Carl Hutzler's Blog

I took three of my Webelos II scouts out to the National Weather Service’s Sterling Virginia office for a tour of the facility. They are having a public open house tomorrow and Sunday and today they invited a few scouts out to get a look at the facility. In addition, they had the local Fox 5 weather man, Tony Perkins, out on location doing his reports for the morning news live every 15 minutes.

During one of the reports, he let my son Jacob and his fellow scouts, Paul Sesay and Josi Echeverria, present the weather during his report. It was a real thrill for them and something they will remember for a long time. I remember my first time on TV in Baltimore in some sort of Romper Room show. Anyway, here is the video.

This weekend, the International Children’s Festival is taking place at Wolftrap. But before the main public performances, Fairfax County Public Schools were treated to a preview. I joined my son’s class for the field trip and was VERY impressed at the performances. We saw dancers and musicians from Ghana, Finland, China, and Joran. And the two clowns that MC’d the show were very good as well. Every kid loved the show.

Some pix below.

Well, OK. Maybe you didn’t wake up today and think, after this bowl of [insert expensive brand name cereal here], I was thinking of cooking up some corn. Likely true. But just think, a few hours from now, around 3:38pm your time you will be hungry and one of your co-workers will be microwaving some corn down the hall. And that smell….oh, how it will be wafting through the halls to your office.

But you could have your own delicious popcorn! Whether you like one of the many microwave varieties or a tin of classic Kettle Corn, Caramel Corn, or even Chocolate Covered Caramel Corn, it all can be yours while supporting a great cause. Cub Scouts.

My son, Jacob, is doing his part to raise $350 for his cub scout pack, Pack 340 of Reston, VA. He would love to have your help and you can order online very easily.

Just visit the Popcorn Order Website and enter Jacob’s code: TEYHWQM

The students at my son’s school are taking their final exams right now. Well, they are not really “finals” but are similar and long. They are called the Standards of Learning tests (no kidding, S.O.L. for short!). Anyway, the teachers are trying to get the kids to take their time, check their work, write out the problems, etc. To encourage this, they promised that all kids who wrote out every problem could throw a whipped cream pie at the teachers after the test last week.

All I can say was that participation in the pie throwing was 100%. And maybe for once, the kids thought that school and rules went together rather well ;-)

click here for more pix

My son’s fourth grade class went on an all day trip to Jamestown yesterday. We had a great time learning about the history and importance of the first settlers of our country…great timing since Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I am not sure if I had ever been to Jamestown before. I recommend it as a great day trip from Washington DC. There are a ton of neat things to do and learn in a small area…everything from how the settlers, Indians, and African slaves lived to how the boats navigated the Atlantic to get there in the first place.

We also went to Yorktown which is just 30 minutes up the road and learned about the Revolutionary war which ended at the Battle of Yorktown. We walked on some pretty hallowed grounds where George Washington, Lord Cornwallis and others stood!

More pix after the jump. Read more

My son’s cub scout troop visited Burke Lake this past weekend. We had a lot of fun fishing, building fires, cooking, learning to tie knots, and other such “always prepared” types of things. We even made peach cobbler in a dutch over. It was very simple to make and so amazingly good I can’t even begin to describe it to you. Yummm, butter!

svgallery=scoutfallcampout2007

My son, Jacob, jammed his finger hard in his little league game on Saturday. A ball was lined to him at first and he caught it, but his non-glove hand was in the glove to help aid the catch….well, the ball hit the middle finger head-on. It still hurt him a lot today so we took him to the doctor. After the x-ray, we know he has a slight fracture in his upper finger.

Splint + Tape to nearby finger for 3 weeks. No more baseball this year :-( He will have to ride it out on the D.L. And to think that his team is in first place! Bummer.