The Return of Pi POD

Today was Utah's Lego League State Championship.  Team Pi Pod came back as the returning champs, but I don't think they had very high expectations for the day, as far as winning went.  They wanted to do another year because they enjoy each other so much and it is great fun.

The day began early with the parade of teams.

Their first of three robot runs was their highest and it let them hold onto the 2nd place robot score out of the 52 teams competing.
Here is a long-ish video of 2 robot runs if you're interested.  It's not very obvious what to look for but there are several different missions the boys programmed their robots to complete on a table of lego obstacles.

The boys were pleased with their judging session on Project presentations.  There are also team work and robot design and programming judging sessions.  But the teams don't know anything about their scoring or standings, except for robot performance, until the awards ceremony at the end of the day. 

There are awards in several categories and then 2 overall champion awards.  Pi Pod won the 2nd place champion award and they were thrilled!  A Utah team is not eligible this year to go to the World Festival in St. Louis;  instead, one of the champion teams will get to go to Legoland California to compete and one will get to go to Legoland Florida.  Tough choice!  The 1st place team gets to choose first, so we don't know yet which it will be for Pi Pod.  But very fun either way!

We had a very enjoyable day hanging at the U.  The hats that Abe and Cannon are wearing were a handout from another team named Lego Bistro.  They won an award for best project and two of the boys are in our ward, so we were very happy for them.

Here's a picture of Cannon, just because I love him and I think he's really cute.

I love him, too, and he is YUMMY!

Abe and I had a fantastic birthday date last night. 

Here's a little video of them winning their award.