Camp Lazarus held it's annual Maple Syrup Festival this weekend, so we took advantage of this opportunity to have Keagan participate in Boy Scouts. (Thanks to Gramma, who heard about this on the radio and shared it with us!) When I first asked Roy about going his response, once again showing his sense of humor, was along the lines of "you want me to go out in the middle of winter to tap trees, enter a pancake eating contest, and throw tomahawks?" He gladly went for his little boy though, and we had a lot of fun as a family!
Here are some pictures from our day with some little fun facts! (I'm getting back into "Boy Scout mode" so get ready for a maple syrup lesson!)
There are 700 taps at Camp Lazarus. Trees can have one tap per every ten inches in diameter, but should not have more than three because this would drain the tree of all of its sap. It takes 56 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup. The sap is collected from the buckets every two to three days so that it doesn't spoil and taken to the "sugar shack." There it is brought to over a specific temperature based on the barometric pressure that day. Today it had to be boiled at 216 degrees. There was all kinds of smoke billowing out of the sugar shack and condensation dripping down on us from the roof when we were inside. 
The picture to the left was of a typical campsite that may have been used in the pioneer days. There was a cute little boy who explained the bed to us, but I saw bread and jam by the campfire and got distracted so we didn't stay there long. Oops! To the right is Keagan and I in a cute little cabin with hand-made furniture and toys. If there hadn't been so many people inside I was going to climb up to the loft as that's where all of the kids were, but I decided not to :)
Outside of the cabin, we had the opportunity to cut some logs using a hand-saw. There was a two-person saw and a one-person saw. Lucky for me that the one person opened up first, so Daddy got to do this one for us! He looks so natural, right!? We then were able to take our piece of the log to get it branded by a boy scout. He could not get it to brand quite right, but we told him it was perfect and we loved it. He was so shocked. I thought it was kind of poetic. This was Keagan's first day as as honorary boy scout (in our minds), and while his appearance isn't the same as "typical" babies, he is asbolutely perfect and we love him even more because he is special.
We enjoyed pancakes and "bug juice" for lunch. I couldn't get Keagan in this picture, but I hope he enjoyed them as well! Roy asked if the syrup had been made there, but the little boy scout who served us said "No, this is GFS brand." We both chuckled at this, and who knows, Keagan seems to like smirking as well, so maybe he did too! The pictures to the right are our souvenirs from the day - our branded piece of wood, Keagan's first boy scouts patch, and stickers for his scrapbook.
What a great memory for our family! We really enjoyed ourselves at Camp Lazarus today and are glad Keagan had an opportunity to experience this first!
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