Lego League Competition 2011

Every fall has been "Lego Season" around the McMullin household, at least for the past four years.

The kids work for two months building and programming a robot to do certain tasks on a competition table. They are also required to do a research project on a topic, which changes every year. Finally, after hours of work, and weeks of meetings, they compete at a regional competition against hundreds of other kids.

Here is this years team...with some friendly chickens.


The topic this year was Food Safety. The boys' team decided to research making eggs salmonella free by designing better chicken coops. (They found that free range hens, in less cramped conditions, laid healthier eggs.) After visiting a commercial egg farm, that was organic and free range, they made up a skit to show the judges their findings. Here the boys are on their fieldtrip, helping bring in eggs from 400 chickens.

Below, Mattias gets a prop ready for their skit, as they wait to be allowed in the judges room on the day of the regional competition.

The team has written a skit with talking chickens, who demand better living conditions. An elite task force of Commando Chickens eventually rescue them. Thus, all the chicken head gear.

Once they preform for the judges, they answer questions about their research data, and how it has impacted their community. Earlier in the fall, we had toured a chicken farm, and the boys were excited to tell the judges all about it.

The next interview session was in a room with judges that ask about their robot's design, and the program code they wrote. They have to answer questions about sensors and gears they chose to use, and how why they chose to design the robot like they did.

The last interview is a less stressful one. It is the "Teamwork" portion of the competition. The judges assign a project, and then judge the team on how well they work together. (Listening to everybody's suggestions, complementing each other, etc.)

The team is gathered around a pile of dry spaghetti and marshmallows, building a structure that will hold a beach ball.

After a lunch break, the teams line for the grand entry, with representives carrying their team banner. We had 33 teams at our regional tournament.

After the entry, the afternoon is full of the robot table-game competitions. With music blasting, and a disco ball spinning, the gym is transformed into a dramatic setting to watch each teams robot show what it can do. There are 4 big screen TV's placed around the gymn so everybody has a good view of the action happening on the table.

After a rough start (our robot broke in half on it's first run), the team rallied, and moved into an amazing third place.

Here is everyone, except Mattias, and the robot. They are waiting for their last chance to score points. (Your robot gets three runs.)

At the end of a very long day, there are closing ceremonies where the awards are given out. Our team won the top programming award. They also finished sixth overall, qualifying them to move on to the state competition.


Unfortunately, State is scheduled to be on a Sunday this year... so the team is going to Milwaukee in December without the McMullins. It was a good season though, as we are excited to see how the rest of the team does next month.

Halloween in all its Glory!

Keeping Sylvia happy during the day was tricky - she was going to die before evening came. We did several crafts throughout the day. One project was to put together this adorable witch, and pose it on the wall.

We have gone trick-or-treating every year with our neighbors, two houses up. Here is a shot of the mixed families, before the pre-trick-or-treating party got rolling.

Sylvia adores our neighbor's baby, Teome.

The McMullins had a pair of medieval archers, and a pink butterfly-princess-angel ready to take the streets by storm.

Noel had a friend, Dorie, come over to help her pass out candy. For some reason, high school girls think they are too cool to trick-or-treat. Or, maybe they just have the right idea. Instead of walking around for 2 hours, getting one candy at a time, they just sit on the porch with a full bowl of candy between them, and laugh at everybody else.

Maritza even took time to paint my face as a clown. I think she is a very talented face paint artist. She may be an addict though. For days after Halloween, Sylvia and Evan would get their faces painted every time they played together.



We had some fun Halloween fare, like grilled cheese sandwiches with Jack-o-Lantern faces cut into the bread. The boys enjoyed hanging out together feeling mature since they got to eat in the living room, while the younger crowd had to eat in the dining room.

Orange punch, deviled eggs that looked like eyeballs, and a vegi plate rounded out the meal.

Evan had a rough time stopping laughing long enough to bob for apples.

Sylvia finally got one, although I think there was some cheating going on.

A favorite game for years has been to tie mini-donuts onto a strings, and race to see who eats their donut first. (Hands kept behind the backs.)

Asher had an amazingly huge mouth, and was able to devour it in one chomp. It was pretty shocking.

This is a fun game to watch, as well as to play. Noel had a good time being the donut stick holder with Dorie.

Everyone wanted to keep playing, but the town siren sounded, and the countdown had begun.
Stoughton is an unusual town, in that they have the town tornado siren sound at 6 pm to signal the start of door to door trick-or-treating. They sound it again at 8 pm. They don't allow kids to be banging on people's door outside those hours.

At first, I thought it was crazy... but I've gotten to appreciate it. You don't have knocks on your door late at night, and everybody in town is out on the sidewalks during those 2 hours. It is great to pass friends and neighbors traveling in huge packs along the sidewalks.

