Global Finals!!

Posted on June 8, 2015May 8, 2016 by missmobilemama

We hit the pause button on our sightseeing and business traveling this week because it was time to head to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for the DestinNation Imagination GLOBAL FINALS!!!

The what-e-a-what? Now’s my chance to tell you about one of our favorite things EVER! (And perhaps expose a little bit of the geeky side of our family).

DestiNation Imagination (AKA: DI) is a super-fun, amazing, and incredibly enriching competition of creativity and innovation. Competitors range in age from elementary to university students. Basically, kids form teams of 2-7 members and choose one of five challenges to work on each year. Challenges involve fine arts, engineering, technology, humanitarianism, performing art, lots of creativity, and team work. Each challenge has a different emphasis, but they usually involve a variety of these components.

It’s extremely hard and it’s extremely fun! This year we had two teams that both took first place in Montana and earned their way to Global Finals!

So what’s Global Finals like? I would describe it as “Spring Break for kids” except everyone keeps their shirt on…and stays sober. Seriously, it is a non-stop kid and teen party zone of 17,000 people from all over the world for six straight days. The adults are DRAGGING by day three but it is so much fun! (With adequate caffeine consumption I was able to rock it out ‘Uptown Funk’ style the recommended average of five times a day, so there’s that to be thankful for. Click here to watch my funky video).

The event is sponsored by groups like NASA and Disney so you can imagine the fun. We filled our time with bounce houses, swimming, all you can eat pizza parties, laser shows, and very cool celebrations like the Duct Tape Ball (the highlight of the week in our book).

By the way, if you couldn’t get that link to work…. Thanks for playing along. 😉

We parked the RV for a week of dorm life and met up with two families from Bozeman who happen to be the other two thirds of our teams. To say the kids were excited to see friends from home would be an understatement. There was much rejoicing, fanfare, and jubilee.

Oh, and we can’t forget about the actual competition! Our Elementary team “The Curious Lightning Bolts” really knocked it out of the park considering that they are on the extremely young age for their division. They placed 21st out of 82 teams from around the globe. They competed in a challenge called “Brand Aid” where they had to implement a community service project and then present what they did in a skit form that included a brand with an original logo and jingle. They also had to incorporate some kind of puzzle into their performance. Wow- they did a fantastic job showcasing their project! They collected 17,000 stickers for kids in Uganda who have to have painful jiggers removed from their feet. These kids spoke at churches and schools, sent letters, and used social media to get the word out. Their skit was adorable and they even wrote a poem to add in for extra pizzazz!

Our middle school team, The Blue Belles, is so fun to watch! They chose a challenge called “The Improve Games” this year. They had to perform three two minute sketches that combined different improve games, settings, and situations that were randomly drawn and given to them on the stage. For example, their first sketch had to be “storytelling one word at a time” meaning they had to take turns saying only one word to formulate a story. (Yikes!) The situation was “you lost your turn”, someone had to perform “fire breathing” (for pretend of course) and the setting was “in a toaster”. They always had one minute to plan and two minutes to perform before moving onto the next sketch. These girls are SO funny! They also placed in the top 30 in their category which was a great accomplishment!

It was bitter-sweet to finish out our season of DI, but the kids are already brainstorming about next year. This was our second time at Global Finals, so they are determined to work hard and make it an annual excursion. I can’t say I’d be surprised if they do!

A little tribute to Global Finals 2015!

Our Duct Tape Ball crew. Project Runway- watch out!!

There isn’t anything these kids CAN’T make out of duct tape!

Play time with NASA

We love finding all sorts of amazing hand-made costumes!

The Curious Lightening Bolts out to change the world!

Yes, the official mascots of the world’s larges creativity competition are

a cube and a sphere named Box and Ball. I still haven’t figured that one out!

Talented- I know.

Improve in action!

Designing robot ideas with National Geographic

Pin trading is HUGE at Global Finals! The kids (and adults) get so into it. I have grown to LOVE this hobby. It encourages the kids to interact with others from all over the world and overcome language barriers to work out their deals. The pins naturally develop their own economy that even the young ones can understand.

It also teaches them how to:

1. Ask for what they want

2. Learn that it’s OK to hear ‘no’

3. Learn that it’s OK to say ‘no’ even if you’re saying it to an adult.

High Fives from this mama to whomever created this program!

Thanks for a rockin’ week DestiNation Imagination!

