REGIONALS WEEKEND!!!

The weekend of October 28th was jam packed full of exciting things for me! Not only was it Halloween weekends so dressing up and decorating and pre-holiday candy munching, but it was also the weekend Trinity's Alpha Phi Omega chapter hosted the Region VII conference! It was such a fun weekend!

Image found on the official APO website.

The whole event started out on Friday night as we ushered in APO brothers from chapters all over Texas and even a few from Mississippi and Louisiana! We all gathered in Laurie Auditorium and kicked off the conference with the usual introductions and chapter roll calls. After excitement of meeting everyone, everyone in the conference was split up into groups so they could meet people from other chapters on a more personal level and took a guided tour of our campus. This tour involved clues and shared history of APO. I hear the tour was a lot of fun but I wouldn't know, because I was wandering the campus dressed in a cow suit representing our chapter's mascot, Cowchip. I had a blast lurking around corners and hiding in the shadows from the groups that passed by. I'm proud to say that out of 20 groups, only one group spotted (ha cow joke there) me.

Saturday started at the crack of dawn as I was up a 6:30 in the morning setting up for late registration, the all-day service project and the various workshops that would be happening. Along the lines of service projects, I crocheted some caps from premature babies, wrote letters to the troops and painted tiles for the Health Coalition's garden. For the workshops, I attended the discussions on Service projects, Membership and Youth and Scouting service projects. These were all very helpful in preparing me for holding a leadership position in APO (which I hope to do in the next few semesters). My favorite was the Youth and Scouting discussion because I made new contacts in the Alamo Council scouting community which will help our chapter of APO arrange more opportunities to help them out and help APO become even more connected with our scouting roots.

Image found on the official TAMU website.

Overall, the weekend was exhausting but more fun than I've had in a long time and a great time to make new friends. I can barely wait until the Sectionals conference at Texas A&M in the Spring!!!! Gig' em Aggies!!

Websites used for images:
APO- http://www.apo.org/
TAMU- http://www.tamu.edu/

Halloween Fun!

The age old month of fright is upon us and I couldn't be more excited. I love Halloween and everything related to it. I especially love the corny or cheesy aspects of it like a movie watching party of the classic, Hocus Pocus. Both APO and my Venturing Crew are on the bandwagon to have some good ol' fashioned Halloween fun!

As Vice President of Programs for my Venturing crew back in Fort Worth, I got the opportunity to arrange some fun activities for the group. On Sunday October 23rd, we're going to have a lovely afternoon ZIPLINING in LaRue,Texas. Doesn't that sound like a barrel full of monkeys?!?!? I wish I had gone home this weekend to fly through the air at the speed of light and kick the last week of October off right, but I'm sure pictures of other people flying will do just fine. While zipling will be a blast, I'm really excited about the next event on Saturday October 29th. Usually, Six Flags enlists Boy Scouts and other organizations to help out with their haunted house but this year they decided to stay internal. So I found us another haunted house to help at. Terrorplex is where we shall be sending our youth and adult volunteers to do everything from park cars to scaring people from dark crannies of the haunted house. This sounds like so much fun! I don't like being scared but I LOVE scaring others. The Haunted house will serve as a building block to hopefully a long lasting relationship with helping Terrorplex and perhaps we can organize a fundraiser through them another year. Venturing Crew 707 will be having tons of fun this week, that's for sure.


Here in San Antonio, APO will be having fun too! This weekend, Trinity's Delta Pi Chapter of APO is hosting the Fall Regional Conference for all of the APO organizations in our region. Last spring, the conference was at UT and it was so much fun! Meeting new people, networking for future opportunities and not to mention cool stuff! Our theme is Fiesta (yes, we're in San Antonio, home of the Alamo so we will use it in the design whenever we can) and its sure to be one. We'll have tee shirts, cups, notebooks and a awesome Fiesta dance at the end of the conference on Saturday night. I really love this opportunity to have fun with new and old friends and escape from school for a while. AND I almost forgot! Trinity University's Theater Department shall be putting on their annual production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show this Thursday, Friday and Saturday night! Everyone at the conference will have the opportunity to go and see the talent and tradition that we cult followers love!!!

