DI Tournament Results

This weekend was our region's DI tournament for 2008. It was a very eye-opening experience for me. Both boys participated in the tournament, but only Firstborn was actually competing. Lastborn performed at the Rising Stars level (grades PreK through 2). His team was all 2nd graders since the school they attend starts at 2nd grade.

First I'll go over Firstborn's challenge. His team manager chose the technical challenge for them. They were required to create a vehicle that could take them through a number of obstacles. They were provided with a list of about 20 obstacle descriptions and specifications. They had to choose at least three of these obstacles and create them to the specifications. For example, they could create a tunnel that was at least 24 inches long, a bridge, pylons, a gap or fulcrum. Firstborn and the neighbor across the street concentrated on creating the vehicle and they really took a great approach to it. Their first idea was to make some sort of wheeled vehicle with a "sail" that they could blow around the track. However, they had a problem finding axles that allowed them to turn the vehicle. They could have used a stick to change the direction of the car, but they would possibly loose control of the car in the 24 inch-long tunnel.

They next tried a remote-control, wireless car. We found kits for the remote control, the dual motor (to allow for steering), a tank chassis (climbs hills and maybe even walls), and a base plate to mount everything on. Now, what they don't tell you is that these directions are primarily in Japanese. They are cryptically translated to English. You have to spend time in the store figuring out which kits you need and then hours figuring out how to build the thing.

Firstborn took days to build it. He never noticed (or knew anything about) the possible gear ratios and ended up building it with the lowest gear ratio. At the time, I figured that was fine and really couldn't tell him to do it higher if I wanted to (that would be interference. He's supposed to do this all himself.)

Then one of the team managers started to hyperventilate because she worried that the car was not creative enough. So we bought one of those helium tanks with Mylar balloons and the boys tried to build a helium balloon that could fit into a 5X8X12 inch form factor. Then we remembered that the power source also has to fit into that form factor along with the vehicle. So much for blowing the car/balloon around the course. Not only would they hyperventilate but they wouldn't fit into a 5X8X12 box along with the balloon. Maybe we could find a small fan. So that means the balloon would have to be even smaller How do you create a smaller balloon? The boys decided to tape the balloon with duct tape to restrict how much it would inflate. They had a problem with the balloons leaking (poor quality) and with getting a small enough amount of duct tape that the amount of helium in the balloon would actually lift the balloon.

In looking over the rules again, I realized that the vehicle creativity was only worth 25 points and getting through the obstacle course was worth up to 120. Well, that's easy. Just reading that to Firstborn helped him decide that the vehicle didn't really need to be creative. So he continued with the remote control car.

This was a really good decision. All of the competitors had remote control cars this weekend. No one got more creative than that. However, of the 14 competitors, only 3 made their cars. The rest went out and bought wireless remote control cars.

Unfortunately, we misread the rules enough to not know that we needed to go through the obstacle course a few times to get as many points as possible. This was a big mistake.

On top of that, the team did not do very well on their instant challenge. The instant challenge is a quick challenge that the kids don't get to see until they walk into the room. Then they have 8 minutes to solve the problem. Usually it includes building a structure or object using paper cups, straws and stickers. Then they have to put on a presentation using the object. This requires really good teamwork and Firstborn's team really didn't gel as a team this year.

Here are the pictures from his central challenge presentation:
Talking to the Judges before they go on. They are with their props getting things measured and talking about how they created them. The adults in red are the appriasers (judges).

Here the kids are doing their performance. One child is driving the car over and around the obstacles. They chose to present an American Idol competition. Two girls are singing for their try-outs. First born, boy across the street and the small blond girl are acting as Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randal ? I'm not a big Idol fan. The entire presentation was supposed to be without words.
Simon, Paula and Randy give their feedback to the two singers.

A closeup of Firstborn's car going over a fulcrum style obstacle. As the car reached the top of the ramp, the ramp would lower, allowing the car to drive off. It was hard for the kids to figure out how to build one, but they finally figured out that cardboard over an oatmeal can would work fine. It turned out to be one of the easiest obstacles to overcome.

