Marble Madness, Monster Jam, Garden Prepping

Marble Madness

My last scout project for the year and it was a success. Marble Madness is an exercise where the scouts build their own maze and use a marble to travel through it. I started by giving them a maze on paper, where we talked about having a goal and all of the little pitfalls in it that are dead ends, but how if we keep searching we’ll reach the end (metaphor for life!). They had a blast. Some scouts themed theirs and then some created little characters that told a story. Some had ramps and traps. It was fun. For this bring lots of tape, straws, post it notes, markers and of course scissors. 10/10 would do this again. It also taught teamwork, collaboration, and planning. I instructed them to plan and then build so they could get some practice designing something. It was clear the few who jumped right in did not finish on time, and thus learned the value of planning!

Monster Jam

We took the boys to see Monster Jam at the arena and we had fun although I’m not sure we’ll see this again in the future. I bought these tickets before we realized the Hot Wheels show was in town also, so we actually saw TWO monster truck shows, maybe one too many. The arena is just a hard place to watch these, but I’ll say overall the show is fun if you have little ones. My youngest son is the monster truck fan, but I’ll admit I like them too, especially Grave Digger. Speaking of which, old GD bit it twice in the show and needed to be towed out. We didn’t get to see much of him, and also missed the famous donut and mud slinging in the show. The other famous trucks were there too, and we got to see Megaladon do it’s famous backflip.

I’ve always wanted to see the Monster Jam World Finals where they get in a larger stadium and just go nuts. This year was in Nashville so we missed an opportunity there, but we didn’t find out about it until too late. Next year my understanding is that it will be in LA and I don’t see us flying out for that next year. Perhaps they’ll come back east in 2025 although I am not sure my sons will be that interested in it, but I guess that doesn’t matter because I think it’s cool.

Garden Prepping

This year’s garden is started in the basement and I hope to have a great vegetable garden this year. My focus – tomatoes. I’ll have eight different varieties in a 30 by 30 foot section, which means roughly 128 plants. I am on the lookout for another fencing solution to keep the deer out. I have 7 foot deer fence and need a temporary way to install it. One idea is to screw 4 foot metal fence posts into my wood posts and create height, and another involves shepherd’s hooks that I can remove and store in the garage. More on this to come.