If You Knew Her, You Would Say...: By Popular Demand...

... the pink is gone. :)

Can you believe March is here already, and that 2008 is already 1/4 of the way over? Wow.

Well, I did it! My neighbor friend gave me courage and we went and played Bunko last night. I think there were 70 to 75 women there, from our church and our two sister churches in the neighboring communities. It was a lot of fun and a great way to meet people. Not that I'll remember all their names by tomorrow, but I hope I can remember many of them at least! But wow - Bunko is sure a great way to get people together and get them to meet others, huh? I even borrowed some dice earrings of Christianne's to help get me in the mood. :) I was just a little disappointed to find out it's really nothing like Craps, though... ;)

Poor Miss Grace seems to have caught Ro's stomach bug. She threw up in the night and has had yucky diapers all day. Poor kid. She's a good sport, though. She's been really good through it all, but now she's getting whiny and I know she's tired. :(

And what a wonderful day it was today! A beautiful, gorgeous 77 degrees this afternoon (with snow forecasted for tonight!?!) Ro got up and took Chris to the designated meeting area for her ski trip at 5:45. She was bundled up in her new ski pants and excited to go. I have to say, I so admire her courage. I wouldn't go play Bunko without a buddy, let alone go skiing 2 1/2 hours away! She has really blossomed here, willing to try new things and learning a lot about herself. I'm pretty impressed with her. When we spoke to her at lunch she said she was having a great time and that this might just be the sport for her! :) This afternoon she called us from the bus and said that she had such a good time. I can't wait for her to get home (another hour or so), and tell us all about it. :)

And then the rest of us went to Highlands Ranch for the 25th year of Colorado's Odyssey of the Mind. The only bummer was that the coach and her two kids couldn't make it because they got this nasty flu. :( However, the remaining kids rallied together and did a wonderful job. They tackled the problem of how dinosaurs became extinct, and Josh played the very important part of DinoPox - the disease that they came up with that wiped all the dinos out. :) After the presentation, the judges came over and talked to the kids about their project; they asked them questions and allowed them to talk more about it. Even Gracie was fairly quiet. All in all, an excellent job.

That's Joshua with the anklysaurus his team created.

We then had time for a nice lunch at IHOP. I know, IHOP, big deal... but we had the coolest guy come by and twist some balloons for the kids. Josh got a monkey with a banana and Grace got a bear with a heart. Fun stuff.

After that we went back to the OOTM meet for the second portion - a spontaneous problem. The kids are given a problem and they have to think on their feet to throw out possible solutions. They're judged on the amount of answers they come up with as well as creativity. Sadly, the kids are sworn to secrecy (only kids allowed in - no parents or coaches) until after the event on what the problem is (so as not to prepare other teams who haven't gone yet) - but Josh says he promised not to tell until MAY! So who knows what problem they got?!?

Hopefully we'll hear the results sometime this evening.

They held the competition at Valor Christian High School. Talk about a facility to make you drool over! This place was amazing - and huge! The church it's affiliated with is just across the street - also amazing and huge! Here are two pictures of parts of the church, followed by a picture of the school from the church parking lot.