Reading Bowl

Devin was asked to be in the Fairplay Middle School Reading Bowl this year. They are required to read between 15 and 20 Newberry award books and then they compete with other schools on comprehension of these books. Saturday was the County Reading Bowl.



While they were waiting to get started they continued going over notes and getting in a few more study questions.

They explained all the rules and then sent each team to a classroom to compete. Middle school competed against 5 other teams. 5 kids on each team compete. First one to buzz in gets to answer the question and each round consists of 10 questions.

Devin answered several questions in the first round and then at the very end he answered the tie breaking question for 2nd place. Fairplay will now get to compete in the regional Reading Bowl next Saturday at West Ga College. I was so proud of him! What a cool kid!

Below are some photos of his team celebrating.

Bela Fleck Concert

Friday night the family went and saw Bela Fleck (Banjo virtuoso) and Chick Corea(a piano playing Jazz legend and Bela's idol) at the GA Tech concert hall. We had a fantastic time.

We started the evening at Chow Baby, then headed to the concert. What awesome music. It was their 3rd appearance together and they were really incredible. After the concert we waited around until almost everyone in the theatre was gone and Bela came out on the stage and greated us. He gave Emily an autograph and was happy to pose for a picture. What a great night!

Honor Band

February 9th - 11th, Devin got the opportunity to participate in the County Honor Band. In the 6th grade you are chosen (a few instruments from each school), but after that everyone must try out. He spent all weekend at Chapel Hill High School working on their music and then on Sunday afternoon performed in a concert. Devin had an incredible time and was very excited to play more difficult music than in class.

I was very proud of Devin. He has an incredible drive to do the best he can at whatever he tries to do. What an awesome kid!!!!

Cheersport

Cheersport was the largest competition we have gone to this year. It was at the World Congress Center in Atlanta and it was massive. Our girls started the weekend off at a disadvantage. One of the girls came down with the Chicken pox on Friday morning. Life happens. But the coaches made some adjustments and the girls rallied and did an awesome job! We were so proud of them. Below is a picture of them heading to warm ups on Saturday morning. They chanted all the way and had a marvelous time.




Here are the girls right before they headed into warm ups.

Emily and I decided to stay all day at the competition and watch the Universities and higher level cheerleading events. OH MY GOODNESS! They were incredible too! Our two favorite teams were GA Tech and Univ. of Western Ontario. As matter of fact, they took second and first in their division.

As you can see below, the girls were a bit smitten with the guys from the college teams. They were literally gitty after the Ga Tech guys posed for pictures with them. They were wiping their hands on their shoes to rub luck on them for the next day! They were certain this would make a difference and the girls were not washing their hands (so they said).

Then we found the Univ of Western Ontario cheerleaders and they were really cool. They took time to talk with the girls and when we asked for a picture they just scooped the girls up in their arms and as you can see, once again they were in heaven!

Not only did we stay late Saturday night, Emily was eager to stay and watch on Sunday night too. Below are more pictures with the two teams. Girls will be girls for sure and I'm going to have to watch Emily VERY CLOSELY when she gets older. She enjoyed this way too much.

Emily and I had a marvelous time hanging out and spending time together. Thanks Emily for letting me hang with you and Alexandra!