Bartlebean's Exotic Tropical Smoothie

1/3 cup vanilla yogurt

1 ripe mango

2 ripe bananas

1/3 of a fresh ripe pineapple

6 medium strawberries

1/2 cup passion fruit juice

Put it all in a blender and blend until smooth.

Put in the refrigerator if you want a chilled drink,

or drink it room temperature to enjoy the burst of great fresh flavors!

Ian and the Green Mountain Boys

Landscape picture from the top of Green Mountain

On April 18, my Boy Sout troop and I went on a hike up Green Mountain. About half way up, I tried to get a photo of a mountain range that was tipped in snow.

As you can see, the mountains didn't come out very well in the photo.

It took us two hours to get to the top. There were a LOT of sore feet when we were done, including mine, and we still had to go down. While we enjoyed the view, we ate our lunch, grateful to be off our feet. After lunch, we did a sweep of the area to ensure we hadn't dropped any garbage, as well as to pick up other people's garbage. We had just started heading down and were out of sight of the top when I called a halt so I could look for my handwarmers, which I had taken off before I ate. My scoutmaster intructed me to take a buddy to go back up and look for them. When my buddy and I were back at the top, I stopped and checked the side pocket of my backpack. I felt sheepish, realizing the handwarmers were in the pocket. My buddy and I waited a second and then took our time walking back to the troop so no one would suspect where the handwarmers had been. Incidentally, they were only about three minutes ahead of us.

On the way down, our troop did a service project by picking up trash on the trail. We ended up with three beer bottles and a lot of candy wrappers. It took us about an hour to get down, and our feet didn't hurt nearly as much. When we got to the bottom, we took a quick bathroom break, packed up, and left. Because there were no trash cans in the parking lot, we packed the garbage out with us to throw away once back at our starting point.

Thus is my story of Ian and the Green Mountain boys.

The "Green Mountain Boys" - Scout Troop 1532

Earth Day at Annapolis Beach

On occasion the boys get opportunities to do outings with their fellow scouts. This time the whole family was able to pitch in.

Daryn and the boys scan for glass.

The boys' Cub Scout troop participated in a community service project in conjunction with Earth Day. We all went down to the beach at 11 a.m. and donned our volunteer gear and starting picking up the beach. The glass was hard to see, especially when it was wedged among the rocks. The kids were easily distracted when they discovered wildlife in the form of crabs. We took the opportunity to have a science lesson on the beach! Evyn found some rusted metal cording. Amber decided she needed to rid the beach of terra cotta tiles ... so our bag was amazingly heavy by the time we returned to our starting point. We spent an hour scouring one side of the pier while others took the opposite route. We had a great time together ... scouts and families.


Finding things of interest.


Five of these bags were collected by us.

What a great feeling of achievement for our planet!