St. Louis

TJ was given the wonderful opportunity of attending the FIRST Robotics World Competition in St. Louis, Missouri last week.  We had 3 Twin Falls High School teams qualify at the FTC (medium bot) level.  The School District was gracious enough to send him & a fellow teacher for the competition.  While he was there, he was able to attend classes to help him further develop the robotics program here in Twin Falls.  He has been doing a LEGO robotics club after school on Tues/Thurs at the FLL or small bot level.  Next year he is planning on making it into a competition level club and perhaps be able to go to St. Louis again with his own middle school students.

There were teams from all over the world competing on the small, medium and large bot level, about 30,000 people.  During each round of competition, the teams are paired with another team to form an alliance.  But during the next round they could be competiting against that same team.

 Our Twin Falls group had the money to also send a few members from the 4th team that didn't qualify with their bot...just in case.  As it turned out they were able to help the Romanian team whose robot got caught up in French customs.  Our team used their 4th robot and drivers under the Romanian name during the qualifying rounds and placed  9th.  Our other 3 teams did well, one placed 6th and the other two were ranked 26th & 29th.  One day TJ got a media pass to be down on the floor with the teams taking video.

So, he left Tuesday morning and didn't return until Sunday late night due to their flight arrangements.  But the boys and I survived without Daddy.  There were a few rough patches, but we made it.  Luckily we had something to do everyday.  Between shopping, appointments, play dates, watching high school rugby and nice weather, we survived..  The boys loved seeing the pictures TJ sent during the week.  They would even wave and say "Hi Dad" as they looked at them.  Here's some of TJ's fun adventures while he was gone. 

He was able to attend the St. Louis Missouri Temple before his classes & competition started Wednesday morning.

TJ lived in St. Louis when he was a young boy.  He has memories of going to the zoo and seeing this seal statue.  He had to go back to show his mom. 

He just had to try out the famous Pi Pizzaria and eat in the park near the arch.

The boys were super excited to see dad got to see some dinosaurs.  They were a little jealous.