Spell That

Sissy qualified for the school spelling bee again this year. She came home on the last day of school before Christmas break with the list of 450 words to practice. I asked her when we should start practicing. She said she didn't know when the spelling bee was so there was no reason to start. 

Hmmm. Seems to me that they sent the list home so you could practice over Christmas break.

Sissy respectfully disagreed. And sometimes not respectfully.

I prodded her a couple more times about practicing. She continued to refuse.

Imagine my surprise when Sissy returned to school on Tuesday morning and I received an email inviting me to the spelling bee on Friday.

Uhhhh....crap. 

Mykey quickly wrote her a program that would dictate the words and she would type them. The words would randomly appear until she correctly typed them 3 times each. That's a lot of typing and memorizing.

Did I mention there were 450 words and only 3 days to learn them? And did I mention that there were words on the list that I've never even heard before? And did I mention that I was worried about her ability to be prepared for this spelling bee? And did I mention that this line of questioning is incredibly annoying?

Sissy spent many hours the next 3 evenings clacking away on the keyboard. It was her only hope.

And then off she went to the spelling bee on Friday afternoon. Mykey had to attend because I nearly met my demise watching her last year - I'm much too nervous for that nonsense and didn't want my innards to explode. 

The crowd started like this:

And slowly whittled down to this:

And then it was this:

Sissy won! I was incredibly proud. The winning word was ensemble. Hooray for Sissy!

When I went to pick her up from school a couple of hours later, this was happening:

A poor old guy accidentally crashed his truck into the front of the school. The story is his accelerator stuck. Thankfully no one was hurt. And even though he demolished the aquarium, all the fish were rescued and survived. 

What an exciting day! We had a lot to talk about at dinner.

We celebrated Sissy's spelling bee victory with Knoppers cookies and coconut almonds.

And my parents bought us pizza for dinner.

Man! It was an exhilarating Friday for us.

Congratulations to Sissy!

P.S. The District spelling bee is in a mere 5 days...that list has thousands of words. Thousands!