Boy Scout Plaques

It's Boy Scout week at the Taggart home. Every year, the Occoneechee Council Relationships Committee (J. Taggart, Chair) hosts a banquet for each boy in the Council who earned the religious award of his particular denomination during the prior year. This year, the banquet will be held at the Cary 1st/2nd Ward building. A few years ago, we were looking for something we could give the boys, and we decided to give them a plaque with Friberg's "Prayer at Valley Forge" affixed. Not having any money, we wondered if we could make them ourselves. Turns out we could. We plane the wood. We cut it to specific dimensions. We rout the edge. We sand it. We etch the words "Duty to God" in it (well, actually, someone with a lazer machine does that). We glue the picture on it and apply a few coats of clear finish. Not bad, eh?

The wood this year was rough cut cherry and black walnut.

My favorite tool: The DeWalt compound Miter

By the time we got to the sanding phase, we had a pretty good system going.

We finished about 80 plaques in about 3 hours. Wesley wasn't much help, but everyone else was great!

The finished product (last year's model).

It's Sunday evening and I just got back from a stake conference assignment in Gastonia, NC. I invariably worry more than I should about these assignments and this was no exception. I find it very satisfying to visit the stakes and always uncover old associations and new relations. This time, it was a fourth cousin, the second great grandson of William Walton Burton's brother. His wife is the stake YW president and she spoke during the Saturday evening session. When I met her husband after the session, I took one look at him and knew we were related--he looks exactly like Uncle John's sons.
The picture below is a lot like the one permanently posted to the right, but I wanted to add one that gives a little more detail. What a nice bunch of people! Anyway, I like them.

Nothing much is happening. Oh, there's the global liquidity crisis, the bailout (and the inflation that will follow), rising unemployment, etc. But otherwise, things around here are pretty quiet. I've been thinking about getting back to practicing my horn.

This is one full-service grandma! Today they made bread.

First, they ground up the wheat on the deck. The leaf blower took care of what they left behind.
Next, everything (including almost a couple of fingers and a nose) went into the mixer. Then we baked the bread.
And finally we ate it. Yummy! Grandpa learned that, even if it is waaay past bedtime, he gets points for letting the boys taste the product of their labor.

I wonder what's up for tomorrow.

The lego guy also had a dragon beastie. Luke: "Dad would LOVE this dragon. Way better than his job at school. If I brought this home with me, he would NOT want to go to school."

Grandma temporarily lost her touch with reality and bought a supply of legos posted on Craig's List. Come to think of it, we were short of legos anyway.

It's Wednesday. Six days since the mommy left for New Zealand. We have survived. We will probably make it to the week-end.

Saturday, March 7th

Things are back to normal. 17 degrees on Monday, 83 on Saturday. Meredith's and Jim's three sons are staying with us while their parents are in New Zealand. Here they are playing in the back yard. (Wouldn't you other grandkids like to be here? You can, you know. Just pester your parents until they give in and agree to come visit us.)

Monday, March 2nd

March roared into the South in the form of a late winter storm. I know it's not much compared to Rochester or Bear Lake but, for us hot house plants south of the Mason-Dixon line, it was a nice reminder of why we moved here--meaning, this is so rare that it is actually kind of a treat.

The Okeefenokee Swamp

Fans of Pogo will recognize this place, but Pogo has been out of print and off the funny pages for a couple of decades now, so the rest of you are forgiven. For me, the Okeefenokee has been a place of wonderment for almost six decades--since I saw a movie sometime in the 1950s that was filmed there and featured flat-bottomed boats, poisonous snakes, fierce alligators and characters in bib overalls with dubious ethics. We have been to central Florida many times but each time, we've always been in too much of a hurry to take a detour. Not this time. Marilyn cheerfully (?) agreed to a side trip. This, the largest wildlife refuge on the east coast, was chilly, quiet and . . . well . . . swampy. We promised ourselves we would go back when there is more action.