Good evening T648!
This has been an amazing week of leadership, and recognition for it, for the troop. We held our Winter Court of Honor Tuesday night, and almost a dozen of our scouts advanced in rank, while a number of merit badges and other awards were acknowledged and received.  We also had a visual review of our last four months’ worth of events prepared by our very capable historian, and a wealth of treats and snacks prepared by you! But the most excellent items for me were the terrific contributions from our scouts in leading the ceremony itself. Mr. Benyi decided to retire the Mr. McFetters and Mr. Cole presentations for this COH, and leverage our boy leaders in our boy-led troop to marvelous results! Many thanks for his coordination of this new way to leverage the creativity of our scouts, and for all of your execution resulting in a memorable night.
Continuing deeper into scouting’s red carpet week, over 20 of our troop’s adult leaders attended the annual awards ceremony for the BSA Four Peaks District on Thursday – the largest of any district troop there by far. The highlight of the evening was the awarding of the Four Peaks Amethyst Award (the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award in scouting) to our own Mr. Butler. It was for his many years of service in various roles within the troop, district and council levels, but also an acknowledgement of his tremendous support for the last few National Jamborees, and the incredible work he has done over time to create and develop the Arizona Scouting Museum. Mr. Butler shared the spotlight with his scouting brother, son and wife – a truly family affair, to a standing-O and much fanfare. But there was more! Mr. Benyi was also recognized with a District Award of Merit for the countless hours that he puts into scouting support at the troop and district level in a multitude of capacities, and Mr. Cole was awarded Scoutmaster of the Year for the district.  Now, we all know that scouting is all about the boys.  And the tremendous support for the boys in our troop is evidenced by the countless hours invested by our dozens of excellent T648 adults supporting our boy leaders, and the respect BSA has for our program.  But the bottom line is that the program is YOU! Congratulations!
This past weekend we have had 21 troop scouts and scouters blasting down the slopes at Sunrise Ski Resort in the White Mountains. There was an additional 14 inches of the white stuff yesterday, so it has been a snow-filled weekend for our intrepid hill-toppers. There was so much snow that it may have been a bit challenging for some of the new skiers, but for the more experienced – it was some of the best skiing ever in Arizona. After the traditional thorns and roses (with mostly roses), they arrived back in the valley very early afternoon cold and tired from a most excellent outing on the slopes.
This week we will have an adult leader meeting at SWC tomorrow night at 7PM, and will make up our PLC from last week on Tuesday night at 6PM, followed by our normal troop meeting.  Be thinking of your input to the 2nd Newsletter – I’m anticipating that a number of you will have content either before, during, or after PLC this week! (outings, fundraising, service projects, meeting minutes, historian, librarian, etc – you can all contribute!). Please also remember to bring the February installment of $100 toward summer camp, or designate it to come out of your scout account. Bring your SOR ticket sales money sold to date to the troop meeting this week, and get the full amount due to you. You can continue to sell, but bring what you have so far. Please remember as well that although the calendar shows the fish fries beginning this week, due to the remodeling at the church they are not occuring this year. Instead, we will have a service project later this month to completely redo the inside of our shed – led by the elder young Mr. Jeorling.
See you Tuesday night at the troop meeting!
Mr. Cole