Friday, July 18, 2008

Day Seven - The Reason We Came


Today was the last day of DesignCamp for Andrew. The camp puts on a show every year and the kids all bring their projects to a big room and set them up for display so all the proud parents can take lots of pictures and gloat about their genius children.

Mine certainly qualifies.
The kids all had pizza

The name of his camp was Electric Jungle and, as the name implies, they all built critters that have at least two electronic functions...or whatever you might call that. Here is our, um, cockatiel. He "blinks" and "walks." He also has no crest - that was a last-minute design change due to time constraint and the difficulty in achieving a crest that goes up and down as was originally planned.


I daresay, Andrew seemed to have more fun demonstrating the "ranger station" that he built early in the week. They had to build a survival station and include a few items they thought they would need. He carved a toilet out of foam. That's a definite necessity, I guess. But there are also several lights and lights of different colors to be used in signalling other rangers if danger arises.

It was super-hot in that auditorium. Today was somewhere around 93 degrees, which is fine at home because we are prepared for it and most buildings are air conditioned. But not so much here. They are much better prepared for cold weather, I think. I'd like to say that the heat and general slipperiness of sweaty hands contributed to the poor quality of these photos. I do apologize.
I did beg someone to take a shot of me and my boy. It's really the only one of the two of us that I didn't take at arm's length from this week. I am so proud of him. This is a big deal for him - it's his first shot at getting his feet wet with any sort of building and designing and wiring up something, and I think he did really well. Not to mention the fact that he was in a completely unfamiliar environment with nobody that he knew around him all day long. So - good job Andrew! I'm so honored to be your mom!

3 comments:

claibornes corner said...

We are both so proud of Andrew and you too.....

60ish and Glad said...

Wow - it is a good thing you knew ahead of time that it was a cockatiel! I love how he brings his life together - no mattter where he is. You see he closed the loop for himself. He will be able to do that at Blake too. This is a good.

Mary said...

You should be proud of him. You'll probably burst one day with all the pride those kids are going to give you.