This week Auburn High School hosted the robotics competition. 36 high schools compete with robots built to complete specific tasks built with identical material kits. These robots are built by dedicated teams of students that are, frankly, on the bottom of the social food chain. Having an event such as this allows the geeks to shine without fear of ending up in a locker or duct taped to a pole. Let me tell you, that school was filled with geeks flying their freak flags high. I practically had to part the geek-ness with my hands in order to walk through the gym.
This is Auburn High's robot pit. The school mascot is a Trojan and these robotic students are dressed for success in front of their pit wearing their Trojan helmets.
The competition arena takes up the entire gym. I also have to give a shout out to the robotics advisors Chris Zawislak (electronics teacher) and Ron Cughan (welding teacher) who give their hours to this club for FREE! Pathetically, the school does not pay the robotics coaches although it garners recognition for it. This competition is so time consuming that Chris parked his travel trailer outside the gym Thursday night and will not go home until Sunday morning. Thanks guys!
On the home front, Bob is starting the final phase of the Jag restoration. Adding an uber shine to and already beautiful paint job. Sadly, to do this Bob has to sand the initial shine off the car and bring the shine back using super, Super, SUPER fine sand paper. RestoCat is back to give Bob the benefit of his advice.
You can see how shiny the hood of the car was before Bob got to it with his sand paper. It's almost criminal to watch, but wait until you see the final product!
The highlight of the week was Carissa's baby shower at Kyanne's house. We were fortunate enough to have JoAnn and her girls (ok, not exactly girls anymore) come up from Albany, Oregon for the big event.
Here Carissa opened her gift from Chelsea. It is created with baby gifts assembled in a roaster pan car seat to look like a baby ready to travel. The "baby" is complete with car seat straps, pacifiers, and stuffed animal. Awesome and totally Chelsea-like. Photo courtesy of Jenna.
JoAnn gave her a cool diaper bag filled with baby stuff including a cute little outfit with flamingos on it.
Only JoAnn would give someone a spray bottle of toy and high chair cleaner.
I made a baby quilt. The design on the front is not recognizable by most folks and looks a little odd. The back story is when Chris and Carissa were kids, they both loved the Disney character Figment. In fact, they both have the exact same Figment light switch plate!
This is a close up of the Figment I appliqued with polar fleece from a picture I downloaded.
The back of the quilt started out as squares stuck to a blanket that was stapled on our family room wall to get the correct layout. Each piece of fabric represents something from Chris and/or Carissa's childhood and the life they've built together. I tried to start with a bride and groom and adult pieces in the center and move to their childhood squares on the edges. In the end, I just gave up and sewed stuff wherever I could.
The bride and groom toward the center represents their wedding, the Aboriginal fabrics is their honeymoon to Australia, submarines for how they met, German shepherds for Bear, Legos and sharks for favorite childhood things, etc.
Bob has been waiting to buy itty bitty Carhartt overalls since Carhartt came out with this adorable product line many years ago. Bob did all the shopping and selecting himself. He finally found what he wanted at Dennis' Hardware in Raymond, deep in redneck territory.
Another project of mine was a monkey car seat canopy. The hardest part of this project was not knowing what car seat they had and what size to make the canopy. I had to stop at Walmart and make car seat measurements and hope it had a chance of it fitting. Photo courtesy of Jenna.
Fortunately, Jenna was regifting her car seat to Carissa so I got to check out the fit on the actual car seat it was going to be used on. Yay! It fit!
Carissa and her life-long best friend Eileen have been through everything together. Although this is Eileen's second baby, once again, they are experiencing life together. This "Charilie's Angel's" pose was a favorite of theirs and no prom pictures were complete without this pose. Eileen's baby is due in two weeks. Good luck to you, Eileen.
Kyanne always provides such lovely flowering plants at her house to make for pretty photo ops.
The proud parents whose lives are about to be turned upside-down...and sideways too.
Chris and Carissa weren't the only ones to receive baby stuff. Darla dropped off her portable crib before we went to the baby shower. It came in several pieces and Bob was determined to get it all back in the bag. To add to the challenge, Bob decided to set the crib up. Several cuss words and manual references later, he had it set up...
...complete with all the accessories. Then he had to check out the musical selections and the nightlight to see if he approved.
As Kyanne said: Dad: 1 Pack 'n Play: 0. For now.
Nice day for tree trimming. Dad w/tiny chain saw: 0 Tree: 1. For now.
To close, the link below is a very interesting view of the Oso landslide. It allows you to toggle between "before" and "after" aerial photos.
As always--brilliant blog. We had a great time and can't wait to come back up to meet your granddaughter!
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