August 2011

August brings us the Hecker family reunion. It is always a wonderful time to catch up with loved ones, but it always goes too fast! Here is a great picture of all the First cousins that were able to attend.

On the way home, they boys always like to stretch their legs at the state capitol.

Our homeschool picnic this year was a fabulous success! The planners encouraged everyone to make a "family banner", so we broke out the scrapbook supplies and gave everyone a corner and created this masterpiece! I am really happy with how it turned out and how much fun we all had working together on it.

First LEGO League Robotics

This fall the boys were invited to join other homeschoolers on a robotics team program sponsored by FIRST and LEGO. They met every week to build a robot and work on a research project. We took 3 teams to Mountain Home, Arkansas, for competition on December 4^th.

We brought home trophies for Robot Performance, Robot Design and Quality Design. Our teams were also finalists in the award categories of Innovative Design, Champion’s Award, Quality Design, Gracious Professionalism, Programming, Project Research Quality, Judge’s Award and Robot Design.

Each team was required to do a research project on a body system and how biomedical engineering is used to help in that area. At competition, the team presented the project to judges. The teams chose vision, lungs and voice for their projects.

In the Robot Performance Competition, our teams placed 4^th, 5^th and 16^th out of 35 teams. One of our teams went on to win the single elimination competition.

I forgot to take pictures of the robots, but if I can get one from someone else, I will post it.

Happy Thanksgiving

We hope you all have a nice Thanksgiving. Last night we had our Community Thanksgiving service. A number of the churches get together to celebrate what we are Thankful for. Give thanks to God today for all the things you have to be thankful for, big and little.

We will be leaving for MN in the morning. We get to visit with some friends that we used to work with in NE on the way. Please lift us up for safe travel, good weather and no car issues. I will send an update about our trip and mom's next dr. appt. next week.