Iowa Bound!

We're leaving in just a few days for a road trip to Iowa, for the Odyssey of the Mind World Championships (creative thinking). This has been a dream of my older son's 5th grade team for the last four years. They have inched closer each year, and culminated this year with both regional and Texas tournament wins for their age division and problem. We're so thrilled and proud. The kids are a great group and sadly are separating next year to go to 3 different middle schools. Our extended families all planned to make the trip so we could celebrate their accomplishments together.

But, as always, life brings unexpected changes and surprises. This has been a challenging time for our team since the kids won the tournament and the right to go to Iowa. Our coach's husband, a young and healthy 45, suffered a devastating stroke. The first few days were touch-and-go, but he has shown remarkable improvement (although still half-paralyzed) and is in extended rehab. As a result, our coach can't go with the team, but her son will still be able to. We're a tight-knit group and the coach is one of my closest friends, so it has just been devastating emotionally. We have got the trip all re-arranged now, but changing travel plans and helping the family has required even more logistical work, time and energy for an effort that was already quite labor-intensive. This, coupled with all the end of school hoopla, has left our whole family simply exhausted. We can't wait to be on the road.

We're hoping to pick up a few more states in our letterboxing life goal of all 50 states--including Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and perhaps even Arkansas. When we first started letterboxing (five years ago), we looked for one in Kansas, but struck out. This is our chance to rectify that (so many more letterboxes than in 2004). We'll be in Ames if anyone has any great suggestions of letterboxes to try. We've got a circuitous route planned, one that takes us through Joplin, MO one way and through Oklahoma City the other. We haven't even decided which route we're taking which way; it's been so busy I haven't had time to do my normal meticulous route planning! We may just wing it.

The highlight of my son's team's performance is a mechanical pig named Princess. Princess is the star of the show, and she'll be traveling on the road with us. My son wants to blog her road trip, so look for a few photographs, a la Flat Stanley, to commemorate the trip.