January Recap and the Celine Dion Concert!

I keep seeing posts about January being the longest month ever and I think that I might have to agree. That being said, it was a good month here.

Ryan received three merit badges and three patches at the most recent Court of Honor for his Boy Scout Troop #589. He received merit badges for Citizenship in the Nation, Citizenship in the World, and Chess. He received patches for his participation in the Longhorn Council Camporee and Merit Badge Mania, and a patch for his Popcorn Sales! Ryan was very proud of himself and of course we are extremely proud of him and all of his hard work.

Ryan also attended the Eagle Court of Honor of one of his fellow scouts, C.J., who Ryan helped over last summer with C.J.’s Eagle Scout project. This was a great ceremony and Ryan was thrilled to be able to help congratulate C.J. on this amazing achievement.

Ryan is working on his Tenderfoot rank and has to complete the physical fitness requirements for this rank. Ryan is working on improving his beginning measurements from his assessment and his one mile time for his followup check in the next few weeks. Lee Seale of Special Strong, Ryan’s trainer, is helping him with the exercises.

Ryan has also been attending our church’s special needs ministry, the Samuel Ministry, since September. He has really enjoyed his monthly evening with his new friends. This ministry is for all people who have special needs within the Good Shepherd Catholic Church Community. Ryan is one of the youngest there, but that does not even factor in. He has had such a great time each time we have gone! Here are a few pictures from the events.

These are Ryan’s thoughts on the Samuel Ministry.

On Monday night, Randy, Ryan, and I went to see Celine Dion in concert at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas! This was a birthday gift for Ryan when he turned 13 back in October. Well the wait was finally over! He was so excited!

When we went to go inside the arena, Randy pulled up the tickets on his phone. When they were scanned, they all showed up as invalid. I could see Randy starting to get flustered. The woman told us to go down to the customer relations window and to show her the tickets to get some assistance. We did that and she told us that sometimes when tickets are purchased via StubHub, if the person selling the tickets views the tickets after they are purchased, then it automatically generates a new barcode. This seemed strange to Randy and to me. Randy called StubHub customer service and we explained the situation to the representative on the phone. She was very kind and told us that she was going to get us new tickets. She sent Randy the tickets and we held our breath (and kept the representative on the line) until they were scanned. We made it! Here are our orignal seats and then our new seats!

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Once we sat down, Ryan did type that he was A BIT NERVOUS.

And now for some pictures from the show!

Here is what Ryan had to say about the experience last night.

So that’s it for now. This is a bit of a shorter post, but hopefully the pictures help to tell the story. Thank you for continuing to follow and support Ryan and our family!