Oil Lamps

In Mom’s seminary class, for the lesson on Matthew 25, the students made clay oil lamps a couple of weeks in advance. For the lesson they could put oil in them and light them in the parking lot to see what it would be like to use an oil lamp the way they would have used them 2000 years ago. Joseph made a really cool looking lamp which you can see here. When lit at night, it actually puts out enough light to see where you are going. It burns for quite a long time, although the wind would blow it out if not careful.

This is the seminary class with their lighted lamps. Unlike the story in the parable, Mom brought extra oil - enough for everyone.

Frogs in the Pond

Several frogs have taken up residence in our pond. There is a large one (4 inch long) that spends part of his time in the bushes and part of his time in and next to the pond in the front yard. There are at least two, but I think it may be three smaller (about 2.5 to 3 inch long) frogs that spend almost all of their time in or next to the pond.

When anyone walks out the front door or approaches from the driveway, the frogs dive under the water and hide. This one did not dive but just watched me until I too close for his comfort level. He is one of the small ones.
I zoomed in with the camera to get a closer look, but he dove under a few seconds later. I think some of our fish are big enough to not get eaten by the frogs, but I do not know about how safe baby fish are. I think we may relocate the frogs to the pond on the other side of Jamestown road when it is convenient. Of course that means we have to catch then first. I'm sure Joseph can move fast enough.

Rope Swing Down

When the remnants of hurricane Ike came through here and dumped about 8 inches of rain early Sunday morning (September 14), the wind also blew pretty hard and broke a quite a few tree branches. I discovered that one of the branches that was broken in the storm was the large branch that the rope swing was tied to. It looks like rope around the branch prevented the branch from growing properly and caused it to die. It looks like it broke at the spot that the rope had been tied. This the part of the branch that is still attached to the tree.

This is a close up of the end of the branch (way zoomed in). A tripod would have been helpful in holding the camera still to reduce the blur.

This is the part that fell with the rope still tangled up in the branch.

I will cut up the branch with the chain saw and perhaps we can burn it while everyone is home for Christmas.

At least the rope did not break this time, but having the log fall on top of someone might have hurt as much, if not more than when the first rope broke about 16-17 years ago. What do you think Neil?

First Squash from the Garden

I was late in getting things planted in the garden this year, but the first squash was ready to pick yesterday (Sunday, Sept21). This is what I picked. It was quite tasty when cooked. I planted yellow and light green squash (2 hills of each), two rows of green beans and a hill of cucumbers.

This is a close up of one of the hills of yellow squash after today’s squash was picked. There should be more to eat in a day or two.

The green beans and cucumbers are loaded with blossoms, so we should have those to eat in a couple of weeks. I have a three foot high chicken wire fence around the green beans to keep the rabbits out. Sometimes I see a rabbit looking longingly at the green beans while he eats the grass and weeds. Too bad for him. If things continue to go well, we will have lots of extra green beans to make several jars of dilly beans to eat at Christmas time.

Joseph's Eagle Court of Honor

We had a court of honor for Joseph on Saturday evening. Joseph completed his eagle board of review in April, the day after his birthday. Jared Dolle in our ward and Robbie Poeppelmeier in the Florissant ward also completed their eagle boards of review this summer. We decided that we could just combine all three in to one court of honor. For part of the display of Joseph’s scouting activities over the years, we made a poster of photos of various scout activities. We noticed that there were a lot of photos that had Joseph, Jared and Robbie together on the same campout. Since they did everything together in scouts, it was appropriate that we have a combined court of honor.

There were lots of people attending. Almost all of the chairs were filled. There were at least 70 or 80 people in attendance.

Sue Hodgson made the cake. We were in charge of drinks, so we had root beer floats that were greatly enjoyed. We went through 5 quarts of ice cream and 10 liters of root beer.

The scoutmaster, Ben Fuhriman, conducted the court of honor. His father has lots of American flags and flag type decorations that were used. It looked really cool. Bishop Fred McCormack did the eagle award presentation. He did a really good job. This is all of us on the stage for the awards, including mother’s and father’s pins (no stab wounds). There were mentor pins for the scout to give to someone that was particularly influential. Joseph and Robbie both gave their mentor pins to Brother Wood. Jared Dolle gave his to Brother Liesman.

After the awards, each of the scouts spoke. Joseph did a very good job.

This is all three of them together.

Jared and Robbie turned 18 just after they completed their requirements, so Joseph is the youngest of the new eagles at 17. He already has enough merit badges for his first palm.

Go Joseph!!!