To think, it all started over 15 years ago.

Back around 1996 we were living in Beavercreek, Ohio and going to church in Centerville.  One of our members, Mike Beausay, had a brother was an author who had just published a book on raising boys.  Knowing that we had a pre-teen son, Mike made sure that we knew that his brother would be speaking at a special Saturday morning seminar at the church.  It sounded interesting and the cost of the meeting included a copy of the new book: Boys! Shaping Ordinary Boys Into Extraordinary Men by William "Bill" Beausay II (Links to the book on Amazon) so we were in.

This was around the same time that the Promise Keepers movement was well underway, and I remember that the content of the seminar and the book were just what I had been looking for as I knew my son was about to move into some challenging years.  As a bit of a bonus, Bill brought along a buddy who was raising several sons into what he called "Spartans".

This guy was quite the story teller, and he had us all on the edge of our seats as he told us about their annual Thanksgiving weekend tradition of heading into land in West Virgina that is owned by a mine, but that's undeveloped.  They enter the property on foot with the clothes on their back and one "luxury item"; a 5' X 5' sheet of 4mil plastic!  That's it!  No food, no backpack, no fresh undies or socks, and best of all, no Nintendo or PlayStation gadgets.  At the end of the weekend they exit the property from the far end... 50 miles away!

I was intrigued, but didn't see this degree of hardship serving my purposes; but what I did take-away was the desire to create meaningful "events" or milestones to celebrate stages of my son's development.

There was another very important book in this story, but that's another post.  BTW, BOYS! is also available as a Kindle book.