Destination ImagiNation and The Wiz

Hola! (Just so you know, I have tried for 5 minutes to get these spaces edited out of the post! I don't know why they won't "delete." I'm giving up on that computer glitch, but I thought I'd type IN the spaces so you know why they are there...) **You can also click on photos to enlarge them.**

I haven't said much about Kara's most recent successes...she's been working with a team for D.I., or Destination ImagiNation. It's kind of like Science Olympiad. They choose a challenge to work on, and the team problem-solves and comes up with a solution to perform the challenge.

Their team's challenge is to move 4 objects from the top of a 6-foot structure, to the floor, and 4 objects from the floor to the top of the 6-foot structure. They can't touch any of it, so they had to build some kind of contraption to move the objects. They had 8 minutes to perform the task. During that 8 minutes, they were also to talk about and "sell" the contraption, telling their audience how it worked and what it did. So, last weekend (9 days ago) they presented the solution at "Regionals."

There are 9 regions in Massachusetts. They competed against about 10 other teams on this same challenge. They won first place! That moved them to the "State" competition, which was held Saturday, 3 days ago. 9 regions, with 6 challenges. The first-place teams from each region, from each challenge, came to compete. There were 9 teams at the elementary level for their challenge, so they competed against 8 other teams yesterday. They did really well...actually, again, they took first place! It was very exciting.

So NOW...the Grand Pooh-Bah event of Destination ImagiNation is called the Destination ImagiNation Global Finals. They go to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for 4 days, and participate in all kinds of fun activities with D.I. teams from all over the world, literally. 40 states (U.S.) are represented, as well as 30 other countries. The kids get to interact with and learn about the home countries of teams from those other countries and states. They stay on the University of Tennesee campus, and it's a pretty big deal. That's at the end of May. Kara is pretty excited. I'll include some photos. The kids built a kind of electromagnetic "crane" to pick up the items, as well as using duct tape (use #1034, I'm sure...) to help on some of the items. Kara and her team member Alex did the advertising bit, having a newscast interview talking about the crane and how it could pick up each item.

The other Big Event I did not mention was that Teresa performed in the middle school production of "The Wiz." She was a citizen of the Emerald City, bright green skirts and hair ties. The costuming was pretty elaborate (a stage full of 50 rainbow-colored munchkins) and the kids did a great job. Here are a few photos from that weekend.

The dark ones, where she is wearing black: she was a "Tornado Dancer," where they did a dance around the house during the tornado, spinning the house before it landed in Oz.

Then she stayed in the green costume for the rest of the production.

This is a good synopsis of these two events. Next time I'll talk about Kara's birthday party. My 20 minutes have expired. :)

Have a great week! Kari

Changes

Wow, Hola!

March is Marching on, and I haven't written in a little while. Here are a few changes around here:

SPRING. We can see lots of grass in the neighborhood now; the slightly warmer temps and rain have melted our snow down, inch by inch.

Our sump pumps are working overtime, and we have NOT had water in the house! Yippee, I can't tell you how relieved that makes me. Every. Single. Day.

(Blast from the recent Past: Exactly one year ago today, our flooding nightmares started. Basement water, round-the-clock shop-vac...I can feel myself start to hyperventillate just thinking about it. Anybody have a paper bag?)

BIRTHDAY TIME. We celebrated Frank's bday 10 days ago, with balloons and chocolate pie. Here is Kara helping him blow out his candle. Happy Birthday, Frank!

CHANGE. Frank has been working (another thing we are HUGELY grateful for), while looking for a job, since about November. He's been with this company for three years, and our expectations for the position and company have not come to fruition. Time to make a change.

After multiple interviews and meeting bosses and team members, he accepted an offer with Hewlett-Packard. Also known as "HP"--go ahead, look around your house--I bet you have SOMEthing in your house from HP! Printer? Laptop? Phone? He'll start a week from tomorrow. Still in Human Resources, except now instead of pharmaceuticals, it's a technology company.

The position is home-based. We will set up an office for him in our house. Lots of phone calls, computer work and video conferencing, a little travel and voila! No commute. Should be interesting--we've never done that before.

Onward and upward! Hope spring is inching its way towards YOUR neck of the woods.

Have a great week, love, Kari