Wacky Weekend

Saturday was the regional Odyssey of the Mind Competition.  This was our third year having a team.  Our problem was to build a Rube Goldberg Machine.  Check out this link if you don't know what a Rube Goldberg Machine is. 

The machine worked great, but we lost a lot of points on style and didn't do very well in the spontaneous problem.  With a 4th place finish, it will be our first time ever not to make it to state.  I shouldn't admit that I am relieved to be done.  We are constantly way overbooked these days that it is nice to see the end of an activity.  There were two other teams from our school though who did a fabulous job and both of them finished first in their categories and qualified for state! One team had a boy from our Lego team and the other was most of our Girl Scout Troop.  We got to watch their performance and it was fabulous.  Ryan's flag football team was also there and ended up making it to the next round, so there were celebrations all around. 
It was also the day of Girl Scout Camporee.  We were going to try to make it for at least part of the day between the competition and the awards ceremony.  I was pretty wiped out though, and the kids seemed to be about the same.  We all took a little bit of a power nap before heading back down again for evening festivities. 

Today I started making some pink ribbon blocks for Mom's Chemo Quilt.  I found a pattern here, and modified it so that it used slightly large pieces.  The directions called for a lot of squares and half square triangles sewn together and it seemed like too many seams to think about.  I've got 7 ribbon blocks done and have most of the chain blocks in progress.  I'll need to put it away soon though so I can get some work done for school tomorrow.  It has been nice to spend some time on other things this weekend, but I will be paying the price all week trying to keep up with lesson plans and grading. 
Speaking of keeping up with things.  I want to apologize to anyone who has commented recently and not gotten a response back quite yet.  It has been an adjustment to keep up with the new schedule and I'm not quite into a routine yet.  I'm slowly working my way backwards to try to catch up again.  So for anyone who has recently asked to join the Rainbow Scrap Challenge -- please consider yourself joined.  I'll get your name added to the list "officially" as soon as I can find a chance.