A Letter to the President

I told you a few days ago about the graduation party we had last Sunday. Well, while we were at the party, the Dog Walker started talking about this awesome trip we are planning to take this summer. We are going to do the church history tour through Nauvoo and then make our way back to New York and Washington DC. It's truly the trip of a lifetime for us and we have been planning it for quite a while.

Anyway, while he was talking about Washington DC, my dear friend asked him if he was going to visit the White House and see the President. At first I think she was teasing him a little, but it shortly turned into a "Really, you should do it!" You know the Dog Walker is a little famous because of the scout thing.

So he has been bugging me about it all week (thanks, Tamra!) so I suggested that if he wanted an audience with the President he'd better write him a letter. So now I'm sharing the letter with you. Do you think it will get us in?

June 7, 2012

Dear President Barack Obama,

My name is [Dog Walker] and I’m from Utah. I am autistic and have been autistic since I was born. You might have heard from the time that I am the Boy Scout who earned all 132 merit badges. The fame I had was really amazing, just to prove to everybody that people with autism can do anything. The fame I had has been going on and on since last September. It’s been the best accomplishment for me in my life.


Throughout life with autism, I haven’t spoke until the age of seven and I have been quoting from movies a lot when I’m by myself, like I have memorized all the quotes from two movies called The Lion King and A Goofy Movie. That is amazing huh? Anyway, back to the rest of my life as being autistic, I’ve been struggling with education in kindergarten and preschool.

Now that I’m out of high school, I’m going to plan to go to college. College might be a little scary at first, but I dealt with the higher moments of school for a while and they were all amazing. I’ll just have to deal with college to see if I can try to get a degree for a good job. Going to college will be the next challenge for me as an autistic person, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to get used to new things in life. I have a whole sash of all of my merit badges that I have passed off and I’m an assistant Cubmaster with my dad.

We are planning to visit Washington DC in July and we would love to see you in the White House. You are the most amazing president of the US. It’s nice writing to you.

Sincerely,

[Dog Walker]

So here's what I want you all to do. Start a campaign to get my awesome son a minute with President Obama. He would be so happy! And maybe then he would really be famous.

Raingutter Regatta

I know I've told you before that my sweetie is the Cubmaster for our Cub Scout Pack. He has about 25 boys and their families to entertain once a month at Pack Meeting. He hands out awards and then he has activities planned. We have done some pretty exciting things, like the Blue and Gold Banquet and the Pinewood Derby. One month we all made paper airplanes and then flew them for prizes. Another time we had a treasure hunt with GPS and compasses. The Dog Walker helped lay out 4 different routes and at the end of each was a small box full of candy.

We have all kinds of fun at Pack Meeting and tonight was no different. The boys (and anyone else who wanted to participate) built balsa wood catamarans with tiny sails and raced them in raingutters with fans to propel them.

We had awesome attendance with only a couple of the scouts missing. While Sport and I were setting up this afternoon, we put up about twice the number of chairs I thought we might need and tonight we filled almost every one.



The kids were so excited! My own kids had spent several hours each on their little boats, cutting and sanding and painting. Their sails were covered with colorful stickers and everyone from Curly to the Prima Donna had participated. As Cubmaster and Assistant Cubmaster, my sweetie and the Dog Walker also made boats.

No, I didn't make a boat. I was the support crew. Instead I made reminder fliers and distributed them. Twice. I made all the certificates and attached the prizes and I made sure everything was set up and ready. I even called all the leaders to make sure they had treats and prayers and such.

And tonight went off without a hitch...except for the fact that some people thought the start time was 6:30 and others thought it was at 7:00.

Scout placed third in the Open Class division and Sport won Best Design for the cub class. I'm thinking I remember Burrito winning a prize too, but it was a bit chaotic and I don't remember what. Maybe Bossy will comment and let us know.

Teach was our amazing photographer and she snapped some fun pics. Maybe now I can relax for a few minutes...at least from Cub Scouts.

Guest Blog: Pinewood Derby Cars by Sweetie

When Sport was less than two years old, we noticed that two things seemed to get his attention… cars and girls… maybe it’s just the curves they share?   It was actually fun to watch.. He would play with his toys (toy cars if they where present) and ignore the TV until  a car or lovely lady came on the screen.  . He would stop... watch until it went away, and then go back to playing.  

