Great Job, E!!

E had his final spelling bee for the year yesterday. He was in the 6th-8th grade group this year, and happened to be the youngest one up there.

He was starting to get overwhelmed after a few rounds but did pretty well. At one point, we thought he was out because he was given the word "guerrilla" and he spelled "gorilla". Since they are homonyms, and he spelled one of them correctly, and the sentence they gave wasn't completely clear as to which word, they gave it to him!

27 students to start, and by the end of round 8, it was E and an 8th grade girl. E was up first and was given "khaki". His nerves had set in, I think, because he knew the word but started with c, then tried to correct himself, which isn't allowed, so he had to just keep spelling it. The girl got a chance to correctly spell "khaki" and did and then was given the final word, "laborious", which she got correct also. E was runner-up, and he did wonderful. He was disappointed in himself - absolutely no reason for him to be though! We found out after that the girl was now a 3-time winner of the bee! So he only lost to the returning winner!

The girl and E were both given a trophy - she got one for first place, and he for runner-up/second place - as well as 2 tickets to Michigan's Adventure and a Kindle Fire!! He's been checking that out all morning after mom set it up yesterday for him. Since it can access the internet, we are going to "share" it as a family and it will be under supervision, as well as the parental controls and password are turned on.

We went to Michigan's Adventure for the first time last summer, after E won the bee and received 2 last year. In fact, we planned a whole vacation around it, our first family vacation. It was a lot of fun. I know he's excited that we are going to go again this year. Since it's on the other side of the state, we will make a weekend trip of it and do some other fun things too. It kind of forces us to take some down time this summer ;)