For a Quick Reference

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

DI glimpses and updates.


Okay- I typed up this entry MONTHS ago in early March and never got around to publishing it. Now it's old news to most people, but I still needed to record it. We've been uber-busy the past few months, and my blog has slipped to the bottom of my priority list (along with exercise, my social life, journaling in my hard-cover journal, and so many other things.)

I was juggling 3 callings- 2 of which are very time-consuming, plus extra  assignments for a huge stake performance of the Easter story (Aiee! I need to record that story!), teaching 4 art classes in my studio each week, coaching DI, and extensively remodeling our home.

So here we are. Catch-up time.

We've been crazy-busy from January-March preparing for Sarah and Matthew's Destination Imagination competitions. Life gets pretty crazy during the competition season, and my house looks like a disaster with construction projects all over as the team builds their backdrops and props for the performance. 

They did a phenomenal job at the competition and placed 2nd in the region (which was fantastic since the teams we competed against were all 3 years older than them, and we lost by a very small margin.) They did a flawless performance onstage and scored the highest overall for the Main Challenge, which was scaled into a perfect score. Their Instant Challenge was done solidly well, but the other team surpassed our engineering skills by quite a margin, pulling the other team into the lead by only 3 points. The scale is 400 points, just for the record. It was a very close race.




They also were given two special awards. 

The Renaissance Award is the most coveted award in the program, and only around 2 are awarded each year for each region of 200 teams. It basically means you've blown away the judges with a perfect stage performance or ground-breaking engineering. We were delighted to receive that award! 

The other medal was the Spirit of DI award, which they were given for exceptional sportsmanship. This year we had spent days sorting the Mardi Gras beads we collected from a parade (I should clarify it was a family-friendly Mardi Gras parade with no nudity allowed!), and made gift tags for each necklace that wished the recipient good luck.

The kids passed them out all day at the competition, and loved doing it. It was like playing Santa Claus and the kids loved making 500 people smile with these gifts.

It's very rare for a team to get 2 medals at the competition, and I've never heard of a team getting 3 medals. It was beyond our wildest expectations to receive so many awards. We were all ecstatic.


After the awards ceremony, we headed out for ice cream before making the long drive home. (Early-morning church was such a killer after getting home later than midnight!)


Now we are preparing to compete at the state level. Busy busy times. 

Here are a couple pictures of our team gearing up for the regional tournament. 








No comments: