The Secret Society

Today, Dallin and I decided to form a secret society after school. Shh! Don't say it out loud! Remember, it's secret. That's why the word "secret" is in the word "secret society". Anyway, it started when I said, "Hey, Dallin, you wanna make a secret society?"

Then he said, "Sure!" Then Jaren was wondering what we were talking about, so we told him he could be part of our secret society.

Secret societies are awesome, you know? People just go around thinking, "Oh yeah, that guy is just a normal guy," when really, that guy could be part of the Knight's Templar or the Illuminati or part of the Opus Dei, or some other secret society mentioned in one of Dan Brown's books!

Yeah, we should have a secret meeting. No, we should have a secret secret society meeting. No, we should have a secret secret society meeting of secrecy! We should think of a name for our secret society, and maybe even a secret symbol for our secret society! I already have some ideas for a symbol. Maybe we could have a snake with Ballal's head on it? Anyway, I'll update on our secret society soon. Very soon. Very very soon. Very very very soon.

Teddy

Today is officially Teddy's 12th birthday, which means we got to welcome him into our troop. Our next deacon may be Brandon Wilhelmson, who will join us I think some time in October 2009, and I know Dewlin Rosdahl and Ryan Hales will join us in January 2010!

Advance Camp

Well, today, we embarked on another journey. Only, it wasn't as far away as Scout Camp over in the Toiyabe National Forest Area (a.k.a. Hoover Wilderness). We only went over to a place called Advance Camp in Antioch, California, which is only 30 or 40 miles away. What is Advance Camp you ask? It's some place where Boy Scouts from the Contra Costa County can pass off several requirements for just about any merit badge!

Jaren, Jeremy, Aden (who's now a teacher), and I met at the Church at about 7:00 A.M. Nobody else seemed to be coming, so we all started driving to Advance Camp in Jeremy's dad's car, while the bishop picked up Alec and Rick. On the way to Antioch, Jaren and I took some pictures of the scenery rolling by.

After about 30 minutes of driving, we got to Antioch, but it looked more like the outskirts of Las Vegas more than a town in Northern California. It was really dry, hot, and there were lots of palm trees.

(No, that's not us in that picture. It's some other Boy Scout Troop). Anyway, we walked across the parking lot a ways and across some wooden bridge that looked like it could be some Eagle Scout project. We saw an advertisement on a car for donating your old cell phones. It showed a lady with a phone from the 1980's. It was pretty big, and Jeremy called it "a brick with numbers on it". As Jeremy's dad got us registered in, we just sat around.

And Jaren tried to get into a small wooden shack, but there were nails nailed in front of the door, so he couldn't get in.

Then, Jeremy's dad came out of the registration building with a bunch of green shirts that said: "Advance Camp: Honoring 100 Years of Boy Scouts of America" (as you can see Jeremy was really thrilled)!

As we waited some more for Alec, Rick, and the bishop, we looked at all the other Boy Scout Troops. A lot of them didn't even have scout shirts. They just had t-shirts with their troop number on them. Then there was Troop 485 who had some pretty snazzy Russian hats.

Then there was Troop 236 who had girly flowers and their t- shirts.

Finally Alec and Rick came, but there was only one shirt left. They fought for it, and Rick won, but it was too small, so we tried stretching it out. Then we got another shirt for Alec.

We walked over to the grassy field and waited for the flag ceremony.

We watched the flag ceremony, and then we went to pass off some requirements for merit badges. Rick worked on the Music merit badge, Jeremy, Jaren, and Alec worked on the Chemistry merit badge, I did the Emergency Preparedness merit badge, and Aden did the Citizenship in the Community merit badge (shown as listed below).

A lot of the merit badge stations were inside a bunch of warehouse buildings. All the educational merit badges, like Emergency Preparedness were in Building #3. At first, I couldn't find the Emergency Preparedness merit badge station, but I did find some pretty cool merit badges like Aviation and Nuclear Science! I did eventually find the Emergency Preparedness merit badge station. It also got really hot outside, up to about 100 degrees! All the doors were open (but that didn't really help).

For part of the merit badge, I had to go outside to learn about signaling for help. Outside, I saw a giant UFO somebody made. Anyway, we worked on merit badges until noon, and then we got to eat lunch. The camp made us barbeque sandwiches, and they weren't that bad! We talked about what we did in the merit badge stations. Jeremy, Jaren, and Alec made slime in Chemistry. Rick made a banjo out of wood, wires, and a tuna can.

Anyway, we got to eat lunch for a while, and since we already payed for Dallin and Jason Bromley's lunch, (because we thought they were going to come), we got to get extra sandwiches and chips!

