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.