That love of cars has continued on.  He loves hot wheels, watching the Velocity channel, etc.  Since he also loves Cub Scouts, pinewood derby is one of his favorite activities. In the last calendar year we have built and raced three vehicles...at three different races…  

Every time it’s the same thing, he loves designing the cars and he’s most excited about the design. He doesn’t care if it’s the fastest because he doesn’t like flat, very aerodynamic pinewood derby cars that don’t look like cars.  And that’s all true until about 20 seconds before the first race… when suddenly he wants to win. 

This last race was interesting.  He wanted to make a jeep..  Tall and short, it would be slow …even if I spent hours on the wheels and axles.  He didn’t care, he just wanted it to look cool.  Once we got there and he found out there was no prizes for design, he watched the first race.  The jeep took fourth on a 4-lane track…so Sport quickly headed off to the exhibits, leaving Dad to the humiliation.

In the end the jeep was only about 0.8 seconds slower over 4 runs than the fastest car…good enough for third  place…. from last that is. Point 2 seconds doesn’t seem like a lot but it’s several car lengths.  

When we were finished, I told him not to play with this one because I wasn’t building a new car for the town days race. I'm just not sure I can lose that many more man-cards, but I am thinking about buying special cheater wheels and axles on the internet.  And Sport is warming to flat aerodynamic designs.. and...dang I hate to be in the bottom half.  Oh and everyone says he’s just like me… and while I’ve learned not to jerk my head when a lovely lady walks by  (love will do that), an Italian sports car.. a nice custom… or a really cool pinewood derby…well, that’s a different story… 

Maybe it's genetic.

Oh, one more thing to explain the pics... Sport and I have built and raced 3 cars... Curly and I - 2 cars,  Scout and I - 2 cars… Crafty one car, Prima Donna one car, Dog Walker one car…

   

Scout-o-Rama

So by now you all know we are big-time scouters in our family and we have been looking forward to May 5, 2012 since last October. That's right, it was the Scout-o-Rama! Sport, Scout, Curly, and my sweetie have been hard at work on pinewood derby cars for the last two weeks, but I'll let him tell you that story tomorrow.

In March, Sport walked the neighborhood for hours until he sold 53 $5 tickets to the Scout-o-Rama...and that's a real bargain for those of us who attended. We showed up around 9:30 and after checking in the cars, we started browsing through the booths. They had so many things to do! Here's Curly and Sport in a footrace around the cones. We raced cars, built boats, played with Legos, made bracelets and stamped leather. We planted seeds, played carnival games, excelled at "whack-a-scout" (use your imagination, it's just what you think), and wrote letters to the veterans.

Sport earned his Geography belt loop and a bunch of arrow points. He also spent an hour in the booth helping with the pinewood derby so he could get a percentage of his ticket sales back to support his scout activities.

While I was supporting him in the booth, Bossy and the Drama Queen took all the little kids and got in line for the most awesome activity in the building. Yeah, it was even cooler than the climbing wall. It was a huge contraption with bungee cords and four trampolines and the kids were so excited to ride. I thought they were a little nuts, but it wasn't me standing in line, so I didn't care.

My sweetie and I wandered around looking for Pack Meeting ideas and then we picked up Sport and headed to the trampoline area. Management nicely allowed him to slip in line with his siblings since he had been working in the BSA booth. And it's a good thing. They had closed down the line by then. Average wait time: 2 hours. Yeah, Bossy and the Drama Queen stood in line that entire time with all the kids, mine and hers except for Sport. If you are counting, that's six kids under the age of 9. At some point the Dog Walker joined them too.

It was nearly time for the Scout-o-Rama to be over by the time they finally got to the front of the line. I thought they were crazy when they decided to strap up Baby Doll, but the guys said if she could walk, she could ride. Curly was so excited he could hardly jump, so one of the workers bounced him up until he was sailing 20 feet above us.

So excited...

The Dog Walker was totally silly and he screamed like a little girl as he was hoisted up. Baby Doll was fine at 10 feet, but much higher and she was afraid so they lowered her back down.

