Avie started Ninja again in November 2024. This past Saturday, January 11, she competed in her first competition since joining the Ninja U team in Ankeny. Here is a video of her run! It was a very difficult course and Avie did great! She took 3rd place in her division (Young Adult - female - age 15-17)! Her is the videos of her one run and a few pics!
The video I took:
https://youtu.be/EDLJ5NvOe_M?si=fUOduoenF4jGp3O4
Ninja U's live stream: go to 1 hour 43 minutes to see her run
When Avie was in 8th grade, her and her friend Elodie went to a ninja class at Emerge Academy once a week. At the time, the Ninja U gym in Ankeny did not exist. In the spring of 8th grade she broke her arm when she fell in a friend's garage while trying to roller skate. She had to take a break from ninja. Then he started high school and was so busy with lots of new activities that she never got back into Ninja until now. She has been asking to start again in Ankeny since last March, so she finally found some time and we said she could give it a try.
She had to go to Ninja U in Ankeny and try out with the coach to see if she could join the team! She went around and completed all kinds of tests and he made the team! See some videos of these below. She practices once a week on Tuesday evenings with the team. She is loving it! Most of the kids are younger than her, but she works out with a group of 12 year old girls and is having fun getting to know them as well as several other members on the team. Unfortunately, she took a whole month off prior to the competition because we (Grandma, Camille & Avie) took a trip to New York, Christmas, New Years and then Pep Band. We are so proud of her for putting herself out there and competing anyway!
Avie joined the swim team this year and so far she is really enjoying it! She says it is a lot of work as they practice 5 times a week for 2 hours and she swims approximately 2500 yards at every practice! She has attended a couple of fun team events including a movie night and scavenger hunt and she has made some new friends!
She competed in her very first meet last night, September 3, 2024.
We are so proud of all her hard work! She did amazing at her first meet and had a lot of fun too! Check out her races below!
200 Medley relay: she swam the first leg - 50 Backstroke in Lane
She was a little nervous to start this relay (and it was the first race of the night), but she did great and she said it is fun to see the next swimmer dive in over her head!
50 Free: Lane 6
This is her favorite race and she was really excited to win her heat!
200 Free relay: she swam the second leg - Lane
She lost her goggles on the dive, so it was a bit of a struggle since she was wearing her contacts, so she could not open her eyes underwater, but she finished it! :)
100 Backstroke: Lane
She tried to start slower and speed up throughout the race, but realized at the end that she wasn't really tired, so she is hoping to improve her strategy at the next meet! :)
We started carpooling after school with Archer's friend Siwon after cross country finished this year. It is so fun to hear what the boys talk about on the way home. They often talk about Geometry and other classes! But the first few weeks of the car pool, they would take turns reciting as many chemicals as possible from the periodic table! Archer could name up to 60 elements! Archer has also spent significant time memorizing as many digits as possible of pie (3.14...). Archer says at one point he could recite as many as 30 digits! I love this kid! 💕
I wish I had a video to share! But I do have a pic of the carpool! 😁
Avalon is in 9th grade and Archer is in 7th grade! Avalon loves performing in theater (STC & Ames High), dancing (she now has 6 dance classes at Bold), singing, listening to music texting with her friends, parkour, choir, marching band (trombone), and hanging out with her friends! Archer loves playing video games, Dungeons and Dragrans (with his friends with Jarad as DM), cross country, reading with Mom (Wings of Fire & Spirit Animals, reading with Dad (Enders Game & Congo), Minecraft (with his Dad), board games, jumping, and running around outside! Both kids love having foster rabbits! Our favorite rabbits so far are Penelope and Lincoln!
The kids first day of school this year was August 24th, 2023. As I write this post on May 18th, 2024, the kids only have 5 more days of school left! We are hosting a foreign exchange student, Giorgia, from Naples, Italy for the year. Archer is starting 8th grade, his last year at the middle school! Avie is starting 10th grade and is excited that she is no longer the youngest at the high school! Giorgia is registered for 11th grade. In Italy, they are in high school for 5 years. Giorgia has completed 3 years of high school in Italy and will have one left when she returns. She is currently 17 years old and will turn 18 on May 18, which is the day I am writing this post. Happy 18th Birthday Giorgia!!
We have had really nice weather this past week, so the kids have been spending a lot of time at the park! Avie misses her Ninja class, so she has been practicing Ninja on her own and creating her own courses at the park. Check out the two courses that she created on her own!
