The Beaulieu Bunch: Eagle Court of Honor and Jeff's birthday

After we got back from the Little People of America Convention we had a couple of days to get Jacob ready for a week at scout camp.

Before he left we slipped in a quick visit to the Allen kids on the last afternoon before they were back off to Oregon. We haven't seen them in a year so they were happy to be reunited for a bit.

Jacob went for 6 days and went on to earn most of his requirements for 7 merit badges!

While Jacob was gone we decided to go to the beach with friends. Taylor wasn't excited to go so we thought inviting a couple of cousins might help.

He still didn't want to go (much to their dissapointment) but that was OK we had a nice girls day at the beach. Jenae and Jolene were great :)

Jenae getting burried in the sand...well just her foot.

Jolene!

Our friend Maddie (not the dog)

Ashley likes to get buried in the sand...and then when she stands up her legs look like churros.

The girls! (with Mclain in the background)

On the way back to the car I promised to let Ashley swim on the bay side. Jenae just hung out in the lifeguard tower.

Jolene had Ashley float on a boogie board (we borrowed from our beach neighbors) and wanted to go out to touch this sign...whatever warning that was on it couldn't be seen in high tide.

When the other kids came over to our side they all got in on the action :)

Finally I loaded everyone up to go home. As we started driving I found out that the girls had to be home by 7:00, or before would be better.

What? I asked them why since mutual was on Wednesdays.

They said no its been changed to Tuesdays, what time will we be home, my parents are asking. Ahhhh we were sitting in gridlock not even on the 91. I did the best I could but we didn't pull up until 7:00 :)

This week we also were getting ready for Taylor's Eagle court of Honor (and Jeff's surprise birthday dinner that he wasn't supposed to know about sssshhhh)

We had a parent committee that split up and took assignments. Mine was to get stuff in the media. So I contact the Press Enterprise and the Latter Day Trumpet....then I didn't hear back from them. Parents started asking when the articles would be out. Luckily I heard back from the reporter and it was scheduled to be run on the Thursday before the court of honor. After much back and forth with the reporter for information and picture gathering from the parents of the scouts the article finally ran in the paper. Wheeewww, I was glad I came through on my assignment.

(The Latter Day Trumpet ran the article on their online paper)

All week I was getting together Taylor's book/scrapbook. Tina Bell (one of the parents) sent letters to all sorts of government leaders, presidents, former presidents, church and local leaders telling about our scouts getting their eagles. So now we had a stack of congratulation letters and certificates to put in these books to put on display.

I also scrapbooked some of Taylor's scouting stuff that I had pictures for.

I tried to put pictures that went with the letter...this one was from the school superintendent.

The day of the Court of Honor came and we were busy trying to get ready. Jeff's birthday was going to be on Monday but since he would be driving up to Utah to spend a week with the scouts at scout camp we needed to celebrate before he left. So I figured I could have whatever family was coming down for Taylor's Eagle Court of honor come early for dinner. I didn't want to tell Jeff though because I didn't want him to stress about it at all. So how could I keep Jeff unaware that I was party planning right under his nose??

He went on some errands like getting balloons for our decorations that night...good now I can cut up the fruit stuff...

The funny thing was that he kept bringing stuff into the house to pack for camping and I kept bringing it out to the garage so that the house would be clean for his family coming over.

It didn't help that Jacob got back for his week long scout camp and we had all his dirty clothes and camping stuff to clean up. Ohhh yeah I was trying to do laundry at the same time as trying to hide the laundry mess all day ;)

I was hoping he wouldn't notice anything but he was wondering where all the snacks he had set out on the back counter had gone...when he saw them in the garage he complained some he probably thought I was a little crazy but he never caught on.

In the end he ran out to get gas just as people were scheduled to start coming.

He was so distracted about getting ready for everything he didn't have a clue that I was trying to surprise him. When he got back to the house and some of his family was there he still didn't have a clue. Finally I to tell him what we were doing.

He said "why didn't you tell me??"" Well it was supposed to be a surprise! :)

He was surprised. We had El Pollo Loco and got to hang out a bit before it was time to go down to the church for the court of honor. The plan was to have the party stuff done before but since some family was walking in the door as we had to walk out we had to wait until after to do cake and ice-cream.

The birthday kids all with within days of each other.

Make a wish...

Now on to the Court of Honor

We were so proud of Taylor and these guys who all got their Eagle.

Celebrating

There were about 250 people or so who came out to see our 7 boys get their awards.

Lots of friends and family were there to celebrate with us.

Each boy had a display table with all their "stuff"

I even put out some of Taylor's cub scout things...I found some cars and other things he made.

Captain Loveland of the fire department was part of this honor guard and they did our flag ceremony with style. The bagpipes and their flag ceremony was a very impressive way to start out the Cour of Honor.