Church activity at the park in Groß-Gerau

We had a ward activity at the park in Groß-Gerau -- good friends, good food, good times...  I brought the camera and took some pictures.

Father / Son Camping Activity 2012

This year's Father / Son camping activity was at the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg (same place as last year).  If you remember my post from two years ago, you might recall that I do not particularly enjoy camping.  It rained hard as we were driving there so I was expecting a sloppy mess upon arrival.  I was not disappointed -- there was mud everywhere...

Oscar's baptism

Mormon children are eligible to be baptized when they turn eight (see here for an explanation).  Accordingly, Oscar was baptized on his eighth birthday.  Oscar spent several months preparing for his baptism.  We talked a lot about what it means to be baptized.  We also we discussed answers to questions that were in a "Baptism Book" that the ward Primary Presidency provides to each of the seven year-old children.  We are grateful that Oscar made the choice to be baptized.

Father / Son Camping Activity 2011

Each year in May (or early June, as was the case this year), the six English-speaking LDS military units in Germany (Baumholder, Bitburg, Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern, Ramstein, and Wiesbaden) combine for a fathers and sons camping activity that commemorates the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood (15 May 1829).  Last year we went to Manderscheid Castle (Google Analytics tells me that the blog entry I wrote about last year's trip has become the second-most visited page on this blog).

This year's trip was to the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg.  Before the location had been announced, I did not know that the United States had a cemetery in Luxembourg.  I have since learned that the American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 24 permanent military cemeteries on foreign soil (there are 124,909 U.S. war dead interred at these cemeteries; 30,921 from World War I, 93,238 from World War II, and 750 from the Mexican War).

Last year I took the boys in my car but this year I took the minivan because we had some extra passengers in the car.  The boys' friends in the Shumway family were going to miss the camping because their parents scheduled a cruise (without the children) that would have them somewhere off the coast of Italy on the night of the camping.  I thought my boys would enjoy the company so I volunteered to take two of the Shumway boys along with us (they have four boys; Ryan Green brought the oldest boy with him and the youngest boy stayed in Wiesbaden with the family that is watching the children during the cruise).   Zach and Rex are very close in age to Oscar and Calvin so they have a lot in common.  A few days before the activity, I heard that somebody else from our unit would also not be able to attend because of some ongoing car trouble that was not likely to be resolved before the weekend.  Paul Woolston and his wife are empty-nesters with five grown children so I offered him the passenger seat in the van and he accepted.

The plan was to camp on Friday night and spend Saturday morning helping with an Eagle Scout project (cleaning grave markers and repairing the ones that have been damaged by lawn mowers).  The church people who organized the activity brought pancake batter and sausages for breakfast on Saturday but campers were responsible to make their own arrangements for dinner on Friday and lunch on Saturday.

Last year I arrived at 6:30PM and had to simultaneously struggle with hungry children and the need to unpack the car, set up a tent, and get everything situated before nightfall.  To prevent a repeat of this situation, I had planned on getting an earlier start this year.  Obviously not everybody can just pack up and leave work in the middle of the afternoon (or take the day off, as I did) so I thought it would be nice to have a group dinner on Friday night for the people that came from Wiesbaden.  Beyond offering a nice chance to eat together, a group dinner would also allow late-comers the opportunity to eat as soon as they arrived.  I wasn't sure how much interest there would be in this but I figured it couldn't hurt to offer it as an option.  I sent the dads an email offering to organize a group dinner with hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, cookies, marshmallows, and soda.  We ended up having seven or eight families participate in the group dinner.  Debbie Woolston added a nice selection of raw vegetables to my menu of fat, cholesterol, and empty calories.

I decided to not go to work on Friday so I could spend the morning loading up the van with camping equipment for my family plus the two Shumway boys.  Once the tent, sleeping bags, and camping equipment were all packed up, I went to the grocery store to buy the food for dinner.  I had quite a bit of food in the car -- 16 frozen hamburgers, 16 hot dogs, 32 buns, a box of 45 bags of chips, 48 cans of soda, two packages of Oreos, 12 1.5L bottles of water, and more.  Needless to say, space in the van was at a premium.  I was pretty full after I picked up the Shumway boys around 1:15PM but I still needed to stop and pick up Paul Woolston.  I wasn't prepared for the amount of camp gear he had planned to bring.  We had to pull a lot of things out and do some creative repacking but we were able to get everything to fit.  The boys all ended up with decreased legroom because of the fold-up chairs, sleeping bags, and tents we stuffed under their feet.

We arrived around 5:00 (later than I had wanted) but discovered we were one of the first ones to arrive.  The plan was to unload the van, get the tent set up, and then get dinner ready.  The unloading part was easy.

5:21PM -- The van has been unloaded and the boys are playing with leaves.

I expected the tent to take about twenty minutes.  I had not used this tent in several years (last year I rented a smaller tent from the outdoor shop on the local army base because we had been told that space at the castle was limited) so I didn't remember how it was assembled.  Tina had used it several times in the last few years to take the teenage girls from church camping so she was more familiar with the tent.  Her comment to me was, "it just pops right up."  It actually did take about twenty minutes to set up.  But that was only after several people spent and hour and half trying to untangle it.  The ladies really mangled it when they put it away.

5:31PM -- A tangled mess...

6:31PM -- Still a tangled mess.  At this point I was thinking we would be sleeping under the stars...

6:53PM -- It should not have been necessary to separate this piece from the tent.  Now we could finally untangle the tent...

7:14PM -- Almost two hours later, I finally had a tent.

