Completion! Mostly...

I'll start with the rest of Saturday.

I made only two more purchases for myself--two little hand-carved and hand-painted fish, a quarter each. I'm planning on using them as Christmas tree ornaments. They are kinda neat-looking...

That's pretty much everything on Saturday.

Sabbath, we had unusually good attendance. Due to a few people that live a long ways away (Detroit and Pittsburgh) we were better than normal, especially since all the "regulars" were there. We also had our monthly dinner after worship.

I'm going to start a couple things. First, I'll be putting, on every post, an aviation-related video. However, I'm also going to start putting in a short, and I mean short, synopsis of the sermons. Remember, if you want to hear more, go to SermonAudio.com and search for Belle Center.

The early service sermon was on 2 Timothy 3:15-17. Basically, Dad's starting a new series on Christian Basics. As anyone familiar with these verses could probably figure out, it was on the inerrancy of Scripture. Isn't it great, knowing that the only truly essential thing that we need is that which we are assured to be perfect?

Later, we studied John 12:37-41. In this passage, Christ basically gives up on the Jews. In some ways, this passage is horrifying. Even though He did many wondrous things in front of them, they could not and would not accept. For, "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them." God has decided against them. Why? Why not? He would be just in treating all of us in this way. Yet, in His mercy, He has seen fit to turn many of us away, to open our eyes, and to soften our hearts. Do you have any blessings He has given you lately? NOTHING is so great as this one tremendous blessing. Nothing. However, unfortunately, those which used to be the nation of the LORD now follow tradition or modern gods, such as money and power. Please, pray for the salvation of the Jews! We are commanded to by Scripture.

OK. The rest of Sabbath was spent on talking with friends and then staying up till 1 AM on Monday having fun playing pool over IM with Milkdud. I won most of the time. :)

Today was busy. I had a bunch of stuff to do before the parade, and I got almost all of it done. I was ready, in uniform, when people started arriving. We were only missing one person that we were expecting for the parade, and we had one show up that I wasn't totally expecting. We eventually evened out. We attempted to keep in step, but, since we'd only practiced together once, it didn't turn out to be the best job. Oh well. Here's a pic.

We got to be the head color guard for the parade! The only problem was that we weren't told very much about where to stop or anything like that. The band wasn't too happy because we kept ahead quite a ways, so they had to march faster to keep up. :)

After the parade, we went out to the cemetery for the dedication. Here are a few more pictures.

One of the largest crowds I've ever seen out here.

More people.

The gazebo. Milkdud and Bumpas are holding the flags in front of the gazebo.

Band coming into position.

Me after just having been briefed on what I needed to do. Thankfully, unlike the opinion of one man who misunderstood, I didn't have to give a speech! If I did, I think I could have done all right, but I'm not the best at pulling a five-minute speech out of my head in thirty seconds! :)

A speaker. Also, a little bit better look at Milkdud and Bumpas.Me placing the wreath. Maybe I shouldn't have taken so long of steps... :D
Placing the wreath.
All of us again.
Everyone that was out at the cemetery except for one guy.

Overall, it was a great day. The weather was nearly perfect, my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Debbie were up for the day, and I got to shoot about 400 rounds of airsoft BB's! It's been really nice. Lastly, I topped off the great day with a really enjoyable conversation over IM with Milkdud.

OK. Here's the video. I love the satisfying "chirp" of the tires as the plane touches down. The only problem that I'm noticing in the approach is that the pilot's coming in a little low and slow, forcing a slight power increase just before touchdown. Oh well. I just hope I can do half this well the first time I try landing! Anyways, I'm off to bed. Good night!

It's been way too long. Sorry.

Sorry. I've been busy, but I could have put up a post. Oh well. You ready for a long post? If so, get readier--this is a very long post. I think. :) OK. I'll start with fourteen days ago. That was my main workday for my Eagle Scout project. Just so you remember, my project is this: researching the Killed in Action from my township and village, then getting the names engraved on a monument out at the local cemetery. Well, we dug the whole hole and poured the concrete. It was interesting, hard work, but I'm really happy to have it done. Here are the pics.

