Jeraldean and I had a little bit of Halloween spirit and carved these pumpkins this afternoon. We have a few kids coming around but not very many. Matthew, my son, is staying with us until he goes on his mission. Oh, and by the way he got his mission call on Thursday. He is going to spend two years in the Philippines Laoag Mission. He is pretty excited, this is a picture of him using technology and talking to his Mom in one ear and his sister in the other.

I have to post this because it is well worth recording in anything! Larry has collected a lot of patches that he earned in his entire scouting career and has wanted a blanket or a poncho to put them on and display them. This summer he will be working a scout camp on Flathead Lake around Kalispell, Montana. He is very excited about doing this and decided this would be the time to put those patches on something. We were going to do fleece but decided that wasn't a good idea around fires. So we were in a store looking at dutch ovens and came upon some wool blankets that had been marked way down because they had been eaten by moths. They were only $15 each. We picked out two that were in the best shape and went on our way. We didn't see any good prices for dutch ovens. The blankets are Very heavy. I am sure that the poncho weighs about 30 pounds or more. Sewing all the patches on got a little more difficult as I went. The blankets are heavy and with the patches on it got harder to manover them around on the sewing machine. The front has 150 patches on it and the back has 75. ( I think that is what I counted on the back). Each row took me about an hour or more depending on how many were in the row and how many patches were already on the poncho. I am so glad to have this project done. It has been fun seeing Larry come and check to see how far I was and what patches were on. He also has a collection of pins that he put on it. This is not the end of the patches though. He still has more for me to put on the front and every time he goes on a campout or does some training he comes home with a patch.