<p>Jayray, congrats on your husband's defense, I remember when my dh went through all that, so stressful and crazy. It was such a relief for it to be over, though of course then the job search began.</p>
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<p>DD's qualifying tournament went pretty well, way better than I anticipated. She spent all day furiously coding and tweeking her programs so she could get as many of the missions complete as possible, and they ended up finishing 17th out of 30. Since it's the first year of the team, and considering all the problems they have had to work through, and the fact that it is a team of 4th and 5th graders in a tournament that has a lot of middle school kids in it, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't good enough to qualify to continue competing, but we were pretty much expecting that from the beginning, I think the teams that do well enough to go on typically have experienced coaches and kids.</p>
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<p>I was super proud of dd, she worked through so many issues with the boys on her team, and both her coaches told me that the team never would have gotten anywhere if it wasn't for her. Even today her team members were fighting and crying about who was going to go up and control the robot, and the coaches had to tell them "Look, you guys are goofing off, running around, and J hasn't even stopped to eat lunch, she's been working all day." So she controlled the robot in all three rounds, on stage with a camera on her, sending it to a giant screen in an auditorium. Seemed like so much pressure to me, but she was cool as a cucumber and did great. I don't think I ever would have been able to do any this as a 9 year old, it's totally amazing to me. I can't wait until next year when her little sister can be on the team, too... she's been helping with the robot design a little at some of the meetings and is already way ahead of most of the other kids working on it, they are really going to kick some butt next year!</p>