My monument's gone in just to the right of this.
The monument next to mine.
The work crew. You can see, in Bumpas' hand, what we're about to be doing! :)
Bumpas breaking the ground up and getting it ready to dig more out.
Work crew getting dirt into the wheelbarrow.
Ditto.
Me measuring the hole to figure out how much more we have to do.
Nathaniel digging while Mr. Soma, our across-the-street neighbor, leans on the posthole digger.
Mr. Soma evening up the edges
Nathaniel having fun.
The nearly finished, or possibly finished, hole. Good ol' country truck. It got the job done quite well, though.
All our tools. The water isn't for drinking, so don't worry! :)
Mixing concrete. No, I don't know why i wasn't actually mixing at this point.
The hole nearly filled.
Almost done.
It's finished!
The full crew. Nice hat, Dad! :)

Well, that was it for then. Last Sabbath I already covered. So, we're on to last Monday.
Nothing much happened then, even including schoolwork. :(
Tuesday was pretty much the same. Mowing, schoolwork, and a scout meeting. We finished up our climbing theme, which then culminated in a climbing trip on Friday evening. However, I'll get to that later...
Wednesday--same 'ol same 'ol. We did have prayer meeting, complete with good attendance.
Thursday--I think you can guess. :)
That was quick.
Friday was busy. We got going on schoolwork, mowing, and then one more thing. Our troop went climbing on a climbing wall here in the county. I'm only going to include a few pictures of this.

Nathaniel going up.
Bumpas 2 (younger brother) going up. Considering it was his first time, he did very well.
Me going up one part. I know the knee socks look dorky, but they gave the flexibility of shorts and the protection of pants (almost!)
Bumpas climbing.
Milkdud coming down on the left with another guy going up on the right. Me bouldering. Basically, this is climbing done no higher than nine feet. You aren't belayed at all. This is over eight inches of rubber shavings, so it's a gentle landing. Anyway, I'm in the cave, which slopes back. The camera's level. :)
Me going up the hardest part, which I did manage to complete.

OK. Saturday wasn't much. Actually, I don't really remember much anything big.
The Lord's Day was, as usual, edifying and enjoyable. Except for one family that wasn't able to make it, we had usual attendance at church. Also, today, Mrs. Soma, our across-the-street neighbor, gave birth to baby #4, Gideon. Both are doing quite well.

Monday, mowing and school. However, since it was the third Monday of the month, it, along with the first, was a Cub Scout meeting night. This week, I pretty much ran most of the meeting. After a few announcements and a couple quick activities, we all went down to the soccer fields and I ran about an hour of rocket launching. We only ended up losing one rocket, which was better than I was hoping for! :)

Tuesday, mowing and school. Also, of course, we had a troop meeting. It was mainly focusing on marching, since we're getting ready for the Memorial Day parade here in Belle Center.
Wednesday, school, mowing, and Prayer Meeting. It wasn't as well attended as sometimes, especially since Somas weren't here. The reason is pretty obvious... :)

Thursday, we got to go bowling. I ended up my last game with a score of 147 or something like that--my best ever score! :) Of course, there was mowing and school later as well.

Yesterday was busy. I'm really glad for everything that happened yesterday. Why? The monument for my Eagle Scout Project is in! :D Pictures, of course, will follow...

The finished base. Really, it isn't this mottled.
Monument about to be unloaded.
Getting it onto a hand cart.
My first good look at the monument itself.
Lowering it onto the base. Back of the monument.
Polishing the monument. Believe it or not, they used Windex to polish! :)
The front of the monument.
My beaming family. I think we're all a bit relieved! :D
From the ground.

OK. That's about it. Yardsales were all over town on Saturday, but I didn't get much. I did get a pretty good airsoft pistol for $5, though. It'll need some work, but I'm up to it (I think!)

One other piece of good news-I got the SAT scores back Saturday, with a solid overall score of 2210. Praise the LORD for helping me to do so well!

I'll leave you with this video. Hope you like it. I'll post more regularly now that the Eagle project is about done, and, thankfully, school's almost done too.

Video

I just couldn't resist putting this one up here. I checked the lyrics for the song--nothing offensive necessarily, but the words might have a slightly different meaning. Turn the sound down if you like. Consider yourself warned. Anyway, the video is really nice. Boy, even though I don't want to fly off carriers, this is a great video!

Not so long of a post this time

Alrighty. According to the system clock here, it's 2154 when I start. Wait, it just changed to 2155. Ok. Wonder how long this one'll be?

