National Geographic Bee

Today was the Geography Bee. This is the second year Stephen was able to participate. We arose nice and early to get the babies where they needed to go and to get Stephen to Tempe to get checked in on time. This last week while they took the AIMS, he took his atlas to read when he had down time. That is really the only studying he has done. We knew he didn't have any chance of winning, but we were hoping for at least final 10. This year the questions were much harder than last year. Last time, out of the 20 kids in our room, I think 13 got all of them right and the rest only missed 1. A couple of kids missed 2. This year, only one kid got them all right but most missed 3-4 out of 8 questions. Stephen missed 3. Only 9 kids did better than him in his group. Unfortunately that was not good enough for the top 10. He was very disappointed and of course there were a few tears. That kid didn't have a chance with the parents he was given. We are all big crybabies. It always makes me cry to see him cry. Once we convinced him he did well and to not be so hard on himself, he settled down. When we found our for sure he was not in the running for top 10, we left and went to Oregano's for lunch. They wouldn't give you your shirt and certificate until after the finals which wouldn't be for about 4 more hours. Totally sucky. Glade and Stephen stayed and my mom and I left. Julia so kindly watched my kids for me so I went and picked them up and headed to Chelsey's track meet. That's a whole nother post. We decided that since Stephen has one more year to do the Bee, maybe we would subscribe to National Geographic so he could be a little more well rounded. I don't know though, isn't that what they joke about being under a boy's mattress??