Weeding & Hiking

We had no school on Friday, so we took advantage of the day and rescheduled our meeting for the morning.  I'm so glad we did because we got so lucky with the weather and our entire meeting was outside!  It stayed dry until five or ten minutes after our meeting ended... so lucky!  Anyway, we started the meeting up at the school and we weeded the front garden bed.  There were a lot more weeds than I originally thought.  The boys did a great job on this service project.  After we finished the weeding we headed over to Lake Sawyer for a three mile hike!  It was a relatively flat trail with lots of little ponds along the way.  The boys all paired up and collected the little bits of trash that we saw along the way.  Another great service project!  Such a nice way to start the day!

Mathew got the biggest weed of the day!  The dreaded blackberry bush!

Eric and Connor working on those tiny little weeds that grew at the base of the Euonymous bushes.  They were tough to spot!

Nick, Hunter, and Liam working hard.

Benjamin, our Den Chief, even got to work.



Eric and Hunter collected the most trash along the hike.  I think they even found a car part!

The hike was beautiful.  Here are Mathew, Connor, and Hayyan searching for trash.

Noah & Luke

Landscaping Service Project

I am months behind in getting this posted, but I just had to do it.  It was such a post-worthy entry!  This service project was a long time coming!  Hours and hours of planning and preparation were put in by Ellen Shelden, a Wolf mom.  The landscaping in front of our school office was rather shabby and Ellen was very passionate about getting our boys involved in sprucing it up.  She was met with a lot of obstacles and a little bit of opposition, but her hard work paid off and we were approved to start work in July.  I will be posting a photo of the landscaped AFTER picture in another week or so!  A big thank you to Ellen and Jane McDaniel for getting these photos to me!

The BEFORE photo

Skyler and Lucas Montry (a Webelo)

Skyler and Matthew lifting a very heavy rock!

Alison Kruse was able to get a soil donation from Iddings!

Jeff Kruse and John Shelden



The AFTER Photo:  Prepped and ready to go!





Mary Keane, John Shelden, Ellen Shelden, Ken Montry, Mark McDaniel, & Jeff Kruse







Community Service at the MV Food Bank

The boys had the opportunity to participate in a wonderful 'giving' project on September 29th.  There is a relatively new program in the Kent School District that helps to supply food to children who qualify for a free and/or reduced lunch during the school week.  A lot of times these children don't have enough to eat at home, so backpacks are filled with food for them to take home for the weekend.  A well-fed child makes a much more successful student!  The children are given the full backpacks on a Friday and they must return them the following Monday if they want to continue to receive the food-filled backpacks for the following week.  It was awesome for our boys to help serve their community and we look forward to doing it again in the spring!  

An assembly line was set up and the boys were instructed to take a few items from each section to fill their packs.

Thank you to Ellen Shelden (Wolf Mom) for arranging this awesome community service project for our Pack!

School Landscaping Service Project

At the beginning of this year one of our Pack Moms, Ellen Shelden, saw a need for a landscaping improvement at our school.  Actually I think we all saw the need, but Ellen actually took an idea and ran with it.  She and Alison Kruse coordinated a service project for our Pack to be involved with.  Ellen did months of communicating with our school principal and with the district in order to even get permission to begin.  She wanted to start a gardening program at our school and she wanted it to start with beautifying the front of our school.  Ellen has even enlisted one of our second grade teachers to head the program with the students during the school year.  Alison got Iddings to donate a few truckloads of compost and our scout dads picked it up and hauled it on the actual project day.  We didn't have a great showing of volunteers for the project because of conflicting summer vacations, but the volunteers that did show up worked extremely hard and did an awesome job!  My family was among the many who were out of town on vacation during this service project (we were there in spirit though), but a BIG thanks goes out to the Shelden family, the Kruse family, the McDaniel family, the Keane family, and the Montry family  (I hope I'm not missing anyone)!  Thank you also to Jane McDaniel for documenting the day with these photos!

This is the first phase of the improvement project.  It was all about clearing out weeds and virtually dead plants and then prepping and letting the compost sit and stew and do its magic.  The work was more difficult than originally anticipated.  A big thank you goes out to all of the Dads (and moms) that helped out.  We really needed their muscle power!

Skyler and Matthew attempting to move a boulder.

Jeff Kruse and John Shelden clearing the last of the compost out of the truck.

Skyler, Lucas Montry, and Matthew at the beginning of the project.

I wish I had the BEFORE photo so you could see the HUGE improvement in the AFTER picture.  The next phase will take place in mid to late October.  We will be planting native, drought tolerant plants that are going to be donated by the Maple Valley Arboretum (thanks to Ellen for procuring!).  We envision this area with bird feeders, stepping stones, and maybe a bench or two.  I must also mention a really big thank you to my Master Gardener friend, Stacy Lynam, who is helping us with garden design and plant selection.  She has been an invaluable help so far!

Christmas Tree Pick-Up

Today was the completion of our Pack's biggest fundraiser of the year.  Once again, we got lucky with the weather (it was dry!) and the pick-up went really fast!  Our Den started in Crest Air Park and, unfortunately, there weren't many trees, so we headed over to help finish up in Winterwood.  The boys did a great job helping get those huge trees in the trucks and we had great overall participation!