Wednesday. Work. School. Mowing. Prayer meeting, which had better attendance than usual and was quite profitable. Done with Wednesday! :)

Thursday was busier. We had a visit from a reporter for the Bellefontaine Examiner, the local paper. I'm getting a nice big story--on my project--that'll be run (I think) the day after Memorial Day. After that I did a couple things for schoolwork before lunch, after which we did *drum roll please* MOWING!!! How did you guess? :)

After mowing, we all headed into town. I got a couple things for my Eagle project, and also a model rocket starter kit, complete with the launcher and the launch pad that I needed. After that, we went to *second drum roll* a square dance! I had a pretty good time. As I was telling someone today, I would have probably stayed out of 3 or 4 dances, but each time I noticed a girl who needed a partner. Normally, I attempt to be gentlemanly at these things, so, instead of making them sit (or stand) it out, I asked them if they would like me as a partner. I ended up drawing the line on the last one, though. I have no clue who the girl was--I don't think I even knew her name then! Anyways, it was tough enough neither one of us could figure it out, so we both dropped out. :) Overall, I had a great time. Sorry I don't have pictures. I guess the people who were wanting pictures will just have to come to the next one! :)

We had a visit to the dentist in the morning, which I didn't enjoy. I've never liked dentist checkups, but they're necessary, so I go along. :) After that was done, we went to Walmart to get a few things. That was pretty much it until the campout, which gets its own post. So, I'll skip to today.

Today was edifying, enjoyable, and yummy. The sermons were excellent and challenging, church was (mostly) well-attended, and the weather was nice. After church, we had the Mortons over for dinner, which was of the make-your-own-sub variety. The food was great, the company was great, and the weather was great! Overall, today was very enjoyable, especially since today, of course, is a special day--the Lord's Day, in which we worship Him!

Well, that's it for now. I'll put up the Eagle post tomorrow or sometime. It's now 2336. I've been IMming for a while, so that's why it took so long. Good night. :)

I'm starting to slack off again...

Sorry. At least it was only 5 days this time, instead of 10 or something.

OK. Thursday wasn't very busy. Just same ol' same ol'.

Friday was different. We were quite busy. Not only did we have to cram a full school day and a full mowing day in, we only had until about 1500 or so to do it. Friday evening was Milkdud's Eagle Scout Court of Honor, so we had to be there nice and early to be ready for it and also to make sure that everyone else from the troop was ready. It went quite well overall, and the cake was excellent! :)

After that was over, we left for Findlay, where I was due to be taking the SAT Reasoning Test. While it wasn't until Saturday Morning, I had to be at the testing center at 0745, and this is over an hour from home! We stayed at a hotel overnight, and the mattress was almost as incredibly uncomfortable as the pillow, which is saying something!

I was quite nervous the next morning, although I didn't think I was. We had supper at a Cracker Barrel, and I ended up having next to nothing to eat. However, the SAT allowed you to take in snacks, provided that you didn't eat them in the room.

Well, I showed up, registered, and went into the room. I'd been praying a lot that God would give me someone to talk to during the breaks. Well, I sat down in my assigned seat, and one of the first things I heard was a guy 2 seats over and 3 seats up telling a girl about his Eagle Scout project! All right! I'm sure thankful for answers to prayer like that. :) The other guy and I hit it off really well.

Other than the fact that I believe the test went well, I'm not really allowed to say anything else until I get the test results back. Sorry.

The rest of the day was great! After a ton of mental exertion, which also drained me physically somewhat, I got to enjoy a long progressive dinner from church. Starting at the Morton house in Defiance, it went to the Probst house outside of Blufton and ended at Bumpas' house. I had a great time, especially since a bit of the time I was in high physical exertion and low mental exertion activities. The stage at the Mortons was over soon after we got there, but I got to stay the entire time at Probsts and most of the rest. Probsts have a bunch of great stuff, including a small zipline, a spud gun, and a carpetball table. Man, I could spend a few days there. Hopefully, this summer, I'll have a chance to do so! :)

The last stage was great. Not only did we have tacos and a fire, we got to play some Capture the Flag. Unfortunately, we only had about 20 minutes to do it, and neither team wanted to be on the offensive. However, it was still kinda nice.

Sabbath was good. We had about normal attendance, and everything was pretty much the same as normal. Most of the people from church were staying for dinner there at church and, since I was invited, I stayed and had a great time talking with everyone and eating leftover tacos from the day before!