Unfortunately, they found out that speaking as the three judges would lose points as well even though they tried to be creative and use the speaking parts as a special part of the presentation. Who thought a bunch of kids could be quiet for 8 minutes!

Then it was time for Lastborn's presentation. I'll continue that in the next post, complete with pictures.

Sledding, Ohio Style

South of Dayton is somewhat hilly. In fact, they refer to our neck of the woods as Far Hills. I can imagine that with the flatness of the overall landscape, that these hills (short as they might be) could have been seen from miles around before buildings were erected to block the view and before the factories came in and fogged up the air. Other than the far hills though, it's pretty flat; except for the occasional Indian mound.

Ancient native peoples that we have very little information about built these mounds all over the midwest. For years, we thought they were all burial mounds. Some were, but excavation has proven that others were not used for burials at all. Some were built to look like animals, like the Serpent Mound and the Eagle Mound. Some were ploughed over by farmers, ignorant of their significance. The ones that are not burials, are considered by the experts to be of some religious significance. Serpent mound for example orients towards significant astrological and solar locations.

Just a few blocks from our house, we have one such mound. It's not much. DH often refers to it as the pile of dirt. I can't get over the age of this pile of dirt though. To me, it is pretty impressive that a people who had to struggle through most of the year just to stay alive hunting and gathering and maybe farming in the good months, would have the ability to plan and build such a structure as even a pile of dirt. What we see of it now is probably lower than the original. The base would have been covered over the years with inches of organic matter, collected in the crevasse formed by it's base. The top, maybe worn a bit by the winds over the flat lands. The top may have been less rounded originally. We'll never know.

but now, it stands as the neighborhood sledding sight. Any kids who walks to this park has to climb the mound and look out from it, summer or winter. Heck, even we adults will often climb up there just for the experience. Somehow, coming back down always seems a bit scarier.

But just to give you easterners an experience of the mound, I thought I would share some pictures from our mid-February snow storm where my friend Sandra and her daughter F came to visit. F got to sled on the mound, but I didn't have my camera then. Later, I brought the littler boys from the neighborhood with Lastborn to have their own turn. We generally don't let them walk to the mound alone. I snapped the pictures to let everyone see the mound.

This one gives you an idea of how flat the neighborhood is.

And here are the kids climbing up to the top. Then, finally, they made it!

Being an avid reader of beancounters, I ended up being tagged for the 1-2-3 meme today. Yes, I take things way toooo literally. Maybe some anonymous reader of my blog will continue the meme.

Here are the meme rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people & post a comment here once you post it to your blog, so I can come see.

"Observe the pattern--the lines of type, the margins, and most particularly the blocks of white space where paragraphs begin or leave off.

You can tell without even reading if the book you've chosen is apt to be easy or hard, right? Easy books contains lots of short paragraphs--including dialogue and lots of white space. "

This was from Stephen King's On Writing. Interesting enough, the passage was about opening up any book on your bookshelf to any page. :-) Ironic.

Your turn, Remcat, Pristol (gotta write something on that blog of yours), Ben (you too!), Charmaine, JJones. Not sure how regularly anyone reads my blog. So I wonder how many of these people will actually continue the meme. So any anonymous readers that I don't know about, feel free to continue the meme and leave a comment to let me know.

Noreaster

Firstborn finally saw the snowfalls he had been waiting all winter for. We've listened all winter to him whining about how he wishes he lived in New England still where they get enough snow.


Don't know quite what he is whining about since he has used up all 5 of the allotted snow days and he has gotten to go sledding more here than we ever went back home. Being in a nice development means that I don't mind a whole gaggle of kids walking 3 blocks to the neighborhood lump-in-the-dirt to go sledding. So as soon as we get the slightest amount of snow, he is over at the mound for a sledding adventure. I never had the opportunity to let him walk on his own to a park for sledding in the northeast.


This weekend's storm was every sledder's dream come true though. It started Friday morning with fairly heavy, wet snow and continued through all day Saturday. Our Destination Imagination dress rehearsal was cancelled on Sunday, our CCD was cancelled on Sunday and pretty much everything was put on hold. The funny part was that the storm was over by Sunday morning and there was no reason to cancel anything.



