Colorado 2011

[Balsa Man]

Wow,
I'm even more impressed given that it all came together after regionals!
I absolutely understand the 'round the house chaos. Both my sons (older graduated in 05, younger graduated last year-and moved on to supervising the Towers for State this year) did S-O all the way thru Jr Hi and HS; mostly building events. Multiple events taking up table and counter, and workbench tops from.....November on was....how it was at our place. Understand the "every free minute" getting sucked up, too. Then we added other building events my boys weren't doing, where our place was the place to come to work. Both my boys, and others ran up a pretty good record doing things this way. Bless my dear wife who put up with it - and made me promise our house would not be "build-central" this year. It mostly worked as she wished (Cheryl can tell you what the living room looked like).

Its different, though, working with kids that are not yours, that show up for....kind of rushed through build sessions. I deeply believe that the price of the craziness of "living" building events at home is what gets a student to the reward of winning, or at least doing really well. Kids learning how it feels to win, and what it takes to win something you really want to, is an important life skill that will serve them well. The times and ways you come up short is part of that learning. I hope some of our builders learned that this year. Parents' involvement- supporting, guiding the learning process is a very big key- its what coaching and parenting is all about. Science-O wasn't around many years ago, but my dad gave me this kind of learning experience- it was for Science Fair; built a bubble chamber in the basement, won physics at the National Science Fair; the lessons stayed with me, and have helped ever since.
So, again, congrats on a job well done- your daughters, your team, and you. Looking forward to meeting.

[hscmom]

Well put, balsa man.

It is a good thing...