After the dinner was over, we had a half-hour-long psalm sing, then evening worship. Quick side note: I really like Covfamikoi for many reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that there's an hour-long psalm sing every day. I really love the privilege of singing the Lord's Holy Words back to Him. It's so awesome (in the real meaning of the word) to do so, especially when there's a large group singing. However, even with a small group, it's still awe-inspiring, especially as you realize that these words were given directly by God for this use! Wow.

OK. Monday. I had a Cub Scout meeting to get to, where I directed the construction of model rockets. It was a bunch of fun. Really. After that, I got out to the American Legion meeting, where I got another $250 for my project! Thankfully, I'm up to almost $800 now, so everything's about done.

The other thing about Monday that was actually the best was that Nathaniel got home from college! I've really been looking forward to this, since he and I get along very well, much better than we used to! :)

Today was a bit different. I've done mowing, a scout meeting, other stuff for Eagle, and work on my own model rocket. I've gotten materials for the concrete base for the stone donated, so that's nice. I'm also having a campout here this weekend to dig the hole and put in the concrete. Everything's seeming to be going well on the project. I just hope that doesn't end!

Alrighty. I think that's about it except for one more thing. I think everyone (or mostly everyone) who regularly reads this blog would like this video. So, I'm putting it up. Please don't flame me if you don't like it. :)

Last Few Days

I'm back to the old titles. Old and boring, but somewhat nostalgic, right? Yeah, sure.

Alrighty. Monday was a little bit busy. Not only was there schoolwork to get done, but of course there was mowing. As Mom noted in her journal, though, we seem to be getting in our "school-mowing schedule." We're getting a good bit of schoolwork done every day and still keeping up with mowing.

Tuesday was even busier. We had to run up to Lima, about 40 or so miles northwest of here. We stopped at the scout store there (which is surprisingly small) and also got to a Hobby Lobby to pick up a bunch of rocket kits. I'm running a small model rocket program for the Cub Scout pack I help out with, so the kits are kind of important. :) When we got back, it was on to school and mowing, the standards. However, as diligent readers of this blog will remember, Tuesday is also the meeting night for scouts. Since Milkdud wasn't able to be there, I ran the meeting, which generally went well. We had two boys, twins in fact, visiting. They're somewhat interested but not certain whether they want to join or not. I sure hope they do!

The other interesting thing on Tuesday was the storm system that came through. We were on the extreme southern edge of it, so we just got to see a fireworks display that was much better than any 4th of July celebration! I ended up sitting across the street with the neighbors, just having fun watching the nearly continuous lightning. Of course, (as you who know me would know) I was also watching the clouds to be on the lookout for anything threatening. The storm was developed, but it wasn't doing anything too bad. Unfortunately, there were other cells in this line that did produce tornadoes. Thankfully, nobody was killed, and very little property damage occurred.

OK. Yesterday was busy, and I mean busy for me. I managed to complete five different lessons, including two tests! One was a history test--I wasn't too concerned about that. Even though I'm not normally a big fan of history, it's about my easiest subject. The other test was English--that's not one of the easiest subjects! Thankfully, I still managed to do well on it. One note about this: it's sure nice being able to take a break in a hard test and just spend a couple minutes praying. It's refreshing, it's beneficial to the test-taker, and, above all else, it gives glory to the LORD.

Prayer meeting yesterday was better attended than sometimes, but not so well as other times. It was pretty much middling, attendance-wise. However, (also as diligent readers will remember) I really do enjoy the midweek prayer meetings. They are an excellent time to have fellowship with other believers and getting a spiritual refreshing, so-to-speak.

That's now up-to-date with the daily stuff. Now, on to the Eagle project.

Eagle's coming along nicely. The stone just got in down in the main engraving office down in London. Last night, the sales rep. called me to let me know that the dimensions are actually different. Instead of three feet tall, it's four, meaning that it looks nicer, fits more, and costs more (normally). However, the company is keeping the price the same, meaning it's actually taking a small loss. They're still certain that it'll be in by Memorial Day. The other part of the project--fundraising--is still going very well. Just the other day, a man came over to our house and handed me a $100 bill. :) I'm just over $400 now, 2/5 done with the goal. Praise the LORD for keeping this project going well! Now, I just need to finish filling out the Eagle Project Booklet and start on the thank-you notes.

I need to be getting going with school. Seeyas all later!