On top of the lack of responsibility, was the wonderful temperature in the high 30s and the bright twinkling sun.

So I decided that we needed to try out a new sledding location. Something about sledding down (and consequently tearing apart) and ancient sacred site just puts me off a bit and, while I tell the kids that if they are going to desecrate an ancient religious spot, they should at least stop and take a moment to pray before they hurl their bodies down the side of the ancient mound, I still don't feel good about it.

So off to a park further north we went.

We almost missed it. Up the road a bit, there are some signs on the side of the road marking the entrance to a woodsy park with lots of trails and a meandering brook. The sledding hill, to the best of my knowledge is the area from the road, leading down to the brook at the bottom of the hill.

It is a nice steep hill, but it is surrounded on both sides by short, scruffy, put-your-eye-out trees and it ends in a 6-inch deep brook. If this were a fast snow, I would never have let the kids sled here. Not like they would drown in that brook, but they could get very wet and cold.

On the other side of the road, there is another entrance to the park. Again, it is a steep hill leading down to a longer flat distance before running into the brook. But on this side, there are park signs and trail signs right in the middle of the sledding area. Who thought of that one.

Of course, Firstborn decided that whichever side I picked was going to be the more boring. And Lastborn was too busy eating the snow. Luckily, the third sledder, a neighbor boy, was enjoying the actual sledding.

The snow was very slow at first. Great packing snow, it was great for snowballs, forts and snowmen, but not great for sledding unless you can start a path. Once smoothed, it could be fast if you know how to ride it. We only have saucers this year, so I did a trial run to try to teach the kids that if you keep your weight back on the saucer, it really goes well because the edges don't get stuck in the snow. They didn't listen, but I did have a good run and I packed down a starter path for the others to use.

15 inches of snow makes for nice sledding on just about any hill. And the fact that it was good-packing snow mean that there would be a base all day.

That will probably be our last sledding snow of the season. With Easter next weekend, I hope it's our last snow altogether, but I know better. We had such warm weather last week before the big storm came in that it was somewhat shocking to see so much snow. Even the kids were a bit impatient with it and they did not take nearly as much advantage of it as I had hoped they would. Firstborn is hankering to get back out to the woods to see how his forts are doing. Lastborn just wants to play his DS.

When the guy from the local tree service...

Knocks on your door and tells you it looks like your oak tree sustained some winter weather damage and he would be happy to help you out with that...

But you know that said "oak tree" is really a black walnut...

How do you kindly ask him to please get the heck off your porch?

Give him a phone and...

Yesterday, Firstborn asked to go to the park with a friend, but it was fairly close to dinner. Knowing how long these kids go to the park and not wanting to have to walk the 1 block to go get them, I had one of those moments of genius and remembered the walkie talkies that DH had purchased for just such an event.

First there were the comical few minutes while Firstborn and I figured out how to get them to work, set the volume and tested the devices. The whole time, neighbor Tommy was trying to tell us how to work them. He's seen walkie talkies you know. :-)

So off Firstborn went to the park and DH and I sat down for a moment to watch the upcoming storm coverage on the TV while dinner cooked away in the kitchen.

The walkie talkie rang (they do that now. They all sound like a nextel phone).
We picked it up and listened. Nothing.
It rang again.
Nothing.
It rang again and finally we knew what was happening. He was pressing the call button to talk. So we pressed the talk button and told him to "press the other button!" After about 3 tries telling him to press the other button, he finally got through.

Ken: You dogs!
Mom: Yes?
Ken: Why don't you have dinner ready for me when I get home so that I can go back out to play after?
Dad grabs the walkie talkie out of my hand and says: You'll get dinner when it is ready!
Silence.

Have dinner ready...
What was he thinking?

Eclipse

We watched the eclipse more than a week ago with Sandra from MA. We should've done that timed photo thing remcat did.

Just where did he come from?