The team competed at the district competition in Webster City on December 2, 2022. The competition includes 3 robot runs, where they have 3 minutes to complete as many missions as possible. All missions are provided by First Lego League at the beginning of the season and the kids work all season to design attachments for their robots and write code to attempt to complete as many missions as possible. There is a lot of decisions that go into which missions to attempt based on the points available as well as the success rate for each of their programs. The kids split up into teams of 2 or 3 and each group tackled different missions. The robots don't always perform exactly how the code says they should, so it involves a lot of problem solving to come up with the best way to have the highest success rate.
Here is a link to the First Lego League playlist including videos of the 3 runs at the district competition:
Run 1:
Run 2:
Run 3:
The team also prepares a presentation for the competition. This year the theme was energy, so the kids decided on an idea to help solve the problem of sustainable energy. Archer's team decided to focus on using vegetables to create energy. They worked so well together and learned so much! After the presentation, the kids then answer questions about their project and their robot and its programs and how they worked as a team and made decisions. The parents are not allowed into the room for the competition, but we were able to watch a live stream from the room next door.
Here are the links to the presentation and some of the questions that Archer answered:
Archer gained so much confidence in himself to speak up and answer questions and his team really did. a great job in working together during the entire process right down to making sure everyone got to answer a few questions.
When it was time for the awards, their was a lot of waiting for the final results to come in. They presented a lot of different awards as Lego League does a great job in recognizing all the work and different strengths that are brought out during the competition and not just whose robot competed the most missions.
They gave away one award for the Mentor of the Year and to our surprise Jarad won this award! When they went to announce the winner he said "I hope we don't mispronounce this name," so that also made us think it wasn't Jarad. Afterwards, we found out that Dagney had recruited a few kids from the team to nominate Jarad for this award. Congrats to Jarad he was an amazing coach and mentor this year and he had so much fun and this award was well deserved!
When they finally announced the awards, we found out that they just declare one overall winner and then for the rest they just announce the teams that qualified for the state competition at Iowa State University at the end of January. As they started to announce the teams that qualified for state, one other Ames Middle School team qualified, but they didn't name Archer's team. We were surprised as we thought that they had a good chance to make it. Then, the last thing they announced was the Champions! The presenter had trouble saying the team name, so at first Archer's team did not realize that they won. I also think they were a bit in shock! The kids didn't even stand up and cheer. They were just like "did we just win?!" They didn't even have the kids come up to accept the award, which was kind of strange. But the kids were thrilled and we were so proud of them and all their hard work!!
Here is a video of the awards ceremony where they announced the state qualifiers and champions. Archer's team, "Attack of the Energizer Bunnies" is announced as the winner at 1:30. His team is sitting in the middle in the turquoise blue shirts. I'm not even sure they realized they had won. :)
When we went down to congratulate Archer, we asked if he was excited and he said "I don't want to go to state." We were surprised. I was excited because this would extend their season and he would get to continue with Lego League, which he loved for another month, for another month and work to make their programs and attachments better and write new programs and decide which ones would be best to run in the amount of time they had to complete the missions.
Then, we found out that he thought state was the very next day (Sunday) and that it was even farther away and. he was exhausted from the very long day! Jarad and Archer had woken up at 5:00 am to go to the Middle School and pick up other teammates and then drive about 1 hour to the competition. And then they competed all day until about 1:30 or 2:00 pm and then waiting around another couple hours for the awards. Once he found out it was in January and at Iowa State, he was a lot more excited!
Here is a link to the First Lego League YouTube playlist we created including the videos of the 3 runs at the district competition and the awards ceremony. You can copy and paste it into a new browser tab to see all the videos (they are the same as the ones posted above.
Avalon is in 10th grade and Archer is in 8th grade! Avalon loves Speech Club at Ames High which is like competitive theater, Dance at Bold (6 classes - Pom & Contemporary aare her favorite), performing in musicals at STC and Ames High, working admissions/concessions at Furman Aquatic Center, volunteering at STC, singing, listening to music, texting with her friends, parkour, choir, marching band (trombone), watching YouTube (including fails and favorite actors from her favorite shows and musicals including Mean Girls, Heathers, Outer Banks, Ginny & Georgia and the Wilds) and hanging out with her friends! Archer loves Lego League, Chess Club, Cross Country and Track at Ames Middle, playing video games on Nintendo Switch and his IPAD, playing D&D with his friends (with Dad as DM), playing League of Legends and Minecraft with Dad, reading Guardians of Ga'hoole with Mom, hanging out with his friends playing games including Hide and Seek, Zombie tag, and Among Us in real life, board games, watching Marvel movies, and jumping and running around outside!
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