Then we went back to working on merit badges. Jaren and I worked on Family Life in Building #3. Alec and Jeremy worked on Emergency Preparedness in Building #3. Rick worked on Communications, and Aden worked on Citizenship in the World (shown as listed below).

When we were done with merit badges, Jaren didn't believe there was a UFO outside, so I proved that there was and showed him the badly silver-painted UFO out back. Then, we all left early because we really didn't want to see BMX show the camp had. I thought they just hired some Weblo scouts to bring their bikes and do figure eights around and around (then again, I'm sure that's worth something for the Cycling merit badge)! Aden, Jaren and I walked back to the bishop's car. On the way, we saw a big teepee!

Then, on the way home, Jaren kept taking video of me from Pittsburg to Walnut Creek. Luckily, we deleted all the videos. But today, if you combine all the merit badges we worked on, you'd get a giant variety of badges!

Game Night

Today, we had a video game night at Taylor Jackson's house to welcome Ben Clark into the troop. I was the first one there and I brought Guitar Hero III. Then, Rick came with a big box of Dance Dance Revolution and Rayman Raving Rabbids. Then, he started playing with some toy phone he found.

The next person to come was Teddy, who brought Guitar Hero Metallica with him. Then, we got to finally meet Ben! He seemed like a good kid, and we were glad to have him in the troop. Also, he brought Super Smash Brothers Brawl!

After Ben, came Jeremy, Jaren and Brent Spencer, then five of us started making pizzas. When we rolled out the dough, Rick tried to toss the dough, but it only got about two inches of air.

While we made the pizzas, Jeremy and Teddy battled each other in Guitar Hero.

Some of our pizzas were done, so we ate, and then we played Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Dallin, Alec, and Kyle Worley came, so Dallin got to help make more pizzas.

Anyway, Ben beat us every single time at Super Smash Brothers! It was awesome! Our first battle was when Ben was Mettaknight, Jaren was Samus, I was Pikachu, and Rick was Fox. Rick died first, then I died, then Jaren died, so Ben won.

The next battle was epic at the end! Jeremy was Link and Ben was Olimar. Ben kept punching Jeremy off the edge, but he kept bouncing back on the ledge and backfire at Ben. But just when you thought Ben was long gone, he bounced up and clung on to the edge. Then, he beat Jeremy! It was amazing!

Then there was one round that was really bizarre. The background had a cartoon pig face on an elevator. Every once in a while, the elevator doors would open and there would be some thing strange, like some disco guy and Auguste Rodin's The Thinker sitting down on the floor.

After a while, Alec showed us the slideshow he made for his Citizenship in the Community merit badge. It was great! He told about some of the landmarks in our community, and the famous people who lived here.

After his presentation, we had ice cream sundaes with French Vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm!

Then, Rick, Dallin, and I played Dance Dance Revolution. My final grade was an E.

Then, Ben was picked up by his sister and his cousin, and the rest of us went to play practice, but I still had my Guitar Hero guitar, so after play practice, I walked around to people I knew and pretended to rock out.

Anyway, play practice went well, we learned the song Go Go Joseph and we worked on The Pharaoh's Song and Pharaoh's Dream Explained.

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head!

The past weekend has had some strange weather! On Friday, it was bright and sunny. The temperature was about 95 degrees.

Then, on Saturday, I woke up from a loud rumble. I peeked out the window, and it was cold and cloudy. It was a thunderstorm! The temperature was about 60 degrees.

On Sunday, it was still cloudy in the morning. Then, in the evening, it started raining!

On Monday, today, it was cold and cloudy in the morning, and then the temperature rose up to about 70 degrees.

Well, there's the weird weekend weather. It went from sunny and bright to cold and clammy!

More Helium

In Sunday School at Church today, we found several more helium balloons from Saturday! Jaren didn't believe that helium made you're voice squeaky, and that we were just faking it. Even Victoria Rosdahl did it, and her voice was more squeakier since it's higher than ours.

Jaren tried it, and it didn't work. When he said, "See it didn't work!" it became squeaky for about a second. Well, there you go, Dallin, Jeremy, and I were right!

Emergency Preparedness Fair

(Click on the flyers to get a full view)

Today was the Emergency Preparedness Fair at Church. There were a lot of people not from church that came. We must've done an awesome job last week putting flyers on people's doors!

Some of us scouts were supposed to do Kitchen Duty I walked over to the Church, and met Rick just as he was leaving, who told me to go into the Kitchen to do Kitchen Duty, but when I went inside the Kitchen in the Church, and there were several old ladies doing everything! So, I just walked around the Fair.

After I found Rick, I couldn't really find anyone else. I found Taylor Aplanalp, one of my friends that's a girl, but then I couldn't find her again. So I wandered around and went inside a fire truck. There was a cool surveillance camera on the top of the truck, and you could watch its monitor inside the truck.

