers were misplaced, mistaken, misdirected before she could get her interviews, but Ian's wait takes the prize!

Dia helped him prepare his papers and they were ready to submit by his four month deadline, March 1. She left in February and anxiously awaited him joining her in the MTC, or at least news of his call. March passes and appointments are set and missed and reset and then it's April

finals supercede all else.

College ends, dorm addresses change, wards shift, bishops are released and reassigned, and college resumes.

Finally one day all the stars in the universe align and Ian is able to find the stake clerk who will spend a couple of hours with him searching for his paperwork.

Voila! His paperwork is recovered and sent on!

Ah, but not yet. Ian must have further medical sign-offs that could take four more weeks. But amidst Spring finals, he perseveres and receives the sign-off and finally, the papers are in three days before his 19th birthday!

And the results will be sent to his dorm - that he's just moved from and is under the demolishing block.

Forwarding order in? A week longer delay?

If nothing else, the guy gets points for patience.