Eagle Scout Project Finished!!!

Big Eagle project today. We decided to get a jump on things out of nerves about the weather more than anything, but we went to the elementary site and started to roll out the stencil for the giant world map. The wind was gusting and before we knew it we had torn stencil and frustration. We got the elementary secretary to let us use the gym for Maddie's idea of assembling th3e whole thing first and then rolling it out since it was in 7 long strips 36 feet long. We taped it all together and rolled it up and tried again, but chickened out after a few gusts and tears and decided to try in the morning calm...if there was one. We also decided to go get long pieces of wood to lay across the whole thing as we unrolled it. We got 24 2 X 2's and laid them around all the edges and it worked like a charm. So we spray painted all the thousands of dots..it took 3 cans of black spray paint.. and soon by 8am we had it. I ran home to get the girls for the unveiling and brought them back to do the giant dot to dot! We took the the big 2x2's off and the wind blew away the giant stencil for us! There on the ground was the whole world map ...in perfect dot to dot! We got playground chalk and began to make all the country edges. It all looked pretty good and easy to do till we got to Europe! What a mess! We had a zillion little countries with no idea how to difine the dots and separate the countries. Thank goodness Cooper knows his geography! He was able to decipher it and label everything! soon we were done and the countries were all numbered and ready to paint by 10:30 for the ward to come. It was a busy Saturday with Jubilee practice, sewing groups for Jubilee and a big cancer walk. Coop's friends were at an all day concert down in Dallas, so they were out. I had moved the date up a week because we would be out of town for mothers day and didnt want the stress of this project on Mothers day!! We had about 10 people come and help and the painting did go pretty fast. Maddie was a good painter, Coop was a good manager and assisted everyone with lines and country shapes and Brian edged everything while I painted away. We had music, doughnuts and gatorade and the weather just kept holding . We tried oil based paint against all recommendations because we hoped it would last longer on the playground than the latex we had seen used on other projects. Time will tell, but the colors look great and all i have left to do is trace around with black to define all the states.