My oldest is Star Rank in scouts so we decided he needs to knock out some Eagle required merit badges this summer. To go from Star to Life rank, you go from 4 Eagle required merit badges to 7. I want him to get to Life because Eagle is by far the hardest to accomplish, but to get to Life, he needs 3 more Eagle required badges.
The four merit badges he had for Star were First Aid, Swimming, Environmental Science, and Hiking. It counted for four required badges, but that’s really only three that count for Eagle because you swimming and hiking are either/or badges. My goal was to get him four more Eagle required completed this summer, and he was on board because he knows he needs them.
I signed him up for Emergency Preparedness at Moody Gardens on Sunday. They have great merit badge classes. We worked on prerequisites that morning which is really stressful for me, but honestly the kid was not tracking when we were doing these things. We got it done, and I was able to drive him there and drop him off and pick him up easily. A lot of other scouts in his troop ended up taking it at summer camp, but he did Camping even though it was a partial.
We decided that this would be the week of merit badges. We signed up for Communication, Citizenship in the Nation, and Citizenship in the World three days in a row at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS). I also signed up my other son who is Tenderfoot rank for all three of these merit badges at HMNS this week. If I am taking one kid, I might as well take both!
We started the prerequisites for Communication and Citizenship in the Nation a while ago, but of course for both we didn’t have everything buttoned up until the night before each class. That is so stressful for me as a mom.
Tomorrow is Citizenship in the World, and thankfully there were no prerequisites for that class so my stress this evening can switch to other areas…such as packing for my son’s trip to Summit Bechtel. They leave Friday!!
I took off this week because we have a lot going on this week with these merit badges, the championship swim meet, the trip my oldest is going on, and the 4th of July celebrations in my neighborhood.