Our Youngins

Posted on June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 by missmobilemama

For those that we don’t have the privilege of knowing in person, I wanted to give you a brief introduction to our fabulous four. We don’t post our kids’ first names on our blog, so they have cyber nick-names.

SUNSHINE is fourteen and starting High School. Like her name, she is joyful, kind, and silly. She loves playing the cello, collecting rocks and monument coins, reading sci-fi, building in Mine Craft, and gardening. She’s a creative story teller and loves to write, draw, paint, and craft. She has an extreme fondness of ice cream and she’s stuck like glue to our chocolate labradoodle, Kuma! She has a wonderful reputation of being responsible and dependable beyond her years!

BIRD is twelve and starting seventh grade. She’s our animal whisper. She has a particular fondness to birds and horses. She spends much of her time training and loving on her three cocketiels, skate boarding, biking, building Mine Craft, and reading. This girl was born singing and she fills our home with her beautiful voice. She’s learning to play the guitar and she’s also a talented actress. She’s funny and the polar-opposite of shy!

BUTTERCUP is eight and starting third grade. She’s a little brainiac who loves anything mentally challenging. (She’s hard to keep up with!) She LOVES card games, strategy games, logic games, or really anything that involves competition. She’s always the first to offer the help or serve and she’s always has a “thank you” or a sweet word of encouragement. She loves to draw, bake, and swim and she has the cutest giggles you’ve ever heard!

THE NINJA is five and is starting Kindergarten. This kid is HILLARIOUS! He is a conversationalist through and through, and he’ll talk your ear off! He has the vocabulary of a 20 year old and describes the world through his eyes in elaborate detail. He is a deep thinker and cracks us up with his ideas! He can hold his own with all the girls, but he’s a mighty man when it comes to “battling”. He loves all things that shoot and he spends hours setting up his army men. He wants to be a police officer, or a soldier, or the President of the United States when he grows up.

Jamestown

Posted on June 8, 2015May 8, 2016 by missmobilemama

13180824_10209567235321590_672851026_n We squeezed it a short detour to Jamestown, VA on our way north. We wanted to tour all of Williamsburg, but realized that we didn’t have enough time to devote to the historical site, so we settled with a visit to the Jamestown museum this time around.

The museum exhibits were fantastic and we learned so much about the early British settlers and life in the New World. The museum did a great job of sharing the culture of the three major people groups that co-existed in the area: The Powhatan Native Americans, the British Settlers, and the Kongolese people that arrived via the slave trade.

We did find it odd and disappointing that the museum seemed to wash over the tragedy of the slave trade. They gave the facts of how the trade operation worked but they seemed to wrap it all up with phrases like, “Their treasure was their rich culture that they brought with them to America”. As much as we enjoyed the museum, it was interesting that we all came away with the same impression of a “white washed” portrayal of black history. The museum was still a wonderful experience and well worth the visit, but I hope that they will make some changes to that important component.

In addition to the indoor museum, there are three walk-through replicated historical sites connected by a trail system. We walked through a Powhatan hut village, a replica of Jamestown itself, and replicated ships in the boat yard. The ships were the most interesting. We were amazed to see how the early settlers survived on such tiny quarters across the Atlantic.

Our North Carolina Family

Posted on June 3, 2015July 13, 2015 by missmobilemama

Actually, we don’t have ANY family in North Carolina. Until two years ago, we only knew one family in the whole state. But things have changed just a little bit…

My childhood friend, Crystal Garvin, joined our Freedom Tree team in Dec. of 2012 and has grown a very large team of several thousand in the area. Crystal and I hit it off as BFFs when we were four years old and we were always sad to be across the country from each other once we had to become grown-ups with “responsibilities”. Becoming business partners was win-win in our book because now we have a great reason to spend time in the East which also gives us a lot of time to hang out with Crystal and her family! We also have a lot of people we can now call North Carolina friends. We have been so blessed by Crystal and her team, it’s always a complete privilege to visit.

We spent a few days in the Triad (Greensboro) area. Crystal’s husband, Dave, taught Sunshine how to properly grill steaks on a charcoal grill (they were delicious!) and the Ninja was in HEAVEN playing with their three boys. Even though our kids already have nineteen first cousins, it’s been decided by our son that the Garvin boys are cousins as well. They look enough alike that they could be!

Crystal and I spent a whole day teaching and training some of the leaders on her team while the guys and the kids hit the pool. On our last night the Garvins hosted a super fun family party for the top ranking leaders on her team- bowling, pizza, and LAZER TAG! (We’re fans of anything that involves shooting each other for points).