When they finally got out of the harnesses, Curly came running to us with his shoes. "That was so AWESOME!" he yelled. I've never seen him so excited. "Was it worth waiting in line?" I asked. Remember, that line took nearly 2 hours. "YES!" That grin didn't leave his face for the rest of the afternoon.

Strapping up...

As we were walking back across the parking lot, we saw a guy who had just tipped his little cart full of booth stuff. The kids were quick to help him pick things up and carry them to his car. Scouts teaches them so many things...and I love watching them "Do A Good Turn Daily."

Curly loved flying!

That's my Baby Doll.

One of Those Weeks

You ever have one of those weeks? You know the ones...where you can't even seem to find time to catch your breath? I expect those weeks when something major is going on like Christmas or a wedding and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying graduation isn't a big deal, but other than just showing up, it only took one evening. I've just had one of those random weeks when it seems impossible except that now we are nearing the end of it and I actually survived!

Monday was filled with Crafty's very first Monster Concert, so I had to drop her off at 4:00 at one of the local high schools and then show up again at 7:00 for the concert itself. Elementary band programs in Utah are typically small, so once a year they combine all the kids from all the school and have a concert. This year there were about 188 kids. Crafty has only been playing her clarinet since September so you can imagine how it all went...

Tuesday night was the first round of baseball games with my sweetie coaching Curly's team, I was coaching Scout's team, and Gamer was coaching Bean Dip's team. Games lasted until 6:30 and then we had to run to get to Pack Meeting before 7:00. I had already acquired the parts and assembled 40 catapult kits, made phone calls and distributed fliers earlier in the day. Visited the church and set up tables and chairs. Yeah, we were ready. Oh and I also had three girls with dance class so we had to work that in. After everyone finally got home about 8:30, we ate crockpot pulled pork burritos that I had been cooking all day, settled the kids for the night and then Princess and I headed out for basketball. I dragged in about 11:00, did dishes, laundry, and sent the big kids to bed. Only then did I find a few minutes to write my post.

I'm not making excuses, really, I love my few minutes to write every day, but sometimes it's hard to work it in.

Wednesday morning I took Baby Doll to the doctor for her 18-month checkup. She's fine and growing like a weed! She wasn't too happy with the three shots in her chubby little thighs. That, along with the two teeth she has coming in made her a particularly ornery girl. But with her on my lap, I managed to pull together the fundraiser orders for my girls and enter them into the computer. Sport had baseball practice, Princess had dance, Prima Donna had a Dance Concert for her Dance Team at the middle school that I couldn't possibly miss. The Dog Walker had one of his photos in the art show at the high school so after the concert I dropped Prima Donna at the church for the last few minutes of her young women's group and drove straight to Bingham. I didn't miss the prizes, but he was bummed that he didn't win anyway.




Thursday was Teach's graduation and that ate up most of the day...

Did you ever see that movie called Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell? In one of the scenes there is a moment when she is so totally overwhelmed that she is beyond functioning. But Kurt Russell has no sympathy. He simply picks her up and throws her in the rain barrel. The crazy thing is that it works! She is able to move on with her tasks that need to be done.

Anybody got a rain barrel? I just may need to borrow one.

Cub Scout Stuff

Remember in February when I told you about the Blue and Gold Banquet? Well, my sweetie is still in charge of the Cub Scouts and he has to prepare an activity/awards meeting for them each and every month. Last month wasn't too bad, they all made paper airplanes and then had contests to see whose went the furthest and the longest.

This month they are supposed to do another craft or a service project and we have been wracking our brains trying to come up with something cheap and relatively easy since most of these boys are only about 8 years old. Except for their fearless leader who is 48 going on 11. Yup, I'm confessing...my sweetie is just a big overgrown kid at heart. He loves this kind of stuff!

When I mentioned that I wanted to go over to Beck's Leather and Craft for some supplies for my Girl Scout meeting today, he was right with me. I was a little confused by this because we already did leatherwork for the Cub Scout pack last summer. That's when he casually mentioned that they had a catapult kit he thought the boys might like. Trouble is, those kits cost $7 each!



Does anybody have a catapult pattern they might like to share? No, not one for throwing Cub Scouts, although I'm sure they would love that, just the right size for ping pong balls?

