And now we stop...

Hi to everyone trying to keep up with us. I think that it will be easier now (I am hoping). M.E.S.A is done, Battle of the Books is done, soccer is done, all within the week. All great experiences for the kids and for us. So here's the results:
M.E.S.A: The kids ended up getting 5th overall in the wind energy challenge. To see all the scores and the number of teams, refer to the following web page:

http://www.nmmesa.org/images/pdf/Event%20and%20Overall%20Score%20Sheets%20MS%20and%20HS.pdf

This will give you a pretty good idea of how well we think they did considering they were the only team from thier school that didn't have an advisor and they were also the only ones to place in the top 5 in thier school. We are very proud of them. On this trip, they got to ride a tram to the top of one of the mountains and there is a picture of Albuquerque from this tram.

Battle of the Books:
Nikole is actually the only one that competed in this one, but we got to go in the room that she was in and observe. A little background...there was a reading list of 21 books put out at the first of the school year. The kids read the books from this list and memorized the authors name. When they got to the compitition this morning, they were assigned a team. Not all thier team members were from thier school so they didn't know the other people. They put 5-6 kids on a team. The teams went to different rooms with an opposing team. There was two adults mediating the compitition for them, one would read questions and the other would time. Alternating teams, the reader would read a question about one of the books. The team had 30 seconds to come up with the correct book and the last name of the author. If they answered correctly they would get 7 points (5 for the book title and 2 for the author). If they missed one or the other, or the whole question, the other team could steal the points by giving the correct answer. A sample question would be like "In what book are there words and thier meanings?" and the kids would have to say, "The dictionary by Webster" There were 4 rounds in which they competed against different teams. At the end, they tallied up the total points that each team earned and awarded madals for 1st, 2nd, and 3 place teams. So, two girls out of the 8 team members from Nikole's school got 2nd place finishes, but Nikole and the other 5 kids didn't get anything..except a really fun time and memories.

Soccer:
This one had kind of a dramatic end to the season. First I will say that the team ended up not winning any of thier games, but did improve as the season progressed. The last game they played was Thursday. It was 95 degrees with no breeze. HOT!! And for anyone that knows about heat also knows of heat stroke. Well 3 of the kids on the Sierra team got a mild case of it, but one additional girl had to be taken off in an ambulance.
Again, something that the kids had alot of fun with. It gave them a chance to get to know people outside of thier comfort bubble.

And now we are just back to the everyday stuff for a while. The kids will get out of school on the 22nd, and we will see what the summer has in store. I am kind of hoping for the sleeping in a bit thing, but time will tell I imagine.