While I'm counting down the days to All Hallow's Eve (Halloween) I'm also counting down the days of fun with both my Scouting and APO friends!!

Websites used:
Hocus Pocus- http://disneymoviesonline.go.com/movies/hocus-pocus-750000000558/?cmp=d2c_AFC_insider_hocus_pocus__Extl
Rocky Horror Picture Show- http://www.rockyhorror.com/images/downloads/RockyHorrorPictureShow_iPhoneWallpaper02.jpg

Busy as a Bumble Bee

Howdy Followers!

From my last update, things have come a little bit more to a calm point. The last couple of weeks have been filled with midterms, papers, a show going on....too many things to keep track of! But now that all of that is over I can focus and spend more time on Crew and APO things! Hooray :)

I actually just got off a skype officer's meeting for the Crew! So its very timely that the next thing I work on is this. This evening, we touched base with each other and discussed the things that have gone on in the past month. We have seven people confirmed to join the crew which is very exciting. On my end of the Horsemanship merit badge workshop and getting people educated on Horses to come and talk to us is moving right along. Back in Fort Worth there is this great day camp and education center called Camp Carter and I've been very fortunate that
the Equestrian Director has agreed to come and talk to our group near the end of October! Unfortunately, I was not as lucky in arranging for a vet to come and talk to them about care and medical treatment for Horses. My Adviser, Tinker, is working on getting a ranch wrangler to come and speak as a back-up. The activity chair for the Horseback riding event, who happens to be my little sister, is in contact with the proper people and planning out a timeline for the day event. Everything is coming together nicely. And I've added a handy little slideshow of how I took one of the honors and Venturing Scout can earn, the Bronze Medal, and replicated it in a Word document. It was pretty fun!


In APO, our New Active class has officially joined!!! Its so heart warming to see a brand new group of people so committed to serving others join our group. As an Old Active member, I offered to take on a New Active member and be their Big. I was all planned and movin' and shakin' with getting welcoming treats for my Little but then she decided she didn't want to join APO any longer. That was very disappointing :(. But I know a lot of the New Actives and plan to serve as a "stand in" Big if they ever need me. This weekend I was a little bit adventurous and did a service project that was not through APO. In fact, it was through my Archaeology class! I got the great opportunity to volunteer at Archaeology Day at the San Jose Mission and it was a blast! I was at the corn grinding station and I got to teach young and old visitors alike the terminology and technique for ancient corn grinding! I also had a break time where I got to wander around the mission and see the other stations and how they encouraged an interest in Archaeology in visitors. It was a real treat. Then next up on my APO plate is a fun-tastic Family event! Since APO is so large, we are broken down into separate families to allow people to get to know people on a smaller scale. I am lucky enough to be a family head and one of my duties is to plan a family event to get people together and talking and making bonds. So, this Friday, I've planned for my family to have a noodle jousting tournament. It is the most fun anyone participating or viewing will ever have. We take a pool noodle and cut it in half. The opponents each get one half and stand back to back, proceeding to take ten paces out. They turn to face and deliver their battle cry. Then, they bend over with their head touching the noodle which is perpendicular to the ground. They spin then times around their noodle and then run at each other trying to be the first to deliver a "fatal" blow to their opponent. It is alot of fun and a great way to get people acting silly.

That is all the new and exciting stuff going on in my life as a very busy Scout!

On My Honor Photos by Hillary is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Whats new with the Crew! (and APO)

The start of another school year is always very, very busy. New classes, maybe a new school and the kick-off of everything single thing on this green Earth. Right now the things I'm busy "kicking off" are of course another year in my Venturing Crew back home and a New Active Class in APO! YAY for new people :).

Horse Back Riding at Philmont summer 2010 (c).

