The Eagle Has (Nearly) Landed

Owen has performed a near miracle in pulling off his Eagle project with days to spare before he turns eighteen. It's not a feat I recommend for the faint of heart! It's a long story, but let's just say that if there was a merit badge for handling bureaucracy, Owen would have earned it with ease. His project? Creating journals for hospitalized children.

This past week was Get 'Er Done week. We started with a work day at Grandma's house for anyone, family or friends, who could help cover composition notebooks with fun scrapbook paper. Owen and Aunt Keli devised the perfect system: create a cardboard pattern to cut out scrapbook paper to fit the cover of the notebooks and then people could grab pre-sliced sheets to glue onto the covers. Owen rounded up rolls of fun duct tape to cover the spines or covers as people wished too. Lots of people donated supplies to make this happen. Unfortunately, Owen couldn't get any businesses on board (one of those fun bureaucracy experiences to check off on the Bureaucracy merit badge workbook). 

Owen slicing the paper, looking official.

Grandma Kennington watched over the whole operation.  Owen looks a little less official.

Lauri waits for Jay to dig out some glue from a glue stick to use. We discovered one glue stick would take care of about four notebooks, and we ran out. Jay rescued the day by running to get more.

Rebecca Call helps out, while Liam entertains Jared in the background.

Bronwyn and Aunt Amy wax creative.

Tyler, Evan, and Mark work on their journals. Those boys put together some great journal covers!

Owen, Bronwyn, and SharLee finish up the last few of the day.

Owen held a second work night at our house. Some of our friends came to help.

Journals for hospitalized children!!

More journals. We tried to get a good blend of boy, girl, and neutral themed journals.

The Man with his project donation! 125 journals and 149 pens.

The group turning in the journals to the hospital.

This project was particularly fun because it was an easy one to involve lots of people of different ages in. If you could wield a glue stick and a pair of scissors reasonably well you could help. I think our youngest helper was 7 years old. It was a project, too, that someone could spend ten minutes on and feel like they accomplished something great. Each journal took about ten minutes to create for the less elaborate ones, and so if someone just had a few minutes to spare they could make a difference.

These journals will be used as a specific part of a child's therapy in the hospital, as recommended by their care team. The donation coordinator seemed very impressed that Owen brought so many. I'm so proud of Owen for sticking with this, not giving up in spite of the extremely shortened timeline, and working to involve so many people.

Now for the last part of the Bureaucracy merit badge: the final paperwork. We're almost there!