This is going to be a long post with everything we had going on in March.
Battle of the Books - Ridgeline. The girls started first with Battle of the Books, always their favorite event of the year. They have read all 20 books and most they have read twice or 3 times even. This year instead of elimination rounds they just added up the points and the top 2 teams went to the finals. Siena and Aria's team (with Annie, Athena and another Aria) went to the school final and won. This is their 2nd year winning and they were excited because this year they got to go to the district wide competition.
The district competition was at American Fork Jr High and it was so fun. We made matching t-shirts for the team. They did about 6 rounds I think and out of the 40 teams that were there, they ended up placing 5th! It was fun because they also got to meet and were given a copy of 'The False Prince' signed by Jennifer Nielsen. She also spoke to the whole group for a while which was so fun.
Battle of the Books - Westfield. Jaron had his competition after the girls school competition. They still do elimination rounds at his school (wish they didn't, always causes crying) and Jaron's team made it through the first day. The 2nd day he made it to the top 4 teams. Jaron so bad wanted to go to the finals. The top 2 teams get trophies and I think that is what he wanted, he has also seen his sisters win twice now. Well the team he went up against (also from his same class) came down to a tie. They did 4 tie breaker questions and it was still a tie. So I guess the rules are you go to a buzzer round (I do NOT like this rule) Jaron was the team captain and when they asked the question he was literally one step behind and they lost. I was so sad for their team, who all started crying. It was a very rough day. I so wish they had changed the way they did this because I think Jaron's team would've gone to the finals but those were the rules and that day it wasn't in our favor. I tried to make sure Jaron learned something from this, that sometimes we lose even when we do our best. We learned to be good sports even when we don't like the outcome. The captain of the other team was so nice and came over to Jaron afterwards and was so nice and gracious about it, I was thankful for that.
All 3 of the kids did Knowledge Bowl this year. The subject was history which was not their favorite and Siena and Aria especially had a hard time because the 5/6th graders had to learn all of the world history. When it came to their competition the questions were so hard. Who was the father of Alexander the Great (stuff like that) which a lot was nothing they had studied. So it was a bit of a let down for them but they still had fun.
Jaron's team who didn't have to learn world history just Utah and US history had a much better experience. The questions were more relevant to stuff they had studied and they did a great job and ended up getting in the top10 of all the teams. One of the questions made me laugh. What event brought the world to Utah in 2002? These young kids weren't alive when the olympics were here and no one of the 10 kids on the teams answered it. Seemed so obvious to all the adults but things like that are hard when you weren't born.
Aria joined a writing club at the library. It was kind of fun for her to have something of her own that she likes to do. They learned all the basics of how to write a fictional book, building characters, setting the scene, etc. She has lots of ideas of stories she wants to write so we'll see how that goes in the next while.
Our Secret Leprechaun remembered us again this year. Always a fun tradition to see what green things he can find.
Siena talked us into getting her a Betta fish. She bought a large tank for it. So introducing Archie, the red Betta fish. She keeps it in her room and does a good job of feeding and keeping the tank clean.
The kids had free passes to the Butterfly museum that were expiring so we randomly went one night. The girls love being able to find and hold the butterflies, even though they were a little harder to hold this night for some reason. A fun night.
