Science Fair

Ian recently finished his first science fair project. This is not my forte, so I gladly handed the task over to Jeff who was more than happy to oblige. They thought and thought about what kind of project they wanted to do, and a week before the project was due, I gently nudged and reminded that they needed to pick something soon. With Jeff's computer programming skills, they decided to write a computer program. This was a program that would help keep track of Ian's 250+ car collection. Everytime Ian would get a new car he would race it down his track to find out which car would be the fastest. They raced and timed cars entered the time into the program, and also the make, color and year of the car. They finished the program at about midnight last Sunday. We went to the school on Monday morning to walk around the science fair. Later that day he found out that he was chosen to go onto the district level. Thursday night Jeff and Ian went to set up his project at another school in the district. On Friday we had him dress in his nice clothes so that he would look professional and ready for the judges. He said he wasn't nervous, but I think he was. He said that he did well and answered all the questions the way that he and Jeff had practiced. We went together as a family to find out the results and walk around to see the other projects (there were some pretty cool projects). Ian's project was in the Engineering category (there were only about 9 projects in the category). When they called the names for the 2nd place winners he wasn't announced, and when they called the names for the 1st place winners he wasn't announced either. He shed a few quiet tears, and my heart broke for him, it's really hard to watch your kids work hard and not get the results that they had hoped for. Well, tonight we got a phone call from one of the district judges, he said that there was a judging score mix-up and he received 2nd place after all. We were all hoping that he'd get first place, this would mean he'd go on to the state level at BYU. I'm so proud of all his hard work and dedication. He and Jeff worked REALLY well together and he only had 1 small meltdown (it would have been a lot more meltdowns if I would have been helping him). Jeff was so patient with him and really helped him learn some basic programing skills. They are already concocting ideas for next years science fair.