We are getting close to the end of the Pathfinder year now. This is the part that I like to call the “sprint to the finish” as there are still a ton of things to do, a ton of things to schedule around, and not a lot of time left to do any of it.

We still need to teach knot tying, and I only have one week available for that. We are having a club campout in April, and conference Camporee in May.

We have been invited to the Laconia Adventist Church to present our “Plagues of Egypt” newscast, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to get the whole club there for that. But I would still like to do that for several reasons. It’s a lot of fun to do, the Laconia Church has asked us to do it, and they regularly record and broadcast their church services on the local cable access channel. Meaning it would finally be recorded on video and I could upload it to Youtube and link to it here.

Furthermore, the date they have offered for us is April 7 – which is the beginning of Passover. I can’t think of a more appropriate time to do our skit on the Passover than on Passover.

We also plan to take the club to a swimming pool to work on their swimming skills, and for the Camporee we need to prepare for two competitions. One is a race to build an A-frame ladder by lashing wooden poles together with rope. The other is – back by popular demand – a cardboard boat race. We did that in 2009, and I blogged about it several times then. We do not have a lot of time to get a lake-worthy boat ready, but I think we can do it. I have not been able to think of a better way to build a cardboard boat, so we’re going to do it the same way as before.

"The" Cardboard Canoe, next to my cedar strip canoe


In addition to all that, we still have two or three Honors we have started but not finished, plus we would like to pilot a new Honor that David has been putting together. From yesterday’s post, you might be able to guess what this Honor is about.

The things we have to schedule around include Easter weekend, Mother’s Day, and the conference’s annual Music Clinic which several of our Pathfinders (including me and Beth) will attend. Also the Adventurers will have their annual Spring Escape weekend which Va and I will attend too.

So the six remaining meetings we have are going to be full of frantic (but fun) activity.

Now that we have finished raising money to go to Holbrook Indian School, we need to begin raising money to go to the International Camporee in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. That will take place in two and a half years (August 2014). To that end, we will sweep the church’s parking lot (we always wait for our snow plow guy to turn in a bid for sweeping it, and then the club underbids him). We will also have our annual yardsale on Memorial Day weekend.

Then to wrap the year up, we will have our Investiture service (when we award insignia) followed by Fun Day (which is the last thing we do for the year). This year we might go to Canobie Lake amusement park.

So it looks like we will be running full out for the next two months. If I didn’t love doing this, I would be one miserable person. 😀