Halloween

We actually had all 3 kids dress up for Halloween. I don't think Chris has dressed up since he was in elementary school, but he had a party this year, so here he wearing Kurt original from way back in the 1990s (the mask and cape were bought, but everything else Kurt fixed up).


Next, we have Justin wearing a 2011 Kurt & Justin original. He and Justin spent all day working on this and got it done just before we left for Trunk or Treating at the church. They were going to make a ghost, too, but ran out of time.
And Nate wearing what could only be bought at a store.
Nate had a great time trunk or treating and then going out with the neighbor kids for Halloween. We let him carve his own pumpkin this year, too, and so he had a pretty good Halloween.

Why I can't have any pretty plants in my yard

Here is our picture of our neighbors learning the hard way why you can't plant nice plants in your front yard.

Summer is almost over

Here it is August 1st and the kids will be going back to school in just a couple short weeks. The summer has blazed by.

Nate has had a great time playing with his friends and digging the most elaborate trenches through the sand in our backyard. They then filled them with water and made a huge mess, but it was so cool, I didn't say anything.

Chris started out the summer looking for a much needed job to help pay for college this fall. He was looking at going to Atmel to work with his dad, but I have to admit I was worried about the night shifts with Chris and how he would adapt. However, in the process of calling one of the brothers in our ward who he did some work for over the Christmas break, he was offered a job working in his shop (he owns a plastic injection molding shop). He learned today that he would be able to keep it into the school year. What a blessing this was for him. He will start college in a few weeks and has been really excited since attending freshman orientation at the beginning of the summer.

Justin has had a great time doing nothing. He has put in a few applications around town, but work for a 16-year-old is hard to come by right now. He will end the summer with a spelunking trip with the young men this week.

Kurt played softball with some guys from work and talked John into joining them.



The family ended the summer with a trip to Bozeman for Kurt's family reunion.

We spent a day in Yellowstone.

The owner of the property we stayed on had horses and let all the kids ride.



We spent an afternoon at the Museum of the Rockies, which is attached to the paleontology department of MSU. We saw lots of dinosaur bones and lots of frogs.





























After the museum, we played in the Hyalite Reservoir and a few of us went hiking.
































The last day there, we took the kids down to the creek and played in the water


and then the kids threw flour bombs at the big guys.


And finally we drove home. And now I need another week to recuperate from vacation.

May Catch-Up - Graduations & Birthdays

May was insanely busy, so I'm just now getting all caught up.

First off, we had Justin's 16th birthday. Kurt was really sick, so we took a cake to Chipotle and had dinner with John and Rachael and their kids. Because planning things with my family is really hard, he got to celebrate again 2 weeks later when we rolled his birthday, my mom's birthday, and Chris's graduation all into one celebration. He was ordained as a priest last weekend.



Lots of big events in May for Chris. We started out with his very last band concert. We have been attending these for 7 years and I have to say it was sad to go to his last one. He has been lucky to play with some really awesome, award-winning groups and it has been a lot of fun to listen to them.



Then we had the senior awards ceremony, where he was recognized for his National Merit Letter of Commendation.



Then, we had seminary graduation on the 22nd marking the end of 4 years of really early mornings and lots of good learning.

Then, on May 25, he graduated from high school. For those of you who haven't heard, he is going to be staying in town and attending the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs next year, where he is right now planning on double majoring in computer programming and electrical engineering. His goal, though, is to go into medical robotics/prosthetics. He is also planning on helping to mentor the high school robotics team next year, so he isn't escaping completely.

One more performance.

Almost there.

All Done!!

How to have a great weekend on 4 hours of sleep

So, once again proving that he is the only one with a life in our household, Chris had quite the weekend.

He started out Friday night with prom. His date's name is Kylie and they have been dating for a couple months now. They went to a friend's house for a dinner of fondue with several other couples. They then went to prom followed by after-prom at Art Sports, which is basically a huge room of trampolines. He made it home about 3 in the morning and went to bed for about 4 hours.



At 8, he was up and on his way to the last robotics event of the season. They received a grant from the Air Force Academy to put together an underwater robotics program that can be taught to middle school kids. They worked with a couple other local teams to assemble and test out the robots in the school swimming pool. That ended about 5:30. It also earned him this picture in the newspaper the next day.



At 6:30, we attended his band banquet, where he received an outstanding band student award.

Not a bad weekend for him, though he came home and slept for about 15 hours straight.

Track and Field Day

You know the school year is winding down when track and field rolls around. I had to work most of the day, but managed to go out and watch a few of the events.

As you can see, he was running hard.

Final Robotics Competition - Nationals in St. Louis

Chris's final robotics competition has come and gone. The kids competed at the national competition in St. Louis this past weekend and had a great time. They hoped to be competitive, but were expecting to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack. Instead, after 10 qualifying matches, they found themselves ranked 7th out of 88 teams in their division, having a record of 8-2. The top 8 teams are guaranteed a spot in the finals. After picking the 2 teams they wanted on their alliance, they went on to elimination matches, where unfortunately they quickly lost their first 2 matches to the 2nd place seed. However, this was their highest finish ever and they did it at the national competition. It was a real achievement for a 3rd-year team. They were right in there with teams who have been doing this for a lot longer.

The event was held in the Edward Jones dome, where the St. Louis Rams play, and the event center next door. There were a total of 352 teams competing.


Their robot helped place a lot of tubes in this match

for a great score.


Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas became involved with FIRST this year and, Friday night, treated the kids to a free Black Eyed Peas concert. Since Chris's team was a Chairman's award winner, they had seats on the floor right in front of the stage. Chris is just sorry he didn't get to see Morgan Freeman, who was also wandering around the event.


What a great way to end 3 years of a lot of hard work. This has absolutely been the most impressive program I have ever seen in a school. There are LEGO robotics teams in a lot of middle schools now, as well as FTC (smaller robots) and the FRC (big robots) teams. If your kids are science minded at all and have a chance to join one of these teams, they won't regret it. It is a great opportunity to get some hands-on experience in not only building and designing a robot, but also in running an organization. They do a lot of work with business professionals from the community, both as mentors and going out to present their team to potential sponsors. It also really encourages the kids to get involved with their communities any way they can, be it helping new teams or doing charity work. It really is a great program.

Pinewood Derby

After a 5-year hiatus from pinewood derby for us, it was time to build a car for Nate. John came over with his boys last week and they cut and sanded and weighted the cars. We had our derby tonight and Nate took third! Not a bad first showing for him.


First place got a baseball trophy, 2nd got a basketball trophy, and Nate got a bowling trophy
.

But we fixed it for him when we got home.

More Robotics - Denver Regional

This weekend was the Denver Regional for Chris's robotics team. Qualifying matches ran all day Friday and Saturday morning. They did really well, finishing with a record of 8 wins and 2 losses, earning 10th place out of 45 teams, their highest finish in the 3 years they have been competing. The top 8 teams pick 2 teams to compete with in elimination matches. The other Colorado Springs team placed 2nd and made Chris's team their first pick. Unfortunately, they lost their first round in the elimination matches. As in Kansas City, it came down to the minibot. In KC, their pole was turned off due to a penalty, so the minibot didn't count. In Denver, the bot deployed, but something went wrong and it didn't climb the pole. It would have been worth 10 points and they lost the match by 4 points. The kids were really disappointed as they had really high expectations after the Kansas regional.

Some bright spots, though. Their team took home all 3 of the top awards given.

Woodie Flowers award: This is the top award for team mentors. Each team is allowed to nominate one of their mentors. Friday night, Mr. McLean, who is their engineering teacher and head mentor, won that award.

The FIRST Dean's List: Each team is allowed to nominate 2 outstanding students for this award. It is for a student who is highly involved not only in his team, but is also active with bringing science and engineering ideas out into the community. One of their members won this award Saturday night.

The Chairman’s Award: This is the most prestigious award they can win. The award honors the team that best represents a model for other FRC teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST. Teams that win this are involved in helping other teams and involved in the community. Chris's team has really been out this last year, helping start up and mentor LEGO robotics leagues in the junior highs, working with Care and Share, running summer camps for robotics for kids, etc. You can see the video they submitted for this award here.

The Chairman's award is the last award given after everything else is done. Though they had earned the 2 big personal awards at the end of Saturday night, the team itself had earned no awards. That, along with an early elimination in the finals, had the kids a bit down. However, the last award of the night went to them. As it happens, teams that win the Chairman's award are also invited to compete at nationals, so

THEY'RE GOING TO ST. LOUIS!!

(Go 2 over from the left on the bottom and straight up and you'll find Chris in the very back)

Well, at least we hope so. There is still the not so minor point of scraping together enough money to go in the next 2 weeks, but it is fantastic to make it.

Chris is finishing out his senior year well with this team. The team started his sophomore year and in the last 3 years, adding in the 1st place finish in Denver their rookie year and the Rookie All Star award they also took that year (top award for a rookie team), they have won every one of the major awards plus a few of the minor ones and made nationals twice. That is a huge accomplishment for such a new team.

Way to go guys!

Happy Birthday Nate

Nate turned 9 on March 30.

It's Robotics Time Again

Chris's team getting ready to score a tube

Yes, it is once again robotics season and Chris's team is off to a great start. They got their game way back in January. This year it was to build a robot that could pick up inner tubes of different colors and shapes and hang them on a wall. They would get 3 points for the top level, 2 for the middle, and 1 for the bottom. If they could program the robot to hang a tube by itself during the first 30 seconds of the game, they would get 6 points and their points on that level would double. If they could put the inner tubes in a certain order on the wall, that was also worth points. In the last 10 seconds, they could release a mini robot to climb a pole. First one to the top gets 30 points, second 20, etc.

The kids worked until the last week of February, when the robot had to be sealed up, and then hauled it to Kansas City this weekend to compete in the Kansas City Regional. They got off to a pretty good start. They had a couple problems, but were always one of the teams consistently scoring. Despite having problems with their minibot falling off the robot the first couple games, they had it running up the pole by the last match.

The way the competitions work is that they play 9 qualifying matches randomly sorted into alliances of 3 teams. At the end of those matches, the top 8 teams pick 2 teams that they want to compete with in the quarterfinals. Chris's team didn't finish high enough to be one of the top 8 teams, but they were picked by the 2nd seeded team. Their alliance dominated their quarterfinal matches, winning 2 games to 0. They then made a real fight of it in the semifinals winning 1 match and losing 2 other real close ones. In fact, they were leading in the last match by over 40 points, but one of their teams sent their minibot up the pole too early and it didn't count. If it had, they would have made the finals. Very exciting!

They also brought home 2 awards, the entrepreneurship award for how they run their team and a runner-up award for safety.

They will now come back home with everything they learned in KC and get ready for the Denver regional on April 8.

Deploying the minibot