We Survived!

This past weekend was the forensics tournament for our homeschool forensics club, and I'm actually still alive, thankyouverymuch.

It was a long weekend, but it was exciting and eventful. Our club hosted the event, so in addition to preparing my own family for the tournament, there were meals to make, shopping and worrying to do, and preparations to...prepare. I was the Individual Event Judge Orienteer, so I had to think of all of the things that are important for judges to know when they're filling out ballots for young speakers. While I had a DVD to work with, the DVD player at the church decided that it didn't really feel like playing the DVD, so I did two of the orientations pretty much from a script, making sure to focus on all of the things that are especially important.

Some people fell asleep. And, based on the ballots my children got back, some simply didn't listen at all.

But that's okay. It was a very good experience, and, while my own children didn't place in any of the events, they debated their hearts out and had good marks for their speech presentations. From the looks of things, Bard was in 5th place going into the final round for her Programmed Oral Interp piece, had very good speaker points for debate, especially for her first tournament going against advanced debaters, and ahd decent marks on her Humorous Duo Interp piece. Houdin didn't do well in his debate rounds at all, but he received some very constructive, helpful advice on how to improve, and he did quite well in his speech events. As a matter of fact, with a bit more practice and polishing, he may even place next tournament.

Sweetheart did VERY well, and while they don't give places for her age division, she did get a certificate and candy (though her candy was stolen before she could eat it all) and she had many very good comments on her presentation. Monet, too, had excellent points and comments, and simply needs to work on annunciating more clearly.

Our club took many of the events, including first and second place HDUO, first place Impromptu Apologetics, first in Sweeps and first in Informative.

Our next tournament is in four weeks, the same weekend as Sweetheart's birthday and just a few days after mine.

Today, I really just worked on recovering. From everything. The tournament, my 8 minute running intervals, our dryer combusting, work, preparing for the tournament, and attending the tournament itself. I slept in, caught up on our houseconcert responsibilities, did laundry and enjoyed my family. We worked on speeches and ate leftover soup and read ballots and did more laundry.

And now it's time to recover from my day, so off to bed I go.