March 10th

Miller's contest was held on the 10th. It was huge. I did end up going to the school, which I knew I would. I went mostly just to see it, but I ended up helping Jania at the registration table. That was fine with me. Jania and I can work well together and I wasn't around Jay at all, since he and I don't work well together :) I can't say it enough....the contest went really really well. There ended up being something like 65 schools and almost a 1,000 kids total. Jay figured there were at least 100 volunteers.

I had never been to a contest before so I had no idea what to even expect, but this was more than I expected. To start out with all of the kids were put in the gym and then each contest group was dismissed. The gym was full. You couldn't fit anyone else in there. The person taking pictures for the paper said her lens wasn't big enough to do it justice because it was so full. I wanted to take some pictures to post but I ended up helping and didn't have time. Looking at all of the buses parked in the front of the school was unbelievable.

It ran like a well oiled machine. There were so many people who put in a lot of time for this contest. Not just parents even. Lyle and Jay had a lot of former students come back to help. I think that says a lot for the type of teachers Lyle and Jay are - they had so many past students willing to give up a lot of time to help them out. And it wasn't just yesterday that they gave up their time. The Alumni group has been working on this since last summer. I think this week there were a lot of them that lived at the school. Every room in the High school was used and most of the elementary.

Some of the contests had to be held at other areas...Ag Mechanics was at a tire shop in town, all of the livestock contests were held at an Arena that isn't too far from our house and Soils and Forrestry was held at a Conservation area outside of town. The bus schedule was unbelievable. I think it was Jania that figured out the timing and number of kids that needed to be delivered to all of these different places. I had to run home after it started to get Jay some clean jeans (he sorted hogs that morning) and it was pretty neat meeting the long line of Miller buses delivering hundereds of kids to where they needed to be.

Again, I'm overwhelmed with the community we live in. When stuff like this happens I think about how I didn't want to move here and God knew what He was doing. Jay and Lyle have made a great team over the past 11 years. Then There are so many great people who live here and they've helped Jay and Lyle so much to build one of the best chapters in the state. Yesterday was definitely a good way to showcase all of the strenghts of Miller's program. It probably also didn't hurt that they were able to display a National CDE trophy on the registration table....

I wish I had some pictures to post because I know that a lot of people who read this don't understand what I'm talking about. Hopefully I will get some eventually.

I really didn't have a babysitter yesterday. Jim and Sharon took Cade to a Civil War reinactment in Pea Ridge Arkansas and everyone else I knew was at the school. Camryn went with me and she was absolutely perfect. Plenty of people were more than willing to take her from me. It was kind of funny because she'd leave with someone and the next time I'd see her she'd be with someone different. Typing that out sounds like something some might worry about, but I never did. I knew she was in good hands all day. And for a good part of the day she was just like this....



She was such a good baby all day long.  And of course she had to wear blue and gold.