Lubbock-Avalanche Regional Spelling Bee

Today was the Regional Spelling Bee for West Texas. There were 21 district champs competing and the winner won a trip to Washington, DC to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. A 7th grade boy won. Allie did great and finished ahead of about half of the kids. It's kind of neat to think that only 9 kids were between her and the national spelling bee. She studied the dictionary almost every day since she won her school bee. It was impressive to see her constantly lugging her big dictionary around. Here are some photos and an account of the day:

We arrived early and had some left over pizza for lunch. (Last night we had pizza and watched "Akeelah and the Bee" to get in the mood. That's a great movie and if you haven't seen it, you should check it out.)






This was taken moments before Kate and I left to drop her off at my friend Debbie's house. It was so nice of her to take care of Kate. Spelling bees and toddlers don't mix. You may notice that her hair looks a little funny. As we were getting shoes on to run out the door, Kate snuck into the bathroom and put shampoo/conditioner in her hair. We didn't have time to wash it out, so she got to sport the "greasy" look.


Checking in and picking a number. Allie chose 18.


Sitting and waiting for the bee to begin. Look how tall some of those kids are! They ranged from 3rd to 8th grade and all of them had to spell from the same list of words.


Our champion! Her first word in the practice round was "Character". Allie survived the first round which took out 9 of the 21 spellers. Her word was "diablo". Allie went out with 3 other spellers in the next round. Her word was "yamen" and she spelled it "yamin" (Yamen is a noun, it is the residence or office of an official in the Chinese Empire in case you wanted to know) She paused at the "m" and you could tell that she was trying to decide between "i" and "e". She was so close!


We are so proud of Allie. She was great today! She has lugged a dictionary around to school and studied thousands of words. She still has 5 more years of spelling bee "eligibility". She is a hard worker and has been blessed with a great mind.


Allie's fan club. She is surrounded by Isa, Mr. Langen the vice principal, her teacher Mrs. Warren is in the blue, and Mrs. Kornely another of Allie's teachers. It meant so much that they would use their Saturday to come support Allie. She is blessed to have so many people at school who love her and help her. So many people were rooting for her and cheering her on this week.

It looks like that giant bee balloon is going to eat Allie.


Allie won the award for the youngest speller there. Even though there were a couple of other 3rd graders, she was the only 8 yr old. She also received a gift bag with goodies and a gift card to Sonic.


Allie chose Fuddruckers for the celebration dinner. We haven't been there before, but it was a pretty good hamburger joint. We sat in the Buddy Holly corner which was cool because he was from Lubbock.


Sometimes I just don't understand why this 2 year old only weighs 21.5 lbs. This was actually my hamburger, but Kate decided she wanted it. The days of just feeding her off of our plates are apparently over.


After snagging my burger, Kate went for my drink.



The Boys


We ended the day at Isa's house with a bee cake I made for Allie.