The weirdness never ends....

This has been the strangest day. Down right weird.

Just now my 7 & 10 yo decided to practice. Piano. All on their own. At 7pm. After an exceptionally long day. And then my 10yo old said "I love to practice." "Now I see why you wanted me to learn piano."

See what I mean? Coming from him, that's just weird.

Our exceptionally long day was spent at an FLL tournament. It was a crazy busy day. But that's ok, right? Because after today we're done for the season. Right...

Right off the bat, at 9am, we had our Project Presentation followed by Technical Judging at 9:20. They ran the robot for the judges and had an interview to discuss their robot and programs. Everything went wrong with the robot run. My team has had a low scoring robot game this season as it is. The team really didn't get a chance to show their stuff. I didn't get to hear the actual tech interview, but it had to go better than the run! Except I had to interupt it to get the team to their 9:40 team work exercise. That probably didn't help. I thought they probably did ok with the teamwork exercise, since they looked liked they were having a good time. (Coaches aren't allowed to do more than watch from a distance) Then we had some practice runs, lunch, and our scored runs. Followed by 2 hrs of presentations and awards. (The first hour of presentations are just vamping so that the judges have some time to complete their rankings and award decisions. I should post about the judging process sometime.)

At the same time our sibling team was making the same rounds with just a slightly different schedule. And I mean sibling team literally. There were 4 sets of siblings each split between the 2 teams that practice at my house, plus a couple of extra kids on each team. ( A couple of weeks ago ds10 quit his team, but I think that story needs to be a different post. Can I just say that things are crazy and I'm confused no end on so many levels, about so many things?)

It was a long day. And it's tough to keep the kids positive by the end of it. We were all tired and getting short tempered by the end. Then.... Then...

The sibling team took the 2nd place award in Project Research - but the description of their work mirrored my team's (because, did I mention? It was a sibling team. So we did all our field trips together, shared research, etc.. There was a lot of cross pollination between teams.) My team was literally getting to their feet as the description of the award winning work was listed when they heard the other team's name and number called. Such conflict! They were so happy for their sibling team - and so disappointed for themselves. I was proud of them, even though their faces showed their disappointment, they congratulated the other team, and were truly glad for them.

And the awards went on. And on. There were 49 teams at this tournament each being acknowledge and picking up their tournament medals (which were very cool this year), with 25 awards given. I wouldn't want to deny any team their time in the lime light, but we were ready to go home. The kids started chatting, not kindly, about a kid they knew from another venue, when their name was called - for the 1st place Gracious Professionalism award.

Can I just write this again?

My team. You know, the team that has been beaning each other with snowballs, bashing each other with boffers, and refusing to run the robot with "him" because of one thing or another, got 1st Place Gracious Professionalism.

To top it off our team got an invite to compete at the state tournament. Only 12 out of 49 teams from this tournament got such an invite.

The sibling team didn't get an invite. It was their turn to practice being happy and disappointed at the same time. They were gracious.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Of course, that could be the exhaustion as much as the shock.

But wait. There's more.

After we put the littles to bed the sibling team's coach called me. A mistake had been made at the tournament. A team that didn't submit a project had accidentally been issued an invite to state. You have to submit a project to qualify for state. The sibling team earned the last golden ticket to the state tournament.

We're going to state. Both teams. 4 more weeks of practices.

Watch that feather, 'cause I'm just not that steady right now.