Seth Eagle Scout Banquet

Our Boy Scout Council has a banquet each year for all the boys who earned their Eagle Scout award during the year. They refer to it as the "Eagle class of 2008", and there were 423 this year. Since Denver only has one council, they can make a big deal about it and invite lots of dignitaries. For example the MC was a 20-somethings local TV weather man who was an Eagle Scout, and members of the State House of Representatives were in attendance. The banquet was at a nice hotel, and the food was professionally catered. The council pays for the boys but parents have to fork out $40 per person to attend. Fortunately for us, an executive for the Sports Authory stores is a member of the Stake and big into scouting, so he pays for all the LDS parents to attend as a donation from his company, so Jane and I got to go, except Jane wasn't feeling up to it due to her carpel tunnel surgery earlier this week, so Molly went instead. It was a very nice evening, but kind of long (3 hours) with lots of speeches, which weren't bad in an of themselves, but I had just flown in earlier in the day from being on a trip and I was a bit tired. The big finale is to have each boy come up on stage, get their name mentioned, shake some hands, and get a commemorative paperweight gift. It was definitely a coat and tie event, and about as classy an event as I've ever seen the Boy Scouts put on.

I always love it when someone gives me dinner for free (and no dishes to clean up!). Here is our little family group.

Seth lined up ready to go on stage.

Molly and Seth were having fun with the camera during some of the less interesting parts of the speeches.

This is most of the boys from the Stake that were at the dinner. Some had to leave early so a couple of Seth's friends weren't in the picture, and there were a lot of other boys in the Stake that didn't attend due to schedule conflicts.