Allan's Photoblog
The Godfather
Dan, my brother, and Tracy, my sister-in-law, had a baby this summer. This past weekend, we went to visit them for D’s baptism, and I stood as godfather.
W and J were quite taken with D, as well as with their dogs. They were both allowed to hold the baby, which was a treat for them as well as for us adults to witness.
D is a remarkably quiet baby, and he doesn’t seem at all bothered by the dogs barking a lot.
After visiting on Saturday night (after a long flight to New England), then all day Sunday for the baptism and just to hang out, and then a brief morning visit on Monday, we visited Boston for a Duck Tour. We also made a brief pilgrimage to the Cheers bar before heading to the airport for the return.
Scout Retreat
I’m teaching the Ad Altare Dei religious emblem to a group of five scouts from W’s troop, and this weekend, I took four of them plus one dad (to provide two-deep adult leadership) to the 2015 Scout Retreat hosted by the Catholic Committee on Scouting in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (CCSALA). Attending this retreat helps fulfill requirements for the AAD emblem. The retreat was held at the Veterans Memorial Park in Sylmar.
We were lucky — the weather wasn’t blazing hot. It was a very pleasant day.
I had a car problem on the way up, so I had to get Hsuan to drive out to swap cars while I attended the retreat. It turned out that one of the spark plugs died in the Odyssey.
Steve (the other dad) and I joined other adults in group discussion sessions throughout the day, while our scouts were divided and joined other scouts for assorted discussion and activity. We broke for lunch at noon, and we gathered together near our cars for the sandwiches we had brought. We also had a daily (Saturday) Mass mid-afternoon.
Dinner was at 5 PM, and I didn’t want sandwiches, so I proposed that we got to a nearby pizza place. We ordered one extra large meat-lover’s pizza and another large half-cheese, half sausage, pepperoni, and mushrooms. Between the six of us, we polished off all but one or two slices.
We returned by 7 PM for Benediction and then left for home.
All of us received special patches commemoriating the retreat. We were also given a chance to get the Rosary Patch, which involved answering 5 questions posed by our group facilitators. During my five questions, at questions 3-5, I started giving long, detailed answers, and Jim (our facilitator) kept interrupting me to say, “Okay, moving on.” Andrea, the next adult to try the test, answered all but one question, but he asked her a sixth and awarded her the patch.
Steve, hilariously, couldn’t answer any question, it seemed, despite some of the questions being the same that were asked of us. Andrea and I kept trying to give him hints, and in the end, I think Jim must have asked him way more than 5 and finally just awarded him the patch.
I picked up the patches when I checked us out after the Benediction.