Then I found Ashlyn Brushke, another girl friend of mine. She then showed me where Jeremy, Dallin, and some of our girl friends were. There I found Dallin sucking in the helium out of a green balloon.

We went inside to try to get some more balloons, but they stopped giving them away. I did see Alec making bread though!

Then, we tried to chase Jeremy around. We couldn't find him, but we did find our friend Victoria Rosdahl. Then Alison Spencer gave Dallin her orange balloon, and he sucked in some more helium.

Wr got bored, so tried jumping over a 5 foot pole. Dallin jumped onto the top of one, so he said he was a ninja. I think Victoria was more ninja than Dallin because she could actually jump over the pole!

Then, wen we were exiting the foyer of the Church, I saw a pink balloon in the corner of the ceiling. I snatched it up and sucked in the helium.

Then Dallin and I got tri tip sandwiches. I also saw Brother Spencer eating a tri tip sandwich as well. I went to get some gunk out of my braces, but then I lost Dallin, Jeremy, and Alec for a while. Then after a couple minutes, I saw Jeremy, Alec, and Jenny Farrell in line for The Quake Cottage, a thrill ride where you sit in a trailer-like building and watch a video of a earthquake as the building shakes like an 8.0 earthquake!

Jeremy and I found Dallin eventually, but the fair was over by then, so we had to clean up. Yup. It was pretty fun!

Here's some videos of our helium voices:

A Sad Day

Dallin's Party

Dallin had a birthday party today. Him, Jaren, Jeremy, me, Rick and some of our girl friends (well, they're our friends that are girls) to Dallin's house. Alec, Kyle Makaiwi, and Kyle Worley came later.

We watched the movie Pride and Prejudice. Okay, you're probably thinking "Huh? Isn't that a girly Jane Austen movie?" Well, this movie was the LDS version. 

Whenever something romantic happened, Rick kept saying, "Aw, I love this movie!" (we heard him say it about 16 times)!

There's a bad guy in the movie and he has a weird upper lip. Dallin said the guy had plastic surgery on his lip and he would say, "Ew! Plastic surgery man!" Also, this one lady gets a fake engagement ring, and Dallin shouted, "It's fake! She got it from a cereal box!"

We also had popcorn and root beer floats (um, not together). But it was all pretty fun!

Play Practice

Today Alec, Dallin, Rick, Kyle Worley, Jaren, Jeremy, and I came to Play Practice. Also, Teddy came because his birthday will happen while we're doing the play, so he came too!

Anyway, we added on to The Pharaoh's Song, and we get to do some cool stunts with our PVC pipes. So, today was also pretty successful!

We Gain Some, We Lose Some

Alex Wright is now a Teacher, so he is not with us Deacons anymore. Sad. We'll miss him.

But don't worry, we have a new scout named Ben Clark! We haven't met him yet, but we might invite him to a Game Night!

Also, we are going to get some new scouts in the future. I think our next scout is Teddy Wright!

Citizenship in the Community

Today, our troop and some other troops got some requirements done for our Citizenship in the Community merit badge. The only guys from our troop that came were me and Dallin. Brother Spencer conducted the meeting. We did get some requirements done, which is good because this merit badge is an Eagle required merit badge!

The Day We Became Egyptians

The youth in our church are doing a play this year and the play is:

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat!

Dallin, Jaren, Kyle Makaiwi, Kyle Worley, Jeremy, and I are Egyptians. Alec is the Butler and Rick is the Baker. Then Alex Wright is Potipher.

Today was one of our first play practices. Alec, Dallin, Jeremy, Rick, Kyle Worley, and I came to the practice We had to practice the Pharaoh's Song, where the Pharaoh is explaining his dream to Joseph. Alot of us guys (except for Alec who has to hold a platter) get PVC pipes decorated as spears. Then we get to do a bunch of cool stuff with them. We also got our dance down to the Pharaoh's Song (we pretty much just bob up and down and wave our spears around).

So, yeah, tune in every Wednesday and Saturday to hear how we're doing on the play! If you want a synopsis of what the play is about click here.

Just an Update

Well, August is over and the school year is starting. We've all survived the first week of school, and I just wanted to update on how we're doing.

Alec, Jeremy, and I have started 8th grade. Dallin, Jaren, Rick, Kyle Makaiwi, and Kyle Worley have started 7th grade. Rick, Kyle Makaiwi, and I are all in Chorus together (and we're all Baritones)! Kyle Makaiwi and I are both in the same P.E. class (some classes at school have both 7th and 8th graders). Jeremy, Alec and I are all in the same English class.

Well, let's hope we can survive this school year!