Last night I waited outside the room in which Lastborn was participating in a Destination Imagination meeting. I overheard this conversation.

Ringleader: We need to makeup an alien language!
Lastborn: Oh! I know how to speak Alien!

It's all becoming clear now...

My husband's idea of a great valentine's gift

I especially like Grow a soul and Do my dishes.

What color are you?

You Are A Green Girl

You feel most at home in a world of ideas. You're curious and logical - and enjoy a good intellectual challenge. You're super cool, calm, and collected. Very little tries your patience. Your only fear? People not realizing how smart and able you are!

What Color Girl Are You?

With thanks to mental meanderings

The Future Andrew Zimmern

Lastborn has discovered food!

Not that he really needs it, but his dad got him to try a couple of types of seafood and now he has discovered that there is a world beyond chicken nuggets and mac-n-cheese. His favorite is seafood of any kind. If we say it comes from the ocean, he will try it; Even if his grand-dad does advise that some things are better left in the ocean.

Along with discovering new and different foods, he also discovered that some people are somewhat queasy about watching others eat some foods. This only helps to sell him on a new food. Take frog legs for instance. He actually at them. And he actually said they taste like chicken. Those were his words.

On the one hand, I am proud. But I could do without seeing him dance the frog legs across his plate. That's just too much.

Because of this intereste in bizarre foods, DH introduced him to a TV show called Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. Lastborn now wants to grow up to be Andrew Zimmern. Although this is better than some of his other career choices, I'm not sure I want to watch his rise to stardom in this field.

February

The boys got excited about the Superbowl this year. Coming from NE and having the Pats in the game and all. They felt a connection. So we watched the first two quarters last night. It meant a later bedtime, but allowed them to have something to talk with their friends about in this sports-centered part of the world.

They were very dissapointed this morning when they learned that the Pats lost. But Firstborn, as usual, cut right to the chase. "I bet a lot of people lost a lot of money on this one!"

It's always about the money. :-)

Georgia and the Mouse

She's a fearsome kitty. But it makes it awfully hard to get my work done.

Of kids and cats

I promise Grandma, this won't become a cats blog.

First the kids:

We brought Lastborn to his first CCD class of the year. They started the class off with a prayer service. Lastborn was not happy, but he cooperated and even participated! That night I was bragging to DH about how Lastborn was singing and even blessing his teachers along with the other kids.

Lastborn gets this big smile on his face. The one that means that either he is about to confess to something he did that will certainly embarrass me or he is about to say something that will embarrass me. Either way, I know it means trouble.

"And I blessed you, too!" he giggled.

"I know, you helped them bless the parents too," I replied, wondering when the bomb would drop.

"Like this!" and he made the devil-horns sign with his fingers held in a V shape. While everyone else was praying with hands outstretched, Lastborn was making rabbit ears like his big brother insists on doing in every picture.

Of course! Why not? We couldn't expect him to actually do what he was asked to do, could we? No, Lastborn had to put his own spin on things.

I'm recovering. After all, the devil horns during a blessing are a whole lot better than "pull my finger" during the kiss of peace.

Grandma, I'm very sorry that you already bought your tickets to fly out here for his first communion. If he makes it through the program, it will be a miracle. I will do my best and I think we all need to pray for the next 3 months. :-)

At the bus stop today, it was pretty cold. The moms and one dad were concentrating on not freezing while keeping an eye out for any stray kids. When all of a sudden I heard a familiar little voice shout out "I'm freezing my wiener off." Of course, statements like this can't be made in a quiet voice. We're still new here but I think the neighborhood parents have already figured out that we are the bad parents on the block. But further reinforcements of that theory are not real welcome. Thanks, Lastborn. I appreciate it.

I shot him a glance and mouthed to quiet down.

There goes that smile again. The I'm-about-to-embarrass-you-smile.

"Whaaaat!" He says. "I'm just saying. I might turn into a girl!"

There is not enough coffee in the world to make me ready for a morning like this.

