Destination Imagination 2014

Once again I managed Emilee's DI team.  It was quite the year.  We had a team of 5th and 6th graders this year.  As much as I wanted them to do Challenge D:  The Improv challenge, I couldn't get them to do it.  Megan's team decided they wanted to do Improv and this is the first year that Emilee was put in the same age group as Megan and so she didn't want to compete against their team.  She convinced everybody that would be a bad idea.  They went with Challenge B:  The Scientific challenge.  They had to create gear that would get them out of a bad situation and help the survive in that extreme weather environment.  Emilee's team this year was called Warning:Extreme Danger.  In their story, they found themselves landing on Jupiter, fighting against Alien squids and trying not to be sucked into the Great Red Spot.  Guess what?  They survived.  It was quite the story.

At Regionals they came in first place.  This is indeed an accomplishment.  They were by far the youngest team going against Middle Schoolers.  Megan's team also got first place in their Improv challenge.

Megan's team at Affliate.  They did a great job.  They got second place.

Emilee's team at Affliate.  They did a fantastic job.  I thought for sure they would get first, but they also came in second.  

So with my two second place winners, I thought.....Whew..No Globals this year.  I can relax.  Then it came.  A first place team had dropped out.  They pulled out a team randomly from the second place winners and guess what? ....Warning: Extreme Danger was that team.  Well, of course they were just excited and so the fundraising begins.  We did a lot of fundraising and with that hard work, everything was paid except for $175 per team member.  Not bad for a $900 bill for each team member.  So onto Globals we went.  (Remember...Globals is where the team competes against the whole world.  That tournament is always in Knoxville, TN.)

Here we are, ready to go.  They were excited!

I signed the team up to have a buddy team.  I thought that would be a fun experience for them.  Their buddy team was from Romania.  I had hoped they would get to visit with them more often, but our schedules were very different, and it just didn't work out.  The kids exchanged t-shirts and gifts and loved it anyways.

Here are some highlights of our trip above.

It was a great trip.  The kids were fun and got a long well.  They did awesome!  Next time, Emilee will be at the middle school and under a different group.  It means a whole new learning experience for the both of us.