Sylvia and Evan had a great night trick or treating together. The older boys ran off together to cover as much ground as possible.

One of the best parts of Halloween is the "Great Trade" of the next day. In the McMullin house, it has become tradition for the each child to line up all their candies by type, and start a trading session that rivals Wall Street.




They spend hours behind a bedroom door, taking turns as they rotate around the circle. "I'll give you a Snickers Bar plus a bag of pretzels. for your Reese's Peanut Butter cup," is the sort of comment you will hear if you enter. It was a little sad to have only 3 of the 4 kids in trading, since Noel didn't go out. I guess I will have to get used to them growing up eventually.

Still, I love our neighborhood in the autumn, and the traditions our family has around this fun holiday. It was a great Halloween!

Halloween Preparations

Halloween of course, starts several weeks before Oct 31. Here is a sampling of our scary October festivities.

My sister, Lisa, has started a great new blog. She posts fun ideas to do with pre-schoolers.

http://totsmarts.wordpress.com/

It has great links to videos, print-outs, and craft projects. Making "monster masks" out of brown paper bags from the grocery store, was one of her ideas. Sylvia and I had a blast decorating the monsters, giving them extra eyes, and wild hair made out of pipe cleaners.

When the mask was done, we clicked on the you tube link to the song Monster Mash, and danced around. Below is the link to a fun cartoon animated version of the classic Halloween song.




We even got the older kids to dance a bit. I must say though, that the dancing is more monsterly and fun with a mask over your head.

Since we only had two masks, we shared them around. Sean was at home working that day, and was lucky enough to Monster Mash with us.

Sean's talents were also called upon for pumpkin decorating...

...and cookie baking! Always good to have a versatile husband around for holiday fun.

Sprinkles are a must whenever Sylvia decorates sugar cookies. They are her signature item.

The older kids also had fun with the frosting.

Noel decorated a Deathly Hallows cookie (from the seventh Harry Potter book).

I think Asher's cookies looked the scariest... although they all tasted very good - escpecially with hot chocolate!

Field Trip to Babcock Hall

One day in this fall, we went on a fieldtrip to the famouse Babcock Hall, up on the University of Wisconsin's campus. We took a short tour of their dairy plant. Here Noel is taking shots of the dairy production floor below.

At the time we were there, they were making chocolate milk. -Giant vats of chocolate milk. This is probably what set off Asher's current chocolate milk cravings. The most difficult part to watch, was a guy dumping bottle, after bottle of chocolate milk onto the floor, to run down a drain. Apparently the do a first run, when they are squirting it into the plastic bottles. If they are not filling to the proper level, they reset the machine, and just dump those bottles out onto the floor.

My favorite memory of the day, was kicking back with the kids in the ice-cream shop on the first floor. I am so glad everyone is old enough to eat their own ice cream without spills and drips everywhere. The best flavor (or so I thought) was a pumpkin pie scoop that Sylvia ordered. It was creamy, and perfectly spiced! We are going to try to make some of our own pumpkin pie flavored ice cream at home.

Noel's photos at Devil's Lake

My daughter, Noel, has a great eye for beauty. I am amazed that she can capture the feeling of a moment with color as well as black and white. Here is an example of a shot she took at Devil's Lake in color.

While I was trying to get Brad and Liz to pose on top of a boulder, Noel shot a great series in black and white of them from the side. I love how content and happy they are in this series. This is the kind of joy I want to have in 30 more years.

Devil's Lake with Grandparents

I knew the trees would be a beautiful backdrop for a family photo. Still, with the perfect background, it was difficult to get everyone to look at the camera at the same time. This is the best we could do.

The trail was steep, and required frequent stops by the adult hikers in the group. Somehow those kids just trotted along up the trail, sword fighting with sticks as they went.

Hiker Brad was in fine form, and let the kids experiment with his camera. We got lots of fun action shots.



The view from the top was great. Sylvia and Liz looked especially photogenic together.

We found a really odd insect crawling around on the boulders at the top. I had heard of stick-bugs, and seen them in books about animals that can camouflage themselves, but actually seeing one outdoors was pretty amazing.





Noel is our familes artistic photographer... here is a nice one she did of Sylvia while we were climbing around on the rocks along the trail. Sometimes Sylvia would lay down, and have a boulder bed, covered in leaves.


After we hiked back down, the kids found a bunch of cat- tails by the road. They taught Sylvia how to explode them into clouds of white puff.



Asher demonstrated how to jog, and leave a trail of white puffs behind you.



We watched the sun set on a sandy beach area along the lake. The kids had a "who can make the biggest splash with giant rocks" contest.



It was a great day. I can't believe we almost missed all the fun because it was a little drizzly at the start.


Here is a shot of the handsome man I am married to, as we watched our offspring toss boulders into the lake.