One of the most important things to keep any organization running is recruitment! Without new blood and fresh ideas, the great things we love wouldn't stay around for very long.  With the Crew, just last week we had recruitment Ice Cream Social themed meeting. Although I wasn't able to be there, I heard it was a great success. We had three crew members bring friends and all of those friends decided to join! And in the crew, each month has a different activity theme to complete requirements for earning ranks and just for fun. I am the Vice President of Programming for the Crew so I am in the middle of planning our November, which is going to be Horse Back Riding themed. One Saturday we will go out to a local Ranch and have them show us general horse care and then go on a trail ride. Prior to that event, at one of our normal meetings I have asked a local Equestrian Vet to come and talk to us about how to care for, treat and general need-to-know information on such a majestic animal. Planning and organizing all of that is keeping me pretty busy.

Goody Buckets fro my Littles last semester (c).

But back here on campus, we're about to welcome in a New Active Class into APO! I'm busy running around gathering treats for my soon-to-be little and creating clues for them to guess who I am. Big/Little reveal is Thursday night so I've really got to hightail it into gear if I want to be ready for all of those new people! Along with new people joining, I'm trying to strike up a few new regular service projects for our organization to help out with. I've been in contact with the Alamo Council Boy Scouts to try and just be on their books for anytime they need volunteers. That's turning out to be harder than expected, though, because the Scouts are going through recruitment for the next couple of months so everyone is probably too busy to call me back...oh well, fingers crossed. Another project I'm heading up is organizing events with the local San Antonio chapters of the American Legion and the American Legion Auxiliary. Both are veterans or wife of veterans’ organizations so I hope to be able to get a consistent military related project going each month soon.

After writing all that down, I just now realize how busy I really am! So many things that I love and want to be a part of are starting to get busy all at the same time. But I know that while I'm busy and exhausted right now, it'll calm down soon and be worth it all in the end. I <3 APO and Scouting.

On My Honor Photos by Hillary is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The History Behind it All

"On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight." 

My APO Jersey (c).

That is the Scout Oath that all scouts aim to live and learn by. It is also one of the founding cornerstones of the International Service Fraternity of Alpha Phi Omega. Founded by Frank Reed Horton, Alpha Phi Omega was an organization through which men might better the conditions for other men, as well as themselves by holding up a "standard of manhood". Through his experience in WW2 and serving with scouts, Horton found that the Scout Oath and Law were what he was looking for in a "standard of manhood". In 1925 while at Lafayette College, Horton created Alpha Phi Omega an organization for college men who cooperated with all youth movements, especially scouting. As scouting is worldwide, so is Alpha Phi Omega, reaching out to universities and people all over the globe.

My Dad, my boyfriend and myself on Scout Sunday at RPC (c).

These are the things I love about APO. Founded on the Cardinal Principles of Leadership, Friendship and Service, APO is an organization where anyone can get involved and better themselves by helping others. My Father is an Eagle Scout which is the highest Boy Scout Rank one can reach. He raised my sisters and I with a strong sense of doing good in the world through community service. One of the first traditions I can remember my family making is our choice to volunteer on Thanksgiving Day for the annual YMCA Turkey Trot Race. While shivering in the cold, a love for service grew. I never had any interest in being a Girl Scout and doing what I considered "girly" activities like selling cookies and learning how to knit. I wanted to go outside and get dirty and be like my Dad. So it was fortunate when I found a way to be the Boy Scout I always wanted to- through Venturing.

Venturing Crew 707 at the White River Canoe Race 2011 (c).

Venturing is a division of Boy Scouts of America geared toward young men and women ages 14-21. In the program, the groups can do pretty much anything a normal Boy Scout Troop would do. We go camping, hiking, fishing, shooting, canoeing and any other activity you can think of. Like in Boy Scouts, in Venturing there are awards a youth can achieve through completing certain requirements. With my Venturing Crew (Crew 707 in Fort Worth, Texas) I have gone to the high adventure base of Philmont in Cimarron, New Mexico, participated in the National White River Canoe Race and am going to one of the other high adventure bases, Seabase in the Florida Keys Summer 2012. It is such a great experience being able to do all these fun things and live my life on such high principles.

Scout Sunday 2011 by Hillary is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.