Aloha, Blue and Gold

Last month, we had our Blue and Gold ceremony. The theme this year was Hawaiian, which you might think is a cute, easy idea. But with boys, little hula dancers in grass skirts is not their idea of a cool theme. Still, they were pretty into the leis we bought them to wear.

After years of neither den ever winning any kid of table decoration or cake decoration award, I took matters into my own hands. I wish I had gotten a better picture of how cute the table for Ryan's den ended up turning out.  Each boy had decorated their own brown paper surfboard, and we laminated them for their placemats. I bought some new sand pails at the dollar store and filled them with sand and put shovels and little drink umbrellas in them for centerpieces, and I brought in all the shells I had around the house and filled them in some of my old cylinder candle vases from our wedding. I also picked up some of these cardboard flowers and scattered them around the light green tablecloth. And guess what? We won second place (out of 14 dens) for table decorations! Color me happy. A new ribbon for our den flag.

Alex's den went with a true "Hawaiian" read on the theme, and one of our moms made this cake. And just in case you couldn't figure out what those cake blobs in the middle of the blue jello were, she printed out a map of the Hawaiian Islands. And we ended up winning second place for the cake! What a pleasant change of events, from never winning, to winning for both dens.

The boys had a great time, and our now on their way to being Bears...

And Webelo IIs. Yikes! Stop growing, Alex.