Eagle Project

Both my kids are in scouts. There’s a lot of scout bashing going on these days and I’m here to say: scouting has not changed much since my brother got eagle in the 90’s. You will never regret the self reliance, the abilities your scout gains and the confidence your young man acquires as a boyscout.

Yes, there’s girls in scouts now. That is the fault of girl scouts for not teaching the girls what they wanted to learn. Plus, the girls are a very small minority of scouts and have different meetings and campouts than the boys. There is no co-mingling except on high adventure and the girls camp in their own area away from the boys. I also think this was a fad and there have been very few girls who stick with it to the end.

My kids do the high adventure camps in the summer. My youngest is currently at Philmont NM on a two week pack hike. My kids are so much different from their friends who just stay at home and game.

Ten out of ten stars, for cubscouts and boyscouts, from our family!

Today was the first day of his eagle project. He’s building a golf cart bridge, over a washout area, at a bird sanctuary near us.

My son, my husband and I rented a two man auger to set the posts. Omg. That was a crazy hard machine to use. My son and I took one end and my husband had the other. It was still: a very heavy, hard to control, and I wish we had another full grown man there, project. I would say you need a two man, instead of a one man, with the amount of torque the bit puts out, but it was still a three person job between us, it’s so massive and we were digging in clay.

We set the posts for the bridge after running to a hardware store because where we rented the auger was far away. They didn’t include the pin for the bit to attach to the engine.

Hot, sweaty Texas work that I was almost not strong enough to help get finished. We rolled out as it was getting dark at 9pm.

Tomorrow we’ve got six scouts and some adults coming to help. I can’t believe my son pulled this off. What a huge project!

All day and all we got done was rent and use an auger and set 4 posts, using weight bearing expanding foam. It comes in a folded bag that you mix together and pour in the hole. This was an awesome choice over concrete. It set in 15 minutes.

We put a couple of concrete deck blocks under the center support. We worked until dark again yesterday.

Luckily the first one fit exactly. The second one I had to dig to get it to the right depth. Yes. I am actually not wearing flip-flops for this project! I feel so grown up and responsible! I also have a huge bruise on my foot where I dropped the concrete block on it. Flip-flops would have meant something would currently be broken. It’s also wet out and I’m slipping and sliding. 😂

This bridge is the eagle scout project from hell. We’re about to go work on it again. This makes 4 days. My husband and son thought it would take two. There’s a reason I fought them on building this thing. Oh well. We’re almost done.

Anyway, if you want an active scout mom’s opinion to dispel some of the random negative voices, going around about scouting, I’ll definitely answer any questions you have below. My suggestions will all be pro scouting. It’s an amazing program!

OK. The lady we did this for fought with us and bullied my son from start to finish. My son wanted to help her because she is aging and lost her husband. She was an absolute, psycho, nightmare to work with. She sent panicked angry texts that were pages long multiple times every single day, however: When the first bridge we built was not making her happy, we tore it down and built a second one.

My son also had six months to finish this with an extension (because of the horrendous flooding in Texas when we finished the first bridge she didn’t like.) Some days we were working in calf deep water. But it only took us two weeks to get the second bridge done.

So, she signed off on this and we don’t have to deal with her anymore. The second bridge came out perfect. We used a tow behind auger this time and it was so much easier to use.

This was a huge project that my son (who is double majoring in ministry and engineering) designed and built after mastering autoCAD in two days. If I ever wondered if he’s well suited to his degree field: I do now. I have an amazing kid!