1st Place, Baby!

Wow. Wow. That's all I can say at this point as I'm STILL in a state of euphoria! My team knocked it out of the park on Saturday at their OM competition and took 1st place in their division (there were a total of 16 teams competing)! But even more exciting than that (can you believe we get more excited about something other than taking 1st place?) is my team was honored with the most coveted OM award that is given out at competition. It's called the Ranatra Fusca Creativity Award and is presented to teams or individuals who exhibit exceptional creativity, either through some aspect of their problem solution, or an extraordinary idea beyond the problem solution. Judges write up nominations based on what they witness throughout the day and then vote for the winner(s). In our case, there happened to be four awarded that day and our team received one of those four! We are honored, humble and thankful for all the blessings and support our team has experienced!

It was a day to remember and a day filled with joyful tears! The suspense at the end of the day finding out who the winners are...there were two coaches and seven kids who were just about having a heart attack waiting for the announcement of winners. You see, they start out with 6th place and announce all the teams from all problems in all three divisions (there were 5 problems) in 6th, then they move to 5th place, then 4th and on and on.  As soon as they finish announcing all the 2nd place winners, they stop for a few minutes to give out what they call the OMer Awards. When THAT'S finished, they announce the 1st place winners. We don't know our scores at that point so once your team hasn't been called and they're preparing to announce the winners, we say it's either "1st or crap!" We ended up with 1st!

Now we prepare to move on to State competition in April (with much more practicing so my presence on-line will be limited!), so until we find out if we move on to World's from there, I won't be posting any videos yet (it's not allowed!). As soon as I am able, I would love to share it here so you can see how hard these talented kids worked! Until then, here's a picture of our team in costume in front of set at State competition...