Battle of the Books

Ever watched a movie where it was so suspenseful that you just couldn't even look?  Strangely enough, yes, strangely enough, the school district's Battle of the Book competition was like that for me.  Watching your own kid, I think, is worse than experiencing it yourself!

It didn't help anything that they ended up going into double overtime (no lie, that is a thing in academic competitions).  More about that later.

Our district has four middle schools and each school sent two teams.  Josh and his teammate qualified in an intraschool competition and then got to pick two other kids to join them to make it a team of four for the district competition.

May I proudly present the "4some bookworms"!

And Jason's fez.  It's a Doctor Who thing and Josh wanted me to bring it.  So I did.

The competition consisted of three 20 question rounds.  After the first round, Josh's team was in first place.  After a perfect 20/20 second round, Josh's team was in first place.  After a rather brutal and difficult third round, Josh's team was tied for first place.

Which is where it gets crazy.  The two teams stuck around (they let everyone else go home since it was 8 o'clock and most people hadn't eaten yet) for a fourth round of 20 questions.  During which each team got only one question wrong.

The SUSPENSE!

The final tie-breaking round consisted of three questions one of the librarians made up.

The question that lost the competition for the 4some bookworms was, "Place the following books in order from the least to the most number of pages, not counting the bibliography."

So, at this point, the teams are really just guessing.  Josh's team was only one book off.

Tragic.

Disappointing.

It was sad to lose over a question that didn't have anything to do with the material in the books they were asked to read; however, the teams were clearly so evenly matched that this was probably the only way without keeping us there all night.

But we are so proud of Josh and his team.  They worked great as a team conferring together on the answers and supporting each other.  And they definitely knew their stuff.  To celebrate, we busted out the red vines and coconut milk ice cream for Josh when he got home.

Can't wait for next year!

Ben's Starry Night Period

Ben has this delightful quirk in his personality where he will periodically become inspired by something and then we see it everywhere: paper in the house, papers from school, papers at church, etc.  Usually, and for many months, this has been math.  We see math everywhere.  Multiplying by two was his specialty.  

But for the last couple of weeks he's moved on.  This time to art.  At school they made their own versions of Van Gogh's Starry Night and he hasn't stopped since.  Below are just a few of his masterpieces.

Jason just spent several days on the Queen Mary in L.A. so he brought this back for Ben in honor of his latest obsession.  It was very well received.

Webelos

Tuesday night was a very busy, big night.  It was the night of our pack's Blue and Gold with an Around the World Carnival theme.  Also, Michael earned and was award his Webelos badge.  In our pack, we do some fun face painting with the rank advancements.  The cubmaster reads a script telling the parents what to paint on their scout's face and then tells the pack the meaning of each mark.  Some of the boys opt out, but when you are the son of the cubmaster, you get painted!

And then if you are the parent (usually mom) of an advancing cub scout, you get pinned.  I am so proud of Michael and all of his hard work.  And I love getting new pins to add to my growing collection.

(Photos by Li Jensen)

More Fun with Aunt Sherri

Sherri just sent me some of the pictures she took during her trip here, so I thought I would add some to the blog.  Especially the ones from her last day here when I spent most of my time chasing our monkey and took no pictures.  

On Tuesday, I let the middle boys play hooky.  This is the first time in their lives that they've met her and we don't know when we'll see her again.  So, three kids plus the weather wasn't great plus Sherri needs the option to sit down periodically equals Children's Museum.  

Michael horded all the money.

Ben made pizza with double the toppings.

He also visited with a questionable dogtor.

Luckily, he was in good health.

You could say he was in good hands.

Aunt Sherri made friends with a local.

Isaac rode a trike (with some help from his mom).

We returned inside and the middles made their mark on the stage.

We finished our visit with some building blocks.  The middles building and the monkey destroying.

Josh has a more vigorous schedule at school and with basketball practice, so we didn't get any pictures with him until we dropped off Aunt Sherri at the airport.

Good times and hopefully she doesn't wait 13 years before she visits again!

Naval Undersea Museum

More adventures with Aunt Sherri!  Yesterday we took what was supposed to be a scenic drive up to Bremerton to visit the Naval Undersea Museum.  We were hopeful that we could get some nice views of the sound from the bridge from Tacoma (which is pretty cool) and then in Gig Harbor.  Alas, the weather was not cooperative and we drove an hour and fifteen minutes in a gray, rainy haze.  My first reaction is often to be bummed out by this kind of situation, but I am learning to let it roll and realize that if we stayed home in rainy weather we would be home a lot.  

Anyway, back to our adventure.  We made it to the museum safe and sound.  And with four boys who were more than ready to get out and move around.

This museum reminded me a lot of the Airborne museum in Fayetteville - a nice size to roam around for about an hour or so and some pretty cool real stuff, in this case old school diving gear (seriously, those people were crazy!), torpedoes, and the control room of a nuclear submarine.

The boys had a marvelous time.  I would like to say I learned a lot; however, I spent most of my time chasing Baby Rage and he was on the move.  I tried to read a little in between pulling him off of and out of the exhibits.  It's definitely a place I would like to visit again and hopefully enjoy the views with nicer weather.

Pics from the Park

Aunt Sherri. Four-square. Playground. Sunshine. Basketball. Rocks. Fun. 

Valentine's Celebration

So inconvenient when a perfectly good holiday lands on a Tuesday.  That is just what happened with Valentine's Day this year.  The only thing to do in this uncomfortable situation is to hold a party on the Saturday before.  I say "party", but we really just invited over one other family.  However, when you bring an additional six people into our house, it feels like chaos a party.

The kids had a blast and I think everyone ate more sugar than is strictly necessary.  And if we needed extra proof about how much fun our kids had last night, the fact that it was terribly difficult to get them out of bed this morning confirmed it.

The evenings festivities included: cookie face, heart stacking, marshmallow toss, air marshmallow hockey, cupid's arrows, root beer or cherry sprite floats, and Valentine's mad libs.