Best Laid Plans ...

We left for Ames, Iowa on Tuesday morning.

We had three teams from our town headed to the Odyssey of the Mind World Competition.

We called the teams, the Bigs (high school), the Middle (Jr High), and the Littles (Intermediate School)

On Wednesday morning, my camera isn't working.

Kyle at Target helped me find a new SD card for my camera so I wouldn't miss any more of our adventure.

This is Meg. 

She represented our team in the Opening Ceremonies

She is a super cool kid 

These are the three girls that represented our teams from our town

Opening Ceremonies

My son, Samuel, and his friend Jake on the Jumbo-tron

The Bigs entertain the crowd with the Macarena before their performance

The Bigs were awesome.

I had the pleasure of getting to know some of these kids and I have to say I am proud to know them!

Mackenzie, Emily, Samantha and Ashton are great kids!

As we waited for our spontaneous problem, Rachel became a diplomat!

She bonded with the team from China.

They bonded over that universal language of song...

Baby, Baby, Ohhhhhhhh

That's right folks

Justin Bieber

They were adorable, and exchanged email addys.

Rachel's mom, Michelle, found a ukulele and got her groove on during a pin trading session.

Here is the Middles (our team) performing. That is my boy, Samuel and Rachel

Everyone but Jake on the scene

The whole team.

They gave the best performance I have seen all year.

I am sooooo proud of them!

At lunch we spied this guy looking a bit like Lenny Kravitz

Since we had the Kravitz family with us we thought we NEEDED a picture with him.

The campus was beautiful. We were on our way to watch the Littles perform so we stopped for a quick picture..

Samuel, Samantha, Rachel, and Meg

This was a group of kids from Poland that were singing and cheering each team that performed.

It was funny to hear them chant. "Texas" and "L V"

Our group of kids and parents waiting for the Littles to go on

This was taken just before they started to perform.

Their performance was soooo good...

I forgot to take more pictures.

So the title of this post is called, best laid plans.

I had worked so hard before I left to ensure I would have a blog post for each day that I was gone.

And I did.

What I didn't anticipate is the complete exhaustion I would feel when I got home

Oh and the fact that the plumber was coming

and the crazy stuff going on at school

and the need for cupcakes at my daughters school

and awards day..

So, I didn't plan far enough ahead to keep posting cards.

Hopefully tomorrow or the next day (last day of school) I will get back into my groove.

Hope you enjoyed a little bit of our adventure.

Edited to add...

I got an email asking how the teams performed overall:

the Littles: 11th place 

the Middles: 31st place

Bigs: 32nd place

Not bad considering there were 800 teams

15 countries

and 40 states represented!