Since I was preoccupied with the tent and four boys who were throwing leaves and playing with sticks, I wasn't able to help much with the dinner I had planned.  Fortunately, Paul Woolston (who did not have children to supervise) cooked the hamburgers and hot dogs.  I was able to help slice a few tomatoes and get the buns and chips organized but Paul did most of the work.  Here we are eating dinner a bit after 8PM:

I enjoyed getting to talk with the other dads.  We had one family that arrived after 8:15 -- they were hungry and tired so it was nice to have dinner already prepared for them.  We had a brief devotional meeting about 9:30 and then I got the boys ready for bed.  Unfortunately, the tent was downwind from a campfire and the smoke kept Calvin up coughing most of the night.

The weather on Friday had been really pleasant and Saturday was more of the same.  It was a bit cool on Saturday morning but by 10AM the boys had taken off their jackets and changed from jeans into shorts.  Here they are eating breakfast:

The boys played horseshoes while they were waiting for everybody else to finish eating.

After breakfast, we walked through the cemetery.  There are 5,076 American soldiers buried in the cemetery.  General Patton is one of them; his grave is featured between the two flagpoles but I forgot to find it.

Visitors Center

Jewish soldiers have the Star of David on their grave markers.

Day Turner was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Over 13,000 people of Chinese descent enlisted in the Army during World War II.  Not all of them came home... 

"All who shall hereafter live in freedom will be here reminded that to these men and their comrades we owe a debt to be paid with grateful remembrance of their sacrifice and high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live eternally." -- Dwight Eisenhower

371 of America's missing soldiers are remembered here.  The small markers next to some names indicate those whose remains have since been recovered and identified.

We spent about twenty minutes cleaning grave markers and posing for photos but the boys were bored and they weren't really helping so we didn't stay very long.

Here is one that needed to be repaired (notice the chip near the bottom).

Russ Tillett from Heidelberg helped repaired it.

After our visit to the cemetery, we packed everything up, loaded up the car, and drove home.  The boys ate lunch while Paul Woolston and I loaded up the car.  For the second year in a row, lunch on Saturday was supposed to be peanut butter sandwiches.  And for the second year in a row, I forgot a key ingredient.  Last year it was a knife; this year it was the peanut butter.  They ate bananas and chips instead.

Everybody had a nice weekend and the boys are already looking forward to doing this again next year.

Church Easter Party

Oscar had a loose tooth fall out the last night we were in Berlin (Wednesday).  The first chance I got to take a photo was during our church Easter party the following Saturday:

No New Year's resolutions

I like to think of myself as a goal-oriented person.  But I am not a big fan of New Year's resolutions.  In a recent study, only 12% of over 3000 people who made New Year's resolutions on 01 January 2007 had achieved their goals a year later (and this despite the fact that 52% of them had been confident that they would succeed).

When Tina took her first German class, sixteen people paid  for the class.  They all said they wanted to learn more German.  By the end of the class (ten weeks later), only three or four were still attending.  Some dropped out almost immediately ("too hard").  Others lasted a few weeks and then stopped coming ("too busy").  Some had legitimate excuses (deployed to Afghanistan) but most just gave up.  Initially, they all had good intentions (I'm assuming that somebody who did not have good intentions would have been unwilling to pay to take this class).  But by the end of the class, almost all of the students in this class had been unable to meet their goal.

So why are most goals (New Year's resolutions or otherwise) unrealized?  First, notice that 48% of those in the study were not themselves confident that they would meet the goal.  Why might this be the case?  Maybe the goal was not immediately achievable.  Or maybe the person only made the goal because everybody else was doing it.  Or maybe they lacked the support structure that would need to be in place to help them succeed.  Whatever the case may be, I think it is safe to say that the goal is likely to be unrealized if the person setting the goal is not absolutely convinced of his or her own ability to meet the goal.

What about the 52% of people who were confident in their ability to meet the goal?  Even if every one of the 12% who successfully met their goals were in this group (unlikely), it would still mean that more than three-fourths of those who were confident in their ability to succeed were ultimately unable to do so.  The actual percentage is probably higher.  This can probably be explained by many of the same reasons already mentioned.

I was disappointed that the study did not say anything about the people who did meet their goals.  What did the people in this group have in common?  I think it is pretty likely that they were all able to find ways to connect their goals to the things that they did (they were people of action who worked to meet their goals).  The fact is that goals don't usually meet themselves.  Rather, successful people find ways to meet their goals (it is important to point out that successful people do not always meet their goals on the first attempt).

As you set goals for 2011 and beyond, consider the following quotes (two of my all-time favorites).  Regardless of whether your goals are about your health, your finances, your career, your education, or self-improvement, commit yourself to also creating a plan of action that will connect your goals to your life.

"No New Year's resolutions...There ought to be no occasion for...the general making of resolutions of improvement on New Year's day. Every day should witness...a determination to lay aside weaknesses and take on more of the graces of godliness. Each day furnishes opportunity to look closely into one's habits, to examine and discard the worthless and cleave unto that which is elevating and holy...Not alone on New Year's, therefore, but on every day, should people seek to effect an improvement in their habits of life."  -- George Q. Cannon, Juvenile Instructor 32 (January 1, 1897), p. 23

"I have yet to meet a businessman, educator, artist, or athlete who has attained a high level of excellence in their chosen field who has not successfully been able to connect the vision of their future to their everyday life. It is very likely that a goal or vision not connected to everyday life by specific action will become just another unrealized dream with nothing more than hope to support it." -- Richard J. Maynes, "A Celestial Connection To Your Teenage Years", October 1997.