We now have an Eagle Scout

Sunday was Cole’s Eagle court of honor. Having not been to an Eagle court of honor in quite some time, I didn’t really know what to expect, but I knew there must be food. I ordered 6 dozen brownies from the bakery, then made tons andtons of Eagle cookies. We went over to the church at 5:00 to set up.

(Not sure why cup stacking was required, but my kids kept stacking and unstacking the large stack of cups I brought. I blame minute to win it.)

We also had decorations, courtesy of my dad. He had made this set of Norman Rockwell scout pictures a few years back when he was over the scouts in his ward, and they came in handy for this occasion. My favorite is the large scout insignia made out of foam core. I thought it was the perfect compliment to the flags, and classed up the joint a bit.

We had set up quite a few chairs in the room, but it was quickly filling up with family, so we hurried to grab a few more chairs.

After the regular court of honor, they switched to Eagle mode and invited Cole up.

Cole looks pretty serious, like he’s going to be interrogated or something. I guess we forgot to tell him that this was a happy occasion. But Mom and Dad were certainly happy!

There were a lot of kind things said, some awards presented, some pins, and then it was done! It was wonderful to see so many of Cole’s leaders and friends and family members go over to the Eagle’s nest, too. I proudly wore my mother’s Eagle pin (I may wear it EVERY day) and Ryan promptly lost his father’s pin as soon as we sat down. No worries, we found it under a chair. They have a new mentor pin, and Cole chose to give that to our good friend and neighbor, J.B.
Cole thanked him for all the campouts he had gone on, and remembers a few years back when JB made him promise that he would get his Eagle. I didn’t know that, but it’s nice that so many leaders have helped him along the way. It was a sweet moment.

I am very proud of my boy. It was not easy to get all of this done, and many times he wanted to give up, but he stuck with it and finished it (before his 18th birthday, which is later this month). I have learned a thing or two about scouting as well, and I hope to be a better support and more organized about all this when John is working on his merit badges and hopefully his Eagle.

We ended with a slideshow that Cole had made. Funny story about that…I searched our archives of pictures and made a file of all the scouting related pictures I could find, plus a lot more that included Cole. I told him to chose from those pictures for his presentation. I was thinking a 5 minute thing, with maybe one or two songs would be fine. Well, he used ALL the pictures, and his presentation was about 25 minutes long. Oh, well. Although it was long, people watched the whole thing, and hopefully no one was annoyed that it was too long.

Way to go, Cole!