Spelling Bee

The local homeschool group had a spelling bee today. The real competition goes through 8th grade, but they also have a competition for students in grades K-3 to allow the younger ones to get some experience. All three of our girls participated and did great. Delie won first and Anna won second in the K-3 age group! And Joy lasted about 10 rounds, making it to the final 8 contestants - that's great since she's only in 5th grade.


Beverly has been "practicing" with the children at home for the past week so that they would be prepared for the bee. She also had George and Samuel practicing with the girls. George is in kindergarten and just learning to read, but he can spell quite a few 3- and 4-letter words. Samuel is just 2, so he doesn't have any idea how to spell, but he liked practicing. Beverly would say, "Samuel, spell chocolate." Samuel would reply, "Chocolate. B-L-D-G. Chocolate." And everyone would tell him how good he did. At the bee today, the announcer was giving the rules very seriously at the beginning, and Samuel got a horrible expression on his face and said, "I don't want to be in the spelling bee!" He thought he was actually going to be in the bee! How cute.

The girls and George are all excited about being in the bee next year. Encouraged by her victory, Delie says she's ready to start preparing for next year when she'll be competing against the older children. Joy, excited that she did so well but exhausted by the competition, asked if she could have the rest of the week off from spelling.

Mama Em's Party

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I've updated the blog. A lot has happened, and I may write about Christmas and other happenings in the next week or two. My parents gave us a digital camera for Christmas, so it's much easier to add pictures to the blog now. Here are some pictures from this weekend.

My grandmother - everyone calls her Mama Em - had her 85th birthday this weekend. The whole family went to Montgomery Bell State Park outside of Nashville to celebrate. We all stayed in the inn there, and we had a great time. The weather was nice enough that we had a picnic and hiked a little on Saturday. Here the boys are walking through a stream with Uncle Roy.

Mama Em held Thomas while we were in the woods.

Then we had a big party Saturday night. The highlight was playing "This is Your Life." We all dressed us and pretended to be people from Mama Em's life, and she had to guess who we were. Then she told us funny stories about the people. It was hilarious.

The two-year-old cousins got tired of that and went off to play their own games.