On His Own Merits

There was a Court of Honor on Wednesday and Z cleaned up. He is now a 2nd Class Scout and he earned 11 Merit Badges! The Merit Badges he earned this time are:

Safety, Nuclear Science, Oceanography, Dentistry, Entrepreneurship, First Aid, Computers, Engineering, Chemistry, Photography and Golf. Way to go Z!

This is a picture of Zac and his friend Gus cooking and eating onions for their Chemistry Merit Badge.

This Merit Badge about killed me. Nuclear Science. Or, since I did vote for Bush and I am from Texas, Nucular Science. Zac and Gus were taking this Merit Badge class from someone who probably knew what they were talking about. But there were a few prerequisites they had to do before the class and the person helping them with those (AKA: Me) felt like she was reading a foreign language. I would try to read a sentence and this is how my brain processed it, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, bla bla".

We muddled our way through all the prereqs until we got to the last one. It said, "Choose an element from the periodic table. Construct 3-D models for the atoms of three isotopes of this element, showing neutrons, protons, and electrons. Use the three models to explain the difference between atomic number and mass number." Yeah, whatever. At this point my brain was already fried. I googled that thing up one side and down the other. And the more I googled, the more confrused I became. AHHHHHHH! Steve was out of town at the time so I called my neighbor who is a math major (YUCK! I KNOW!) and is one of the smartest people I know. Thankfully she is also one of the nicest people I know too. She came right over and within minutes she had us on the right track.

The next day I had to go to the Library to get the boys some books on Oceanography. The librarian showed me the books and then asked if I wanted to check out the Oceanography Merit Badge book also. She said it pretty much has all the answers and explanations for all the requirements. SAY WHAT!?! I wanted to hit her and kiss her at the same time. THANK YOU TO NO ONE FOR TELLING ME SUCH A THING EXISTED BEFORE I ABOUT KILLED MYSELF WITH NUCLEAR SCIENCE!

Anyhoo. Congratulations to Zac. I am proud of him and all the hard work he has done to earn so many Merit Badges.