The Blue and Gold Banquet

 As you can see, I mostly managed to survive the Blue and Gold Banquet. There was a short time there when I wasn't sure that was going to happen!

I chased around all day yesterday, trying to pull together the tablecloths (that ended up being white; nobody had yellow) and food together. Then my sweetie nicely took the day off to help with the preparations. We were expecting about 100 people.

Fortunately, there were other scout leaders helping make soup. My sweetie made two extra large crockpots of chili while I headed to Costco with the Gym Rat. He still has a card, and I'm a Sam's Club girl. But the main thing we needed to buy was rolls and Costco has the best rolls (ok, my sweetie makes the best rolls, but there was NO WAY I was going to add that to our craziness).

After Costco, the Gym Rat took off so he could get ready for work and I made three more stops before I finally got home just in time to take Scout to kindergarten.

I was in charge of making the dirt pudding. I had a huge can of pudding we had purchased from the cannery, so I assumed that would be about right for feeding 100. Boy was I wrong.

I mixed the pudding and poured it into cups while the Drama Queen smashed Oreos with a rolling pin and sprinkled them on top. Curly stuck a gummy worm on top and set the cup on the tray. We made a great team...until I ran out of pudding mix.

After searching our storage room and not finding another can, I started calling the neighbors. I didn't want to change brands in the middle and Jello brand is expensive! After half a dozen calls, I finally found a can that one of my awesome neighbors agreed to donate. (Thanks, Modina!) After running to pick it up, we finished the last 30 cups. Then it was time to deliver the reminder fliers to each cub scout's house so they didn't forget.

The Dog Walker did all the running (good thing because I was starting to run out of steam). By the time we were finished, it was time to head for the church and put up the tables. My sweetie drove over in the big van and I took the minivan. I was going to swing by the grocery store first and pick up the ice and balloons. When I walked into the store, it was pretty evident that my pre-order hadn't worked. We waited for about 10 nail-biting minutes. It was nearly 4:30 by the time we got to the church and dinner was at 6:00.

It took us about 45 minutes to transform the gym into a party room. Then we headed back home to get the food. Things went off without a hitch after that. We fed lots of people and the Dog Walker gave an awesome speech. Then he and I slipped out and over to another Blue and Banquet going on at a different church so he could speak there too.

I was a little worried about missing Sport receive his Wolf badge, but I shouldn't have worried. My sweetie just took plenty of time with the cheers and other awards. When we walked back into the gym it was about 2 minutes later that the awards were given. Bean Dip earned his Bear and Taco got his Bobcat.


After many "good jobs" from the parents, we finally got cleaned up and arrived home about 8:30. That was just enough time to get the kids settled before I headed off to basketball practice. I was so tired I could hardly run down the court! It's about 1:30 AM here now and I probably should have waited until morning to write this post, but I knew how anxious you all were to hear how things. went. Maybe now I can actually get some sleep!

LIttle Bits of This and That

This is one of the things I love about our church...

Less than 10 minutes ago, this entire gym was filled with chairs and people sitting in them. It's amazing what we can do when we all work together. And nobody was asked, but right after the closing prayer, racks were pulled out and literally a hundred people were suddenly clearing the room.

My girls helped gather paper and trash and the boys helped with the chairs.

On a totally unrelated note...This is the awesome poster hanging on the door of our dance studio. See that scary looking dancer in black? That's Princess! Crazy, huh?! My sweet little girl looking so evil!

I had a sports meeting tonight at the church and after we were finished and I was putting away chairs, a lady came up to me. "I think I know you," she said. "Do your girls dance?" After we established the fact that our girls were dancing together, she admitted that she had just taken the pictures for the Sleeping Beauty ballet! How random is that? I guess we live in a small town after all.

The cookie pile is getting smaller and smaller and is no longer threatening to overtake all the seating in my livingroom. Thanks for all of your concern and offers to take them off my hands. As much as I love cookies and count on the money to plan fun activities for my troop, by the time cookies are done, I'm totally tired of looking at them.

I'm going to be completely tied up with preparations for the Blue and Gold Banquet for the Cub Scouts on Tuesday. If you don't hear from me you will know it's because I am chasing to every Hobby Lobby in town looking for gold tablecloths. Wish me luck!