Thank you Garvins and team North Carolina for such a fun weekend!

Mischievous boys sitting together in church!

The grill master and his apprentice.

Learning how to play pool from Laura (one of the leaders on our team).

Love working with this crew!

A couple of handsome dudes hangin’ by the lake at Oak Hollow Campground in High Point, NC

Dophins and Chickens!

Posted on June 1, 2015June 1, 2015 by missmobilemama

Before I even begin this post, I have to thank my good friend Libbie for recommending Red Gate Farm Campground to us. Libbie took her family out on the road in the same model RV that we have last year, so she’s served as mentor to me in many ways. She helped me know how to organize the RV and gave me great ideas and her husband took the time to show James the ropes on all the mechanical and “hook up” details. (It is more complicated than I realized!)

We have always heard wonderful things about Savannah so we planned a few days to relax there on our trip. When Libbie heard we were headed to Savannah she was quick to tell me to check out this out-of-the-box campground. It’s basically a beautiful little farm property with race horse stables, a large pond, and a little farm house that has been turned into an RV parking area with hook-ups.

I could not get over the enormous shady oak trees and the pretty red out buildings. There were goats, peacocks, chickens, ponies, horses, and ducks. As I sat next to the pool watching the kids, a few horses strolling by (some of them just roam around), and a man painting the white fence, I thought, “I could stay in this moment forever!”

We did pull ourselves away from the farm a few times to enjoy the local sites. We drove down to the river front and treated ourselves to THE famous Leopold’s Ice Cream shop and enjoyed learning the history of the legendary business that invented Tutti Frutti (and inspired the song!)

Confession: We were complete gluttons in Savannah. How can you not be with all that amazing southern cooking, seafood, and famous ice cream? Don’t judge- appreciating the food is appreciating the culture in my opinion!

Continuing on the theme of gluttony, we found some AMAZING southern food at a little restaurant called The Sisters of the New South. Let me tell you- those sisters know how to feed people! The yams- I could have just eaten a whole plate of yams and cornbread! When you order a lunch combo plate you’d better wear your Thanksgiving elastic wasted pants (no I don’t really own any of those but if I kept eating here I’d need some!) because their spoons are large and they PILE on the food! That’s all I really have to say. Go to Savannah. Sleep at the farm. Go see the sisters and order the yams. Do it and thank me later.

Oh, wait, you need to add one more thing to that list. OK, the yams were amazing, but THIS was our favorite outing in Savanna: A sunset cruise with “Captain Derek’s Dolphin Adventrue” on Tybee Island! Derick and his First Mate toured us around for an hour and a half. And there were dolphins EVERYWHERE!!! They were diving and swimming under our boat. None of us had ever seen a dolphin before so we were squealing with delight! (Squealing. For real.) The pelicans were also diving for fish which might not sound exciting, but they are hilarious! They just nose-bomb into the water and it is very entertaining. Did you know that pelicans dive with their eyes open and most of them die from starvation because they eventually go blind? And the largest dolphin in the world? The Orca “killer whale”. Yep, it’s not a whale, it’s a dolphin. There’s a little free sample of our road schooling- you’re welcome.

The highlight of the boat trip was probably about 20 minutes in when our 5 year old Ninja announced that he had to pee now. No he could not hold it for another 70 minutes. He needed a bathroom NOW. (I know what you’re thinking, and no, he couldn’t just pee over the side. The sides were wide and that would have resulted in having 30 people watch my son pee onto the side of the boat and possibly endure some of the not-so-great kind of splashing.) OK… I have to say this. After YEARS of trucking our daughters back and forth to the ladies room I firmly announced that it was James’ turn when I gave birth to a son. So, the question I’ve been pondering since our boating excursion is how on EARTH did I end up bent over in a dark storage crawl space under the bow of the boat watching my son pee into a 5 gallon bucket? I don’t really have much more to add to that story, except that the First Mate received a nice tip and now I know where sailors pee.

Lets end on something more lovely. We headed out to open sea and sped along right beside an ENORMOUS cargo ship. Wow- that was so fun! And we came back in front of a beautiful lighthouse as the sun set. We also passed by Fort Pulaski (which is a very large Confederate fort that is still standing) and learned some fascinating history.

Savannah was a win in our book! The only regret we had was that we made it through the whole state of Georgia without eating a peach. (Tragic I know!) Well, now we have to go back!

I have a lot of great pictures from our Savannah days:

Sunset cruise off Tybee Island