The Harpers: FIRST Robotics Competition

O.k. o.k. I know it's been a while. I just haven't been feelin' the blog lately. Not sure why. Just busy doing all kinds of springy things, I guess. We have had a lot going on and my camera has been busy! I'll just have to catch up on posts over the next couple of nights beginning with our April 17th trip to Atlanta to meet Grampa at the FIRST Lego/robotics competition!

What? Doesn't every family of a 5 yr. old boy you know drive 3 hours in the wee hours of the morning on a Saturday to see robots built by high school students compete in robot soccer? No?

Well, we do.

We did.

And it rocked!

Here are some pictures from the day:

We got there on the final day of the competition and all of the Lego robots built by elementary and middle school kids had been put away. All that was left of the Legos was this giant statue of Woody and Buzz - enough to satisfy Miss Cate.

a typical finals team :)

another team

That's right. *Israel* (!)

One of the robots in the finals. Very interesting for Max to learn that real robots do not, in fact, look like metal human beings.

The kids that built these things were great kids! So nice, and willing to spend some time talking Max about how their robots work.

Max said something while we were in the pits. Something like "Mom, when I grow up I think I'm going to be a lot like these people."

Agreed.

A practice arena with a practice match going on.

As much as Max loved the robots, he loved the buttons that the teams were passing out at their booths even more. All of the people walking around there had these crazy collections of buttons pinned to their shirts, and Max was determined to have the craziest collection of them all. He came very close (some of these people were CRAZY!) and he wore the whole collection to school on Monday, giving him ample opportunity to discuss legos and robots with his entire class ALL. DAY. LONG.