Now the Cats:

The cats are getting very calm. They are out most of the day, no longer cowering under beds and hiding in closets. They spend most of the sleep hours under the couch where they can watch us all. They play for hours with the boys and they spend lots of time on their cat tree. Thanks Cheryl for recommending them. Not only was http://www.armarkat.com/ very reasonably priced but it only took three days for the tree to arrive. Amazing. And they love it. They spend lots of time on it. Nadia did try to climb into the hammock as soon as she saw it. But the hammock moved! So she is afraid of it for now.

Georgia has discovered the cursor on my computer screen. While this is very cute, it is also very disturbing when I'm trying to work. We will definitely have to get a picture of it before we break this habit though.

Welcome, our new babies

Announcing the arrival of Nadia Comenici and Georgia Peach.

This is Nadia.

And this is Peach.

They were found in a home in Cincinnati along with about 59 other cats who were either stuck inside the house with no one to care for them or were living around the house. Cat rescuers from all over the area worked together to find foster placement for all of the cats who survived and for the last 6 months these girls have been staying in a wonderful foster home outside of Cincinnati. The woman who took them in has cared for them and nursed them back to health. They were just little girls when they were found and had horrible respiratory viruses.

They are still pretty skittish though Georgia seems to be a thrill seeker. She darts around the house exploring everything even though you can tell that the slightest movement will send her back to her safety room. She seems to love the thrill of the exploration.

Nadia, on the other hand is very shy. She spent most of the day here:

Under my bed. You can almost see how sleek and silver she is. If you look past the eerie glowing eyes.

At about 2:00 she came out and frolicked with Georgia until the kids came home.

Mr Professor

I'm trying to encourage the kids to use the phone. I apologise to those neighbors who unwittingly answer a call from my offspring. But the only way they will learn how to use this tool is by actually using it. I hope you have a sense of humor.

Especially in this cold snap we are experiencing, it's nice for my kids to call their neighbors to see if they can play instead of walking down the street in the cold only to find that neighbor boy can't play because he didn't clean his room this morning.

So the other day, I overheard this conversation between firstborn and a neighbor:

Firstborn: I possess a strategy for which I need the consent of the convention of the directors before I proceed to execute the strategy.
Silence.
Firstborn: OK. I have a plan. But I need to run it by you guys before I do it; just to get your approval.

Pretty bad when an 11 year old has to translate back into simple terms.

You see, in 3rd grade they started learning to increase their writing skills by substituting "baby" words for "grown-up" words. This is a skill Firstborn relishes. He loves big words. So he practices in regular speech. He must have composed this speech all morning while "waiting until a more reasonable hour to call his friends." Not everyone gets up at 6am.

Even Grandma got to see Mr. Professor in action. The first day of her Thanksgiving visit, we waited for the boys at the bus stop. When the 12 kids that get off at this street disembarked, the same neighbor boy from the telephone conversation yelled out to Firstborn, "When can you play?" To which Firstborn responded, "Not for an indeterminate amount of time!"

I saw Grandma's eyebrows raise. Yep. That's Firstborn.

The neighbors all seem to have a sense of humor. One boy was home schooled until this year and he is familiar with the idea of using big words. He does a pretty good job of participating with Firstborn. The other boy prefers to communicate in grunts and single syllable words, which he tends to mumble at super-sonic speed. He's hard to understand but very funny if you catch a word he's saying. They are all smart kids, and very fun to be around.

Happy New Year

... to all my friends and family who read this.

I have been a sorry poster for a while and promise to try to do better in 2008.

But to catch everyone up with family info . . .

The kids got out of school on December 20th. We spent a few days at home enjoying some relaxed vacation time and catching up with all of our wrapping, packing and last minute shopping. Then, on Friday, we headed eastward towards MA. The boys were very happy that MA had 2 feet of snow on the ground!!! What a wonderful Christmas present that was. Firstborn got to go sledding with his older cousins at the park down the street. It had a really great steep hill and because the snow was melty, the run was very fast and slick. Firstborn slept well that night, but panicked when he returned home because he left his gameboy in his pocket while sledding and now it was gone. A quick return to the slope down the road found the charcoal black electronic device sitting at the bottom of the still-white snowy hill. Glad we bought black. :-) It was getting dark out, so I was very worried that we either wouldn't find it or someone else would have spotted and pocketed the device before we got there. Lucky, lucky.

