and the winner is.....

About a month ago Nathaniel brought home a paper to sign up to participate in the school spelling bee. He was pretty hesitant so I talked to him about it-I told him it would be a good experience, that he would do great (Nathaniel is an excellent student), and that he might just have fun. So he finally said "fine mom, I will do it for you. (pause) But only because I want to win the trophy".

So we spent the month reviewing the spelling words. Every day in our 10 minute drive to and from school I would quiz him from the spelling list the school provided. He breezed through most words until we got to the hardest list, then there were a few tricky words he wasn't sure of.

Last night was the big event, I think I was way more nervous than he was. They started with about 30 kids, Nathaniel was #19. The first few rounds the words were very simple and not many kids dropped out. As the words gradually got harder there were fewer kids remaining. Finally it got to the final 4 and Nathaniel was going strong.

It then dropped to 3 then 2. Nathaniel spelled his first word right, then the other boy misspelled his word and Nathaniel had the chance to spell it right.

Well, he did but then had to correctly spell one more word for the win. He was given the word, and he spelled it without a pause. THE WINNER!!! I was so proud! He did great, was confident and spelled every word without hesitation. He got his trophy and boy was he excited. It was a memorable night.

A couple of night ago we had a fun experience. We had been out looking at houses and decided to grab some dinner. We were driving around Payson trying to find something that sounded good and we came upon an Argentine restaurant and decided to try it. We order an Argentine BBQ for 2 and the waiter said it should feed the whole family. Benjamin called his brother, Jacob, (who just returned from a mission in Argentina) and invited him to come join us. He hurried over with his "friend" Kimberly. So the food comes out and it is this grill looking thing piled with meat, different steaks and pork. It was alot of meat - then the waiter says "this is just the first part". WHAT!! So after we work on that for a while he bring the second round, another grill thing piled with more steak pork and chicken. It was ton of food, and it was delicious. We all ate til we were stuffed and still took food home. It was a fun adventure.

I have to say a big THANKS to all the comments on my last blog. It was exciting to get so many, I don't think I've ever had that many comments on a blog and it was fun. I think it's great that most of us comment on blog just to let people know we read their blog and we care about them.