Monthly Archives: February 2012

Potawatomi Area Council’s newest Eagle Scout

Eagle is the highest rank advancement in Scouting. Since 1912, over 2 million scouts have earned the rank of Eagle. This represents, however, less than 5% of all scouts. Today, Matt Kaarolek became the newest Eagle Scout in Potawatomi Area Council (Waukesha, WI).

To earn the rank of Eagle, Matt progressed through the ranks of Scout, Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star and Life. He has earned over 21 merit badges including; First Aid, Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the Nation, Citizenship in the World, Communications, Environmental Science, Personal Fitness, Camping, Family Life, Personal Management, Emergency Preparedness and Swimming. He served a minimum of six months in a leadership position while a Life Scout. He planned, developed and lead a service project for the community. He took part in a Scoutmaster conference. And, today, he passed his Eagle Board of Review.

While a Scout, Matt has gone on numerous events, outings and campouts including High Adventure camps at the Florida National Sea Base, Northern Tier Canoe Base and this summer will travel to Philmont Scout Ranch to complete the Triple Crown of Scouting. Matt is a Brotherhood member of the Order of the Arrow, a national service organization within the Boy Scouts of America and has worked at a local scout camp for two summers and will be on staff there again this summer. Matt has also been accepted to work on staff at the 2013 National BSA Jamboree, opening the newest national high adventure base at The Summit in West Virginia. He’ll be working in the extreme mountain biking area. What an exciting opportunity!

Scouting has been good for Matt, and Matt has been good for Scouting! His mom Teresa and I are extremely proud of his accomplishments! Obviously this experience hasn’t happened by accident and I wish to extend a heartfelt thanks to the primary leaders who have worked with Matt over the years including:

  • Greg Bomberg, Pack 294 Cubmaster
  • Lisa Murray, Pack 294 Den Leader (Wolves, Bears, and Webelos)
  • Trace Stoller, Troop 24 Scoutmaster
  • Lisa Murray, Troop 24 Scoutmaster
  • Rob Wucki, Troop 24 Assistant Scoutmaster & Eagle mentor
  • Assistant Scoutmasters, Troop 24 Committee Members and Scout parents who helped with our programs

Traveling for Work

 

This has been a busy spring, with me traveling approximately every two weeks for work. Columbus, OH. Miami, FL. Las Vegas, NV (now), Phoenix, AZ and Washington DC coming up. I’m not a gambler, and walking is good exercise, so I’ve been walking the strip with my camera in the evening.

Here’s a link to some of the photos I’ve taken. Let me know what you think!

Timing in Miami was such that I was not able to visit my Uncle Ernie. Hopefully next time. Timing in Phoenix will allow me to have dinner with dear friends Pat and Robin Hafey.

Traveling for work isn’t the same as traveling for pleasure, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t try to make it as pleasurable as possible!

New and Improved

Some of you may be wondering what happened to the karoleks.com web site. I recently converted the old, hand-coded html site into a WordPress blog format. The posts you see with a date prior to today’s were copied here from my old Blogger site. I’ll leave that up for a while and add a pointer here in case anyone is following it.

Hopefully the easier-to-update site will get more frequent updates. Let me know what you think.