March 30, 2012

Outside Temp: 44 F (not sure of the weather here, but it was 70 and beautiful in Billings)

What I cooked today:
nothing... ate out twice, which makes me really want to cook tomorrow, since I'm decided I hate food at restaurants.  I mean, Denny's... okay, I expect crappy food there.  But we went to Red Robin for dinner, and it was, well, not bad, but certainly not good.  Maybe it's not enough salt.  Or maybe the beef wasn't as good as what we get here.  There was nothing specific to complain about, it just wasn't good.  Oh well, I have no reason to eat out for the next few day (or weeks...)

Update:
Allen had the Geography Bee in Billings today.  He didn't win, and he could have done better than he did, but I think he did okay.  We didn't study as much as we could have, but I don't think he took it that seriously.  Now, we know the format and how the Bee is done.  He did great on the US Geography questions, which is where we spent a lot of out study time.  But he got 3 questions about Africa, and he is just not interested in that continent.  So, we didn't study there as much as we could have.  Next time, he'll do much better.

The drive out to Billings was about 3 hours, so we brought the other kids up to the Grandparents place around 7am this morning.  I'm not usually up at 7, and I'm certainly not dressed and ready to go.  And Ryan is NEVER up that early.  But we somehow managed to get up and out the door.  While I was bringing the kids up there, Patrick and Allen got ready.  So we were out of here by 7:15ish. 

We, of course, had to stop for junk food at Eddie's Corners (which is about 45 minutes from the house).  We just needed to have donuts and soda and beef jerky and candy.  I'm not sure exactly why we needed all this junk food, but I'm sure it was a matter of life and death. 

We made it into Billings around 10:30, which was about an hour too early.  So, we hit Denny's for breakfast/lunch.  By the way, Denny's is just nasty.  Just in case you didn't already know.  I mean, Denny's has always been mediocre, but now, it just tasted terrible. 

We went back to the Bee, and got registered.  They split the 100 students into groups of 20.  Each group went through 8 rounds of questions.  Allen did fine on the first 3, but he got stumped on the 4th.  By the time they got through 8 rounds, he knew that he had missed too many.  Out of the the 100 students, there were 7 kids who didn't miss any.  The 9 kids who only missed 1 competed for the remaining 3 spots in the finals. 

We stayed to watch the finals, which were great.  I'm sure if Allen had made it to the finals, he would have been so nervous, he would have missed questions anyway.  The girl who won was so relaxed and calm.  I was amazed at how comfortable she was, standing in front of about 200 people (the other 90 students, and their parents and siblings, etc).  She was very gracious when she won, and we were rooting for her (especially since we no longer had to root for ourselves).

Allen was a little upset that he had let his school down, but I figure he made it this far and I was pretty impressed.  And, since he's never done anything like this before, I think he did great.  And now, he knows how to prepare better for next year!

We hit Red Robin for dinner and then started the 3 hour trek home.  It was kind of nice, though, to be able to talk with Allen.  We got to just have those awesome discussions about random things, from politics, to economics, to history, to life in general.  I love our discussions!