Firstborn slept very well that night.

In previous years, we housed one sister and family for the holidays at our house while my other sister housed the rest of the family. This always made Christmas special because I was able to spend so much time with my oldest sister and we were able to spend lots of time in my other sister's house as well. This year we were in a hotel, having no house in MA any more. It was much more tiring coming home to a hotel instead of a house and we spent much less time with the family having to pack family visits on both sides into 1 week.

I also hoped to contact some of my friends, but time ran out. Firstborn was lucky to see one of his best friends for about 3 hours on the day after Christmas. Lastborn, unfortunately did not get that chance. We only had one car and DH had to work the day after Christmas. I had to work on the 27th. So the remaining parent was stuck at the hotel or at my sister's house.

So while the week was long and tiring, it still wasn't long enough. To all my friends that I did not get to see, I miss you and hope to see you this summer. Keep in touch and have a wonderful new year.

Literally

Lastborn lost a tooth last night. The biggest fear among all children of tooth-loosing age is that the tooth will get lost and the tooth fairy will not be able to swap for the desired money. He constantly worries when a tooth gets to a certain level of wobbliness that he will swallow it or drop it down the sink.

Well of course, while Dad was brushing his teeth last night, the latter happened. Like a scene in slow motion, the tooth tinkled around and around in a circle around the sink drain and then, without warning, changed direction and disappeared down the drain, never to be seen again.

Thinking quickly, Daddy informed Lastborn that he could just write a note for the tooth fairy and she would still deliver the loot. So, with great industry and the kind of focus that is never shown to schoolwork, Lastborn sat down and penned the following:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I lost my tooth, literally.

Love, Eddie

ap-cray

That's pig Latin for crap. That was my day yesterday.

It started with a Team Manager for DI calling to quit. And I couldn't even get angry at her because she's really sick. She's doing the right thing, but for a while, I thought I would need to be the team manager for her group.

Then, in checking on what I had ordered for Christmas for my sister, I discovered that all of my Amazon orders had been sent to Tewksbury. Oh Man!!!

I, of course, discover this 3 minutes before I had to be outside to meet the kids bus. So I couldn't begin the phone tag required to re-route the packages somewhere more useful.

So out I headed to the bus at 2:35 only to step into a giant pile of doggy doo as I was crossing my yard. And I mean giant! I've never seen such a giant pile of ap-cray! Right in the middle of my yard. I'm sorry dog owner, but there is no way you could have missed your dog producing such a giant pile. Could you not have just picked it up? Please, let me know where you live and I will send my children over to your yard to squat down and dump a load.

So, I survived. I was able to call the Tewksbury postmaster who calmed and soothed me, and told me that she would contact the route driver and see if they could find the packages. I was able to get most of the poo off my shoe in time to attend a wonderful little neighborhood party around the corner, where we exchanged ornaments and cookies and had wonderful conversation, and fortuitously, the regional director of DI was there and told me she had a couple who still wanted to be team managers. The glass of Sirah at the party was helpful as well.

Today will be a better day.

What's that I smell?

Oh yes. It must be the testosterone.

Living in a household full of menfolk certainly does bring it's share of manliness. This usually comes in the form of constant obsession with weapons and weaponry.

You've heard that team "A man's home is his castle?" Well we take that too far here. Instead of a nice umbrella stand in our front entry, we have a nice weapon stand.

Where there aren't weapons, there are tiny green and tan commandos hiding in my plants and Christmas tree. Just the other day, I saw the Bionicles leading an attack in the family room with a division of characters from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in formation backing them up. Who knew that Rudolph and his gang were such warriors.

And one of these days, I have to snap a picture of Firstborn heading out to protect his woods. With his wooden hand and a half sword down the back of his shirt, his bow strung across one shoulder and quiver across the other, and a plastic dagger down his pants. Oh - and a 5 foot long stick.

We feel safe.