Can I brag on my clubbers?

I love these people.

Yessiree, those are first-place ribbons for our first-time-ever first-place Sparkies. Yeah! I had so much fun being on the line as a coach with them. They are just precious.

And these people...

...did so well! 

The competition was so tight between all 4 teams, that even the 4th place team (us) won quite a few games. The girls did especially well. Look at Laura, halfway between clubber and leader. During practices she was gracefully coaching the younger players. She makes me proud.

And speaking of people I'm proud of, two weeks prior...

David, Maddie, and Emma knew their Bible quizzing material forward and backwards, and proved it! Second year in a row as 1st place winners!

Since we didn't have any other Book Four people for Laura to quiz with, she teamed up with two other girls from two other churches. They were the best of the best. Laura made family history by finishing out her fourth year of T&T with her fourth Bible Quiz medal! When she wore them all at once my dad nicknamed her Clackety. *smile*

All our Quiz teams. Brian also did very well, with a perfect paddle score.

A big thank-you to Commander Dave, Mrs. Cory H., Mrs. Peggy N., and all the other leaders and parents. Your support was invaluable!

This Saturday is our Grand Prix (Awana's version of a Pinewood Derby). It will be our 9th consecutive week of extra Awana stuff. Whew! The practices were worth it, though. Not only did the clubbers perform better, we got to develop deeper relationships with them. I'm happy to say I can now tell the twins apart (both sets). :)

And I didn't even write about Summit, which was right in between Quizzing and Games. Well, in case you were wondering, I'm very proud of Stephanie too. That deserves a whole 'nother post.

Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15

Grand Prix 2010

This was our first year doing the Awana Grand Prix at this church, and despite some differences, I think everyone had fun! There was a clubbers' and a leaders' division. Our family's cars are never big speed winners so we tend to go for Best Design, often with non-car designs. I didn't know what I wanted to do until the eleventh hour, because I really wanted to do something rectangular (a tradition starting with "Butter"), but Laura came up with a great idea the day before - dice! And then Chris and Michael did the drillwork. So all I did was sand and paint. But I am happy with how it turned out.

Before paint and wheels / After paint and wheels

The ribbon is just for participating. Sadly, the leader division had no Best Design judging.

If I can, I'll get a picture of our family's other cars. Stephanie made a skateboard and Michael made a working clothespin! (I think David was the only one that made a "real car", lol.)

What I've been up to in a nutshell (nutshells not included).

Update time! Life keeps happening, and there are a lot of posts that I wanted to write but never got to. Whether they ever get revisited or not, here is a quick outline of "what I've been up to".

• Do Hard Things conference in Chicago. Great, fun, lived up to expectations. :) Alex and Brett are great speakers. Read their book!

• Citation Connect '09. I got to go to Awana headquarters for a few days with a group of other Citation Achievers (a Citation Achiever is someone who has finished 10 Awana handbooks). We got a tour of HQ and the building where they handle all the shipping stuff (Penny Lane). We also took a sightseeing trip to Chicago and did some other fun stuff. I learned a lot and especially enjoyed meeting other Awana people from all around the country. Some came from as far as Maryland, Washington state, California, Texas, etc.

• Illinois Square Dance Convention! Ironically, this year it was in Davenport, Iowa! But we didn't mind, because we stayed with our friends who live there, the S. family. Best of all, Megan S. learned to dance just so she could come with us! She was famous that weekend because she learned all of Mainstream in two 4-hour lessons the previous week and did great! (Her brother Jared also came and we pulled him through... he also did great despite the fact he had no idea what was going on, lol!)

Well there you go... my exciting highlights of July. :)

Competition-crazy month

Been wondering what we've been up to? There's a lot to tell! For 4 weeks in a row, we had some sort of competitive event, most of them having to do with Awana. My sister Stephanie was especially busy, as she participated in each one! A privilege of being in 6th grade.

First weekend: Awana T&T Bible Quizzing. My mom helped coach, and I served as Timekeeper. Very interesting being part of such suspense. Steph quizzed alone against one other Book 4 quizzer (normally they are teams of 2 or 3). They were well-matched, but Stephanie pulled ahead and won! Yay!

Second weekend: Gamequest. It's true! Awana goes all the way to high school... it's a big secret, I know. Jr. and Sr. High have regional games and quizzing competition all on the same day. Chris, Michael, and Stephanie all joined onto other church's teams so they could play games. Michael and Stephanie's team (Trek) got 2nd place in the first round and 4th place in the second round. Chris's team (Journey) got 3rd. We see a lot of people that we know from camp there, so that's always great. Megan and Jared S. even came out to watch (long time no see, haha).

Third weekend: Sparks-A-Rama and AwanaGames!!! (I almost made a whole post for just this one, but obviously I changed my mind.) I was so excited for this day! I wish I could still play as a clubber, but helping coach is the next best thing. This was a very interesting day, because it was almost exactly like last year, except with all new people from our new church. Even down to the scores... Sparks finished, um, last... but our T&T WON!!! Woohoo! They did fantastic! At first we didn't know if we'd have enough people to make teams, but we did it, though we had to pull kids from 4 other churches to have enough. (Sparks did end up being short a girl, but they needed us to play so bad they let it slide). We had really cool blue camouflage T-shirts that made it very obvious who you were cheering for. (Ironically, they make it really easy to spot friends across the room, and they didn't help our Sparks at all in the game Rabbit Hunt.) Afterwards, we went to Culver's for ice cream, another tradition.

Fourth weekend: Odyssey of the Mind (or OM for short). OM used to be called Olympics of the Mind, and what it is is a competition of creativity. Michael and Stephanie did it with a couple other kids. They had to choose one of several tasks, then creatively accomplish it. The task they picked was to research the trials of Hercules (or Heracles), then make up their own and act it out, overcoming a few prescribed obstacles. This weekend was the State competition in St. Louis, and they got 2nd place out of 5 teams. That means they will go to World in May, which is held in Iowa. They will literally be up against teams from all over US and the world!

So there you have it: our past several weeks in a nutshell. Busy but fun!