Miller's Contest

Miller's FFA contest was this past Saturday. Thank goodness that is over. I know I didn't contribute as much leading up to the event as most- but I did live with Jay during that time. I definitely did my part :) Poor Jania actually helped a lot AND lived with Lyle. She will have a special place in heaven. Most would think I'm joking when I tell Jania that one of these years the boys will move into one house and the girls will live in another house from January 15th until the night of the banquet in May. Those women married to an Ag teacher (Janella) know I'm really not joking.

But as usual when Jay, Lyle and the Miller FFA Alumni set out to do something they make it a success. This year was no exception. When the final test sheet was ran through the scantron it totaled 1070 kids. Then when you consider there were around 47 schools each with 1-4 advisors and at least 100 people from our community helping....Miller's population probably tripled on Saturday.

Since we have Camryn Jay didn't want to rely on me to actually have an important role Saturday in case Sharon couldn't keep Camryn. My role was a floater. I ended up helping at the Ag Mechanics contest because they were short. I was a little nervous until I learned I would only be watching them take the written test part of the contest. Everything was fine until I had to read a test to a kid with a Learning Disabiltity. I might as well have been reading something written in Spanish. I had no idea how to pronounce some of the words, no clue what any of it meant AND I was reading it at a weird angle so he could still see it. The kid had to tell me how to pronounce some stuff. He probably would've been better off on his own. I know I had to have hindered him more than I helped. Jay loves it because the fact I can't measure anything has been a big topic around our house since we did all that work(and Jay did all the measuring). One of the things I was saying was one-fourth instead of a quarter on a measurement. That was one of the things the boy corrected me on.

After I got through that stress Julie and I got to sort papers. The Ag Mech contest is the only one not entirely on a scantron sheet. They took the written part on a scantron and then 6 other individual tests on paper that had to be graded. Julie and I got to sort about 30 different teams with 4 kids per team with 7 pieces of paper per kid into stacks. It sounds bad...now imagine some of them with no names on their papers and instead of writing their school name they used their school
number. Fun times. Then once those were sorted we had to bubble in the scores on the scantron from the other 6 tests.
I've already figured out how we will sort them next year- and it will not be like we did this year. Jay opened up the front door of the building I was in and a gust of wind came in with him. I told him to not use that door again. I think I would've cried at that point if the papers had blown away.

But we all survived. I think the FFA has only heard good things about the day so that is great. There were so many people who gave up part of their Saturday and that was so appreciated....but I'm still glad it is over!!

And a side story (Janella you will understand this). There is an Ag teacher couple who has two toddlers. Jay told me that this couple brought their toddlers with them to the contest the first weekend in March. They also had them with them this Saturday. If my ovaries weren't already non -functioning seeing those toddlers on Saturday would've shriveled them. There are several Ag teachers married to each other (Jay's brother and his wife are one). I don't know how those couples do it with kids. Maybe I'm not as much of a woman but if Jay and I were both Ag Teachers somebody would be quitting their job!!! Can you imagine taking toddlers and a bus full of HS kids into this mess every Saturday in March....