Monday, February 28, 2011

Nearly an Eagle & Serious Sandbox Activity

It is an exciting time in Ethan's life. This, being on the brink of adulthood - is exciting. Some days it almost feels like parts of his life are like a movie.

On Sunday night Frank, his first Scoutmaster, stopped by the house to pick up Ethan's Eagle project notebook and have him sign the final paperwork. There will be a board of review, the final one, on Tuesday evening. Should all go well, he will officially be an Eagle by Thursday. There were times, especially when he was about 13 or 14 that I thought he would not hang in there long enough to get to this point. He pulled out all of his patches, his awards, his old uniforms. I think that is when the significance of all this began to hit him. We began talk of what his celebration will look like and what would occur. I'm proud of him. I just hope his final review goes as we expect.

Ethan has been chasing other dreams as well. He has ALWAYS loved digging and mining. For over a week now he has been leading an exploration of the geology at school.

A team of kids have excavated a small section of the sanbox in hopes of finding gold. The school sits on what was once a major river bed so getting to the water table was not very hard.

Ethan called in Dave, a professional mining engineer, to give him advice. Dave and Ethan spent a good part of the afternoon in consultation and ended up purchasing a pump to remove the water. It will be reserved in some fashion so that it may be used in the sluice box.

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