Wonder Mom

Fort Douglas Museum...the fam and our guide, Patrick

When we first started going to church with this neighborhood, one of the ladies called me Wonder Mom. It kind of irritated me because I certainly didn't see myself as anything special. I was just a mom like everybody else trying to figure out how best to raise my kids. So when I typed the title for this post, I giggled a little. I still don't see myself as special, but I think I am a little crazy.

One of my favorite things to do is run away with the kids and do something we haven't done before. That's why on Thursday we made our trip to a THIRD museum! This one was at Fort Douglas and yes, it was for another scout patch. We drove up to the University of Utah campus and then into Fort Douglas. It was a slow day and we were able to park right in front of the museum.

This was nothing like the Museum we went to on Monday. There weren't any interactive exhibits and Curly kept asking when we were going to go to the museum. We took Grandpa because he is a veteran and he enjoyed showing us the badge for his group. The museum itself was pretty awesome! It housed all kinds of old uniforms and memorabilia from the various wars. Each display had signs telling about the battles or the soldiers. They had tons of old guns and models of ships. We had a guide with us the entire time to answer questions and point out the things that would interest the kids the most.

After we toured the inside, we went out to the gardens and wandered past all the tanks and big guns. They even had some helicopters out there! That's about the time Curly finally got excited about the museum.

As we wandered back inside, I asked our guide to pose with the kids for a picture. He was happy to do it and I told him I wanted to post it on my blog. He was all for it! And he wanted me to invite all of my bloggy friends to stop by the museum...so I am. It's another freebie (worthy of a scout patch) and a great place to wander for an afternoon.

The kids go back to school on Tuesday, so I guess that will end our adventures during the day.  I'll have to come up with another way to be crazy...any ideas? Especially FREE ideas?

Another Museum Day

 In our state, they have what’s called a ZAP tax. That stands for Zoo, Arts, and Parks and the theory is that these taxes help subsidize these activities so they can be nice (and sometimes free!) for the general public. Monday was the quarterly free day at the Museum of Natural History. We have been to the museum several times, but never since they moved to the new building.

I told you before that my elementary-aged kids are off-track, so it ended up being me, Grandpa, Drama Queen, Teach, Crafty, Sport, Scout, Curly, and Baby Doll. We all piled in the van except for the Drama Queen. (She had been waiting in line for 2 hours to checkout at Roberts Going-Out-of- Business sale and she said she would wait for the three people still in line ahead of her and then drive herself downtown…some people will do anything for a bargain! I wonder where she gets that from? Hmmm….)

When we finally got within a mile or so of the museum, we saw signs pointing to the additional parking. This couldn’t be good. But we turned into the lot anyway and hauled the kids to the shuttle stop. This actually turned out really well for us. The shuttle dropped us right at the front door. The driver was so nice he even pulled over and loaded up a few people as they struggled up the hill with their strollers and little ones.

I was so worried that the museum would be crowded! We had been in the old one on free day before and it was so crazy you could hardly get close enough to the exhibits to see inside them. But this new museum was amazing! I’m sure there were hundreds of people scattered around, but we had plenty of room to roam and play.

And I do mean play. Nearly all of the exhibits are interactive. We put together puzzles, looked through a microscope, shook down a small building with a simulated earthquake, and studied the effects of erosion on sand in a huge water table. Sport got a little extra attention because of his scout shirt and we are excited to report that he completed the patch to add to his vest.

In one of the children’s rooms they had a fake stream with fake fish and insects. Scout was absolutely convinced they were real and she refused to touch them! Curly loved the animal puppets except for the eagle. When he put his little hand in it, he started to cry because his hand was too small to make the large wings flap.

Three hours raced by and the only one who wanted to leave was Baby Doll. She was pretty tired of the backpack by then. We enjoyed it so much I am actually thinking of going back with the entire family and PAYING for it…I know, crazy, huh? You all know how cheap I am. But check out all these fun pics we took. Sadly, Teach forgot her good camera so you only get cell phone stuff. If we head back, I’m definitely taking the real camera…and the shuttle.

** Bossy here.  I added two links that give information on free entry days for the rest of the year.  You can also follow NHMU on Twitter.  This museum did not pay